Office supplies

While I may be purposefully ignoring the rapidly approaching school year, my children are not. And really, it is not because they are all so anxious to crack those math books open again. I know why. It's all because the beginning of the school year means new school supplies which means a trip to the office supply store. The badgering has already begun. "When are you going to get school supplies?" "Can I come with you to get school supplies?" "I love going to the office supply store!" And on and on and on. They love office supplies and love to walk around the office supply store. Every single one of them.

(Actually, I have no idea if G. and L. love the office supply store since I have never taken them there. I have taken them to very few stores at all. Poor things don't get out much.)

You would think to hear them that we were down to two short stubby pencils and they were pulling paper out of the recycling to use. The reality is, I'm not sure we really need to load up on all that many school supplies this year. I have stacks of empty notebooks and boxes of reams of paper. We have more crayons than we know what to do with and currently the children's scissors are in a breeding phase. (At least that's what it seems like. Our scissors go through phases. We either find ones we don't recognize all over the house or they have done some sort of lemming trick and there is not a pair to be seen.) Based on how often office supply type things have to be picked up off the floor, I think we could use a little less of them and not more.

There are a couple of things I do need to get. The first is I'm going to (finally) throw out all the bad pencils which fill the drawers and buy good ones. For years I thought I could get buy with purchasing the cheapest pencils available and now I'm paying for it. They don't sharpen, they just break. Since they don't sharpen, no on uses them and they sit and pile up in the drawers giving the illusion that we have more pencils than one family needs. If I added it up, I have probably wasted hours of my life looking for a pencil which will actually write.

I will also be buying (again) a new electric pencil sharpener. I'm pretty sure our family could hold the record for speed killing of electric pencil sharpeners. I still have the latest one sitting on my desk, but I don't know why since it doesn't do anything but make noise anymore. It will be joining the bad pencils in the garbage. Anyone come across an industrial strength electric pencil sharpener that works?

The last things I know I need to stock up on are glue sticks and tape. At the rate these items are used up by the craft loving children is astonishing and I don't think I could ever buy too much of either of them. I actually hide the tape so I have some when I need it. I've actually put rolls of tape into people's stockings at Christmas it is such a valuable commodity.

So that's it; that's my list. It's not terribly exciting. Some people will be disappointed that it doesn't include carbon paper or pretty paper clips or index cards or multi-colored erasers or stacks of new notebooks. I'm the mean mom sometimes. It's OK, I can live with it. I do have something maybe all of you can help me with, though. When you have an appliance repairman come to your house, sometimes they have a metal box that has rolls of carbon receipts where you are asked to sign (after having written a very large check) and they turn the handle and out rolls the receipt and they go away with your check and you are left with a small piece of yellow paper and (hopefully) a working appliance? Does anyone know what the actual name for those boxes is? And how does one go about locating one? There is a boy in my home particularly obsessed with those boxes and there is a birthday coming up... (Shhh!)