43 Freaking Days

Oh my God! It's wonderful! Sniffle, sniffle. Wipe away tears. Bloody wonderful!

It's the last day of the Victorian School holidays for my kids! I can't believe it's finally here. And boy, how those 43 days just flew by...

Nooooo.

I've been reading through friends' Facebook posts of beautiful and sometimes teary stories of their youngsters returning, or beginning, school. Lovely photos of tidy uniforms, rows of bags and homemade lunchbox treats. That's not me.

Tonight, as I count down the hours until Big Grade Six Girl returns to class, I have jobs to do. Jobs that I'll admit I've been a little delayed in doing. With Ella just settling in bed after several curtain calls to remind me to wake her at 6 (WTF?) and to iron her school dress (again, WTF? - in her six years of primary school I have never ironed her uniform, and I do not intend to start now. You will not teach this old dog new tricks) I have decided the most important thing I could be doing with my time now is to blog. You are welcome.

I should have learned from last year's 11pm run to Kmart. My nearest store is open until midnight and is specifically designed for mums like me. We walk through the store with purpose, make-up-less and daggy, heading directly for those last minute first-day-of-school purchases. This would be a great place to meet likeminded mums who are just as crap as I am at getting their shiz together. However, we all walk fast, heads bowed, eyes bleary, moccasins shuffling on the vinyl floor determined not to make eye contact as we race for the checkout before they lock us in there overnight. 

I'm proud to say I will not be doing the Kmart run tonight.

Instead, I will be finding matching, or close-enough-to-be-matching, socks, lengthening a school dress (which will probably not even be worn tomorrow as she'll change her mind, again) and labelling brand new lunch boxes and drink bottles. My bad - I forgot to clean out the lunch boxes from last year and they were stashed in a box of 'hide for Christmas' stuff until now. I didn't have the courage to open them. I just threw them away. Shudders.  

I had Ella empty her own school bag this afternoon. In front of me. So I can see first hand how she 'emptied' it at the end of the last school year without me present. Needless to say, the ghosts of bananas and ham and cheese sandwiches of terms past that had been fermenting in the summer heat, are still haunting my nose. Apparently it was my fault. I could have saved myself a lot of trouble and just emptied it for her in December. I'm terrified of what might lurk in Campbell's bag. I know it's not school work.

You'd think that with my excitement to have them return to school I would have had them all packed and ready the first day of January. So would I. I just can't figure myself out somedays. But here we are, 10 hours before school starts, and I can't fucking wait. It's not that I don't love having them around. I just don't love having them around all the time. But after 43 freaking days, Mummy needs her sanity back and maybe her ears will stop ringing from the competitive shouting from dawn to dusk. 

Forget the Tea and Tissues morning at school - who's up for a Wine and a Whine at ten past nine tomorrow morning?

56 days until the end of Term.

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