Bug Begins School

I can always tell based on the lack of attention (sounds all me-me-me, doesn't it?) the Etsy shop receives when a 'holi-day' or another far-reaching event is occurring. Recently, sales have slumped, views on the site have dipped, and before I remembered it's BACK TO SCHOOL season, I thought, once again, I had lost my mojo. I remember this now. There's nothing else like it. The mad scramble to get the t's crossed and the i's dotted, the digging from the family archives immunization cards and birth certificates, the scurry and rush and fake sales blanketed in ads professing time is running out, hurry and buy these jeans or whathaveyou's before they're all gone and we pretend they will become more expensive. It's all must-have backpacks and markers and pens and pencils -- and back to school night where you and your children get to meet their teacher for the first time, where a list of have-to-buy's are provided (one year a request for spare underwear was on the list), and you begin to see the fear and excitement in your child's eyes when they realize this is really real.

Bug starts school next Monday. Tonight is back to school night and Bug's mum is on the verge of tears because of it. Her wee Bug is going to school. In conversations over the past few weeks, Bug has indicated the extent of her knowledge about school seems to be focused on dress code. Every time I'd hold up clothes at the store for her to approve, she'd simply say, "There's a dress code," without actually stating what that meant. She doesn't know what codes are outlined within the mysterious dress code, she just knows that they exist. Aside from that, she seems completely ambivalent to the fact that she's going to go to school from now on, five days a week, week after week, until holidays and summer vacation release her from the drudgery. She's not excited; she's not sad. She's just accepting. Gotta go. And there's a dress code.