Sixty dollars?!?
Are you freaking kidding me?
I’m starting to think I should’ve encouraged my kids to drop out in kindergarten when I had the chance.
You see, when my oldest son was in kindergarten, he took a swing at a fellow classmate on the playground…
For not getting a turn on a swing.
Oh, the irony.
The ensuing suspension was clearly a sign that we should’ve quit while we were ahead.
At any rate…
I (half) jokingly offered to buy this now high school-aged child of mine two middle school yearbooks for the price of one $60 high school yearbook.
Good deal, right?
He respectfully declined.
Apparently, more is not necessarily more.
School is expensive.
And everything is exponentially more expensive once you reach high school.
It’s not enough to own a single pair of Nikes.
A child must cram a minimum of two extra pairs of shoes into his backpack every day.
Just in case Converse or Vans suddenly become more popular 2/3 of the way through the school day.
OMG!
Look at those shoes!
They’re sooooo 2nd period!
Uh, yeah.
Okay.
What do you mean your phone is soooo outdated?
Since when is last year considered The Dark Ages?
And everything has a fee.
Activity fees.
PTO fees.
Booster Club fees.
(What exactly is it that we’re boosting?)
Even volunteering comes with a price tag.
Along with the obligatory background check, they now insist on taking your full set of fingerprints.
In exchange for a cheerful mug that boasts the numerous virtues of volunteering.
I’m still not convinced that was a good trade-off.
Clothes are expensive.
Books are expensive.
You need money for what?
More school pictures?
More broken earbuds?
More pencils?!?
Again?
What the…
Did you eat that last batch?
Speaking of eating…
Food.
Oh my goodness.
The amount of food growing kids require is beyond belief, especially with those never-ending growth spurts.
What do you mean there wasn’t enough food in your lunch today?
What did you think- it was all just one big snack?
My mountainous cart is always one bag of cheese puffs away from overflowing and toppling over whenever I go grocery shopping.
There seems to be some unspoken challenge in our household for attempting to eat $200 worth of groceries right out of the bags.
Bonus points if they can pull it off in under 24 hours.
When are you going shopping again?
Sigh.
I’m seeing stars as money fails to conveniently drop out of the sky.
(On a positive note, I have been saving money recently while tripling my wardrobe in the process. My boys and I are currently close enough in size that some of their shirts fit me quite nicely.)
Money, money, money.
Down the toilet.
Along with my sanity.
Fluuuuush!
~Happy Saturday, my friends! Have a safe and happy weekend!~
Mom is Latin for ATM.
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I wouldn’t doubt it! 😄
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My God! I’m just starting on that road… but everything on your post…yes and YES….my child is not even in high school yet?! I think I’m starting to hyperventilate and my eye is twitching!
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Haha! The good news is the eye twitching does ease up… usually at night, in the brief moments of sleep you might manage to capture when you’ve exhausted yourself from all that hyperventilation. 😂
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Kids are definitely too fashion and gadget conscious these days. Gotta have the latest everything or you’re not considered cool. Thank God we grew up in a different era. I feel your pain!
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Isn’t that the truth! Thank goodness we didn’t have half as many pricy gadgets then or we would’ve driven our parents crazy! Crazy, like my kids are driving me with all their requests and demands. 😝
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I feel your pain!!
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I have no doubt you can completely relate. 😄
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My mom STILL talks about the two to three year period in elementary school when apparently my feet didn’t grow – and she was thrilled she didn’t have to buy me new shoes. I’m not sure how the same shoes lasted that long, but apparently it was quite memorable to my mother 🙂 Now having a stepson – who even with us part time attempts to eat us out of house and home, amongst a million other expenses – I have wondered if he would stop growing too!
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I’m thinking that must be just a girl thing. I had years like that myself, where I really didn’t “need” any new clothes or shoes for lack of intense growth spurts. Boys, on the other hand, can barely make it through a school day without somehow managing to outgrow the clothes they wore to school that day. 😜
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CAPITALISM! Seriously though, kids (and the schools that charge you an arm and a leg for everything) are the worst. Who needs to own their own math kit? When am I going to use that protractor and compass now? WHEN!?
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Ha! I remember having a protractor and a compass. I used them for exactly one school year, in Geometry. And then never again. Such a great investment. 😜
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Been there, done that! Must keep a sense of humor.
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A sense of humor is the only way to maintain any semblance of sanity, I’m noticing. 😝
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I think I would have been your dream child. While I did run up a nice food bill (What growing boy doesn’t?), my other needs were either simple or non-existent. I wore clothes until they’d fall off (No, I DON’T want to go school clothes shopping!), conveniently withheld any information about school photos and yearbooks from Mom, and didn’t have or want the latest anything (And STILL don’t!). Of course, since I had four younger sisters, my folks still went broke anyway…. but at least I wasn’t a drain on anyone’s livelihood!
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Oh, I can most definitely attest to the fact that food disappears disturbingly quick whenever boys are around. 😜
There’s something to be said for not always rushing out to buy the newest edition of everything. Is the world really going to end if you’ve got only the second-newest version of that phone? Or last season’s hoodie? Probably not. 🙄
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Ha ha ha! Great post. Wow, it’s pretty astounding how much $ is involved with having kids. I don’t remember things costing that much when I was going to school. (OMG did I just actually say that? I swore I wouldn’t talk like an adult when I was younger….) Have a great weekend!! Hope it’s fun and full of laughter. Blessings, Debbie ps – I went to a workshop today to build my coaching practice! It was awesome, for women entrepreneurs. And tomorrow, a spa appt. 🙂
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Ha! But it’s so true! We didn’t have yearbooks in kindergarten, or fancy electronic devices either, for that matter. The coolest electronic I had was a graphing calculator that I had bought myself during my senior year of high school. It was quite helpful with calculus, but it was even better once I figured out how to download Tetris to it. 😝
Hope you enjoyed your spa day! Have a terrific week! 😊
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Ha ha! I was just talking with my office mate about those cool calculators. 🙂
Have a terrific week too. Blessings! 🙂 Debbie
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I do love your posts, your wordplay draws me in and makes me feel as if I’m there with you – I can totally feel the ungainly cart underneath my white-knuckled fingers!
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Thank you! 😊
The overflowing carts are the stuff of nightmares- especially when the cart is pushed past its limits of capacity, and items start falling out of the cart and rolling down the aisle. (There’s a slight chance I may be speaking from experience.) 😝
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You must submit your words to a local newspaper, you’d bring a lot of joy (& understanding!) along with the smiles!
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I cannot even begin to tell you how much your kind words brightened my day! Thank you so much for the encouragement, along with the gentle reminder that my ultimate goal is indeed to touch the lives of people throughout the world with laughter and smiles. 💗💗💗
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…and you are, believe me!
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😊
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I hear you. And I have news…it doesn’t stop. Just sent one of to college and had to transfer money to her account. Yep. It just keeps going smh
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I had a feeling this might be the case. When people say that your babies will always be your babies, I’m starting to think they aren’t speaking strictly in the sentimental sense… 😝
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OMG Angelica, don’t get me started with my kids, their school and the amount of $$$ that goes into it. Why do these schools need fees for everything?! And my kids want new clothes almost every month because they can’t see themselves wearing the same thing for the rest of the year. I told them to mix and match…be creative with your clothes, but got an “Are you crazy?!” look from them. Here I thought I was the only one feeling this way.
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If they’re not outgrowing everything in their closets in under five minutes, then every single thing in those closets will inevitably be beyond uncool two weeks later. It’s a lose-lose situation. But hey, it’s a fine excuse to go shopping again for the tenth time this month! 😜
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Yes! This! I am a parent of three teenagers – two of them boys. I feel your pain. 😆
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If you’re wondering where all of your money keeps disappearing to, it all goes either on your teenager (shoes) or in them (food, food, and more food)! 😜
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LOL! Yep. Right on the mark. 😀
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In retrospect, it’s almost disturbing that this isn’t a work of fiction. 😜
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Amen.
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😀😁😃😂😄😅😆
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I laughed and laughed and laughed and then paused and thought, “wait a minute, she’s right about all this stuff…. and then I laughed and laughed and laughed some more. Great post!
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Thanks! It’s amazing how much humor there is to be found in real life situations. I’m sure it’s easier for you to laugh since your shopping cart probably doesn’t resemble an active volcano moments away from erupting. 😜
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🙂
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