We're gonna need a bigger boat

It's like Shark Week.  You know it's coming every August.  It's going to be graphic and stunning, and you know you're going to see some of the same stuff you've seen before.  It's out there, swimming in the water, and you're compelled to watch because you can't turn away, but there's going to be damage, and crying, and shock, and you're still going to watch it.  Every day of that week.  Every August.

(Insert Jaws theme here)

Scary, right?

Yeah, it's back to school time.  You're swimming in the water and all of a sudden, something "pulls" at your leg.  By the time you get to shore, you realize your leg's already gone.

School starting is just like that.  By the time you realize it's official, and it's real, and you're ill-prepared, it's already begun.

All this stuff I thought I'd have time for all summer long is now undone.  All my great master plans of entertainment and activity are futile.  Besides travelling all over the place, and visiting with my family, and seeing crazy wild animals, I had this delusion that my kids would have these magical crafts and projects and activities.  That I'd turn into SuperMom and the kids would be so impressed by my creativity and initiative, that they'd leap into fantastic uber-selves, capable of art and craft and exercise and imaginative play.

They're watching, I think, Suite Life with Zach and Cody.  Possibly the least creative, least imaginative, most derivative thing on television.  I am not wowing them with my SuperMom abilities.

My leg is being chewed by a giant Great White, but that's only his appetizer.

I washed their uniforms, so at least they won't be nude on the first day.  They have shoes, and haircuts, and their summer work packets.  They won't be the neglected ones on the first day.

I, on the other hand, need to get teacher supplies and help out the PTA and sign up for  Welcome Back! and Welcome, Kindergarteners! parties.  I need to get a bunch of library books to have in the car for the hours sitting and waiting at swim practice.  I need to restock the snacks for lunches....hell, I need lunchboxes.

It's all so awful.  The kids are acting out--they're dreading the routine, the monotony, the homework just as I am.  For the last week of summer, I'm hearing things I haven't heard in weeks--I'm bored, there's nothing to do.  I don't wanna do that.  They've got an extended version of the Sunday Night Blues.  They're resisting the inevitable.  They refuse to go back into the water.

I feel for them.  We all would rather not have bathtime and bedtime and wake up time, and lunchtime dictated by bells and alarms.  We all would rather swim than study.  We all would rather not do the same drill every day.  Alas, this is life.  And there are upsides, of course--they'll see friends they literally haven't seen in weeks.  Our family becomes very isolated in the summer, and I'm sure they'll be happy to see their friends and socialize with peers.  I get to see my friends again, too.  We've all been buried in pretend, temporary summer lives, and we reemerge every fall in cooperative efforts to get these kids through school.

It's time to start setting the alarm.  To start enforcing bedtime.  To retrench the half hour of reading every day.  It's time for collared shirts (ugh) instead of swim trunks.  It's time to see what lurks out in the vast black sea.

It's gonna be scary.