Homework

Monkey started homework today.  First of all, I don't remember having homework in kindergarten.  Of course, I don't remember much from kindergarten, but I am 90% sure that homework was not like this.  There are folders.  With prongs.  There are lists.  In childish fonts.  There are schedules!  For a five year old!  

After dinner, Monkey and I sat down to tackle his first assignments.  Math consisted of tracing numbers  (thank Buddha, that's math I can do).  ABCs took a lot more time than I thought it would.  There was once a time that I thought I could/would teach.  So I entered the School of Education after graduating with my BA, and boy, was that a rude awakening.  Whatever my calling in life, teaching was definitely not it.  Dashed were my dreams of free summers, holidays, and breaks.

Halfway through tracing the letter M over and over, my phone rang with a work issue.  Which led to me having to check my email and then send out some stuff.  Before I started homework with Monkey, I had to shut off Disney Junior, to his disappointment.  (He claimed he just wanted to "listen to it, not watch", but he hasn't heard of multi-tasking yet.)  Once I got on the phone, it was all, "who's that who's that who's that, WHO IS THAT MOMMY?".  Which got Disney Junior turned back on.  You know what else got turned on after that?  Parental guilt.

And by the way, we didn't finish the homework.  FML.

Mail

I hate the post office.  I hate mailing stuff.  And most of all, I hate buying stamps.  When I was young, my dad would keep stamps in a tiny coffee can he kept on his desk.  He would keep those little silica gel packets to keep moisture out, since in those days, stamps had that lick-adhesive.  Stamps were also 20 cents back then.

I would write letters to my pen pals, then I would sneak a stamp from his stash, and mail it.  It's a little hard for me to comprehend a roll of 100 stamps being $20, but that's what it was back then.  And I loved to write letters, so I'd run through my dad's stash quickly, especially during the summer.  But he never complained.  He'd just buy more stamps.  He never even complained when he'd need to mail something (and he wrote letters as often as I did), and the stamps would be gone.

Today I had to buy stamps for a mass mailout.  350 stamps, to be exact.  Which cost me about $165.  My eyes nearly fell out of my head, since math is not my strong suit.  I didn't even bother estimating what it was going to cost me.

I don't understand the post office.  I don't understand why some people take so long at the counter.  And I really don't understand when people pack their shit at the post office, waiting until they get to the counter.  Me, I take my box there to be mailed, all ready to go.  By the time I get to the counter, it takes all of 2 minutes to mail my shit and get the hell out of there.  And that line is ALWAYS long.

But at any rate, whenever I have to buy stamps, I am reminded of that little coffee can on my dad's desk, always ready with a 20 cent stamp for me.  Now I have to buy my own stamps, and man does that shit suck.