Slacking and Office Supplies

So while I am still making any kind of excuse to avoid anything that resembles school work, I have a peculiar obsession with office supplies that is well known to almost all who know me. Summer used to be a fun time of year where all of the pressures of school were removed and the urge to buy supplies was usually well repressed. Unfortunately the retailers have now decided that July is the perfect time to put school supplies on sale. Not just on sale, but the special isles full of fresh pens screaming my name and virgin notebooks calling for my chicken scratch to be scrawled all over their pristine pages.


It began about three weeks ago, while walking through Target, I noticed that most of the garden/patio supplies/decorations where beginning to not be restocked (whoa that's a lot of backslashes). The next trip to Target resulted in the discovery of these cardboard bins full of markers and pencils. While these make me smile, I could resist the temptation to walk those isles. That and I was there to purchase Mario Kart for our Wii (this is another reason that I have slack off). I then went on vacation with my whole family, so I was removed from this temptation, until today. I made an innocent stop at Walgreen's. I was paying my bills and ran out of envelopes and white out tape. I knew that Office Max would be way too much temptation when I just needed to get two things. I have more than enough pens and paper to get me through this semester, and I also am good on binders for this coming fall. I thought that I would play it safe and go to Walgreen's where the temptation is minimal for office supplies.


Wrong! Now mind you, I have been gone for almost a week, and do not know what sales are going on. I get to Walgreen's and everything is buy two get one free or better. I decided to peruse the isle looking for my white out tape. It was not in this isle, but there were binders of every size and color and priced at buy one get one free. I could not resist the empty binders. I go through two or three per semester, usually one per class. This fall I have two classes that I am taking, two that I am teaching, and I still do not know who I am going to be assigned to as a graduate assistant, so that could be more classes. I felt compelled to purchase at least two, even though I know that I have a few empty ones laying about the condo.


I grabbed two and continued on my search for the aforementioned items that I had come for: enevelopes and white out tape. From there I passed a display full of composition notebooks that were buy one get two free. Now I debated longer over the colors of the three that I would buy longer than I did over if I should buy them. I couldn't resist their solid uncracked bindings. I then made a bee line to the envelopes and quickly moved on to grab the white out tape as well.


I know to some this is silly, but to me this is like Christmas. Brand new school supplies are like crack, an addiciton. I told my husband what I bought, and he just laughed and said: "that's it?" He can be such an enabler when it comes to things like this. I need to stay out of the stores, at least until I have to buy books for this semester.