School starts in less than a month in Nashville and a few moms I know have already bought their kids school supplies.

Um, that would not be me.

I had every intention of buying the ready made packets through our PTO earlier this summer (really!) but missed the deadline. Plus those packs are not exactly inexpensive, although the prospect of avoiding the checkout lines at Walmart is enough to make me want to toss blank checks out the window as I drive by our elementary school.

Last year I made the mistake of waiting until the week before school started to do our school supply shopping. By the time we got to Walmart the school supply aisles had been ransacked. I was lucky to find one box of crayons that hadn’t been stomped on. Entire sections of supplies were out of stock. We had to make additional trips to Target (which in retrospect probably should have been my first stop but I love Target passionately and can’t get out of there without jumping on the retail crazy train) and Staples just to find everything on the list.

Segue back to this weekend. On Saturday the girls and I brought the hubby lunch at his shop and I printed their school supplies list from his office.

“I think I might go to Walmart this afternoon to get their school supplies,” I told him as we were finishing up our sandwiches. Obviously July’s oppressive heat had gone straight to my brain.

“Take THEM? On a Saturday? To THAT Walmart? Are you insane?”  hubby asked.

You see our closest Walmart is one I would classify as borderline Jerry Springer scary. You never know what colorful language you will hear, what characters will have driven in from BFE, and what the checkout lines will be like. Weekends, especially, are a guaranteed hot mess of humanity. You may have somehow navigated safely through the aisles, completely avoiding confrontation, but the checkout line is another story. By this point you find yourself praying God help me get out of here alive as you clutch for dear life to your children, your shopping cart, and your sanity.

I decided to ditch the Saturday Walmart excursion craziness. Instead I’ll be heading to the Walmart near my office (aka the “nice” Walmart) one day this week at lunch all by myself for a leisurely school supply shopping experience. And if I don’t find everything on the list I will do the happy skip into Target where I may or may not need to buy myself a little something.

So have YOU bought your kids’ school supplies yet?