7 Ways to Ease Your Back-to-School Blues
When I was a kid, on the first day after school would let out each year, the summer ahead seemed endless. Ten weeks, give-or-take, felt like a lifetime. I was determined to sleep late, watch lots of TV, stay up late, and hang with my friends at the beach or the movies or the local haunt. And if I was lucky, I might even get a part-time job to earn some spending money.
Of course, summer vacation never lasted forever. Alas, those interminable weeks came and went way too fast. Soon those dreaded back-to-school sales would arrive—a harbinger of things to come and the trigger for my annual case of back-to-school blues. Family vacations were winding up, the days were getting shorter, and both parents and school-aged children were shifting the focus from being out of school to getting ready for it again.
At home, we’d begin to change our routines to
