When Will It Be Summer Again?

So, school. It’s started again. I thought I was supposed to be whooping with joy that two of my three munchkins would be spending at least some portion of their day in school, leaving me ample time to, you know, do the whole proverbial sitting on the couch and eating bon-bons thing. Instead, I feel like an extra from Night of the Living Dead. Reasons for this include:

1. My two school-bound children are attending different schools on different sides of town with start times ten minutes apart. I have not yet figured out how to clone myself.
2. After all the early morning agita, Vivi’s day in preschool is a mere three hours long, so just when I’ve dropped her off (late), I have approximately 47 minutes before I need to turn around and pick her up again.
3. That pesky third child who keeps hanging around the apartment. I was idealizing all the quality time Jack would have with me once his two older siblings were in school, but so far, all that quality time seems to be spent strapped into the double stroller dropping off or picking up someone from school.
4. It has been raining all week.
5. Have I mentioned that our stove and oven are still not working? Perhaps I have a vitamin deficiency from subsisting mainly on frozen waffles and that has added to my tiredness??

Unable to stomach the early morning school commute to preschool today with the three year old and a whiny, drippy-nosed 16-month old in the rain, I made the game time announcement to Vivi that we were going to play hooky. At first she was really excited because she thought we were going to play hockey all day, but her enthusiasm waned a bit when I told her that we just weren’t going to go to school today.

So, to all you seasoned moms out there, please tell me: does the back-to-school routine get easier in, say, the next five years or so? Or is this just the beginning of the rest of my life? And how many hooky days do I have before I get put on a parent watch list?