A short six weeks ago, I was giddy with anticipation. I was crossing days off calendars, looking forward to my days and counting each sleep like a Santa-junkie before Christmas Eve. One topic consumed almost every conversation I had. There were excited murmurs with friends, exasperated sighs shared with my husband, knowing laughter with my mother. I had one focus. One goal. One thing and only one thing mattered:

Surviving summer long enough to send the kids BACK. TO. SCHOOL.

Summer days had stretched interminably. Unbridled chaos punctuated with whines of, “I’m bored” combined with a shocking wine shortage in my house had me looking forward to the first day of school the way I had, as a child, looked forward to the last day of school. The first day of school glistened like a beacon on the horizon, a shining symbol of a time where I would regain my sanity, have time to put away the laundry and maybe fit in a pedicure.

Granted, I have not been at this sending kids back to school thing very long. My five year olds have been attending preschool for two years, but this has been my first formal-public education-the state requires you to make them go-back to school experience. And not only was I getting to send those little 5 year old heathens, um, angels to full day kindergarten, but their little minion of a brother was starting preschool five mornings a week. It would be nothing but days full of bliss. Bliss!

At least between 8:30 and 11:45.

The first day of school came – eventually, as it was held up by that witch Hurricane Irene – and I thought I had the whole thing wired. I made lunches the night before, I helped the kids set out clothes and shoes after their bath the previous evening, I made sure we were fully stocked with frozen waffles, boxes of Cheerios and Flintstones vitamins. Nothing could derail what I envisioned as our calm, morning routine.

Apparently, I failed to take into consideration the one element that could throw the entire thing out of kilter and send my mornings tumbling into near unimaginable chaos.

My kids.

The single hour it takes to get three kids out of the house and into the minivan is more stressful and more life-endangering than an entire week of summer vacation. And once they come home, the decibel level in my house reaches a level that even Pete Townsend in his guitar-windmilling days would find a little too loud.

How come I was not made aware of this? How come no one ever told me that no matter how nicely you tell your kids to hang up their backpacks on the special hooks in the kitchen and to put their shoes in the special box in the laundry room as soon as they get home from school that you will still be yelling at them, five minutes after you were supposed to leave in the morning, to find their backpacks and shoes?

How come no one ever told me that, in addition to there being a secret hideout in my house for the clean socks, that there is also a secret hideout for any papers or library books that MUST go back to school by a certain date? And how come although my kids can find that secret place to deposit said items, they cannot find it in order to retrieve said items?

How come no one told me that, while each and every teacher will tell me that my kids are beautifully behaved in school, they will act like they have been raised by wolves as soon as they get home?

And my mornings of bliss? They are nothing but a fiction, my friend. For in my quest to be a part of the school community, I volunteered to be a room mother. In two different schools. Instead of leisurely eating my bowl of Quaker Maple & Brown Sugar High Fiber oatmeal while watching Hoda and Kathy Lee get drunk and interview heads of state, I am designing class websites and typing up emergency contact lists and running back to the school because someone forgot it was gym day and didn’t wear sneakers and if I don’t bring them sneakers right now they will simply perish. Honest. They will.

This back to school chaos is not the fun and games that we naïve, first-time school moms think it is. You don’t have less to do with your kids. You actually have less time to do more stuff with your kids. And they haven’t even started getting homework yet.

We were at a friend’s house yesterday and they have a model globe. I pointed to Connecticut and asked my daughter if she knew what state we lived in. Without missing a beat, she replied, “A state of chaos.”

Someday they’re going to move out. And then?

Then there will be bliss.

I wonder how many sleeps until that happens?