It's crunch time: kids go back to school, extra-curriculars start, and lunches need to be made. For the organizationally-challenged (like me), it can be stressful. I have, over time, developed some techniques to help me keep on track.

Get your partner involved: It takes two people to get the year going. Even if one person does the majority of the work going forward, I find it easier to get both of us doing it at the beginning to start us off relatively smoothly. That way when I am having a breakdown or have my one sick day, I can trust that my husband knows where the lunch bags are.

A major crisis in our house last night: my sons' Minecraft server got griefed.

If you know what I'm talking about, then welcome to the club of parents of crafters. If you don't, you soon will. Minecraft is a an open-ended video game that appeals to kids aged 5-105. It may be the first online game that teachers, parents and kids like with equal abandon. There are over 36 million registered users worldwide. It may be the hottest thing to hit home computers, well, since the Internet. 

Until the addiction sets in, that is. 

I admit it, I left the Globe and Mail lying around on the kitchen counter open to the story with the headline "Teenage Pot Smoking May Lower IQ for Life" visible, hoping that a certain 12-year-old would read it as he walked by. 

Those are the kinds of subtle messages that I want him to pick up on before being presented with the option to partake. Because he will be offered and it will be in the next couple of years. 

On Monday and Tuesday, the government of Ontario, the teachers, the politicians and the pundits all debated an education bill that forced the teacher unions to accept a new contract and outlawed their right to strike.

I find myself unable to take a side in this debate. I think teachers are undervalued, often underpaid, and that they work a lot harder than we may give them credit for. 

And yet, there are some union policies that make me crazy  -- like using retired teachers as substitutes before new hires. And I know (from a tiny bit of experience) that teacher's unions can be very difficult to negotiate with. A teachers' strike is very hard on children, parents and the other school workers. No one wins in that situation and I hate that the unions use that as a bargaining stick.

Poor Janice Min. Her New York manicurist thought she was pregnant four months after having her third child. She was so incensed by the judgment and the thousands of eyes downwardly cast on her flabby, but no longer baby-filled bump that she wrote a piece for the New York Times about how obsessed everyone is with the post-baby body.

But don't feel too badly for her. If you could lay the blame for all the body judgment that comes after having a baby on one person's door, it would probably be right at the doorstep of Us Weekly's former editor -- Janice Min.

How old was your baby when you left them alone overnight? Or is the thought of leaving them freaking you out right now?

Controversial writer Rebecca Eckler left her 10-week-old for a week's vacation in Mexico. Her mother-in-law moved (who brought up four kids) moved in to take care of the baby.

In another article set up to fuel the (media-invented) mommy wars, a study has come out that shows women who work are happier at age 40 than women who don't.

Assistant Sociology Professor Adrianne Frech studied over 2,450 women who had children between 1978 and 1995. The study accounted for many variables including education levels, pre-pregnancy employment, cognitive ability and others. What it found is that women who returned to work soon after their baby were in "better mental and physical health such as greater mobility, more energy and less depression by the age of 40 than moms who did not return to work".

I don't really get the whole back-to-school shopping craze. It's just now how I want to end my summer. And it's not like my kids need a whole new wardrobes for the first day of school. (Although my 12-year-old does not have one pair of pants that fit him. And I realized for the first time that I have to go to those horrible mall stores because he's too old for The Gap and Old Navy. But I digress.)

But the first day of school is exciting (especially for me!) and we do have some rituals for it.

Now that camp is done, I'm already working on the nightmare of scheduling extra-curriculars for the three kids; this is logistically difficult and can get very expensive.

We have barely recovered from paying for summer programs, but I am already pulling out the chequebook and making a list of gear requirements (well, making a list might be overstating things, I should be making a list.) I am thankful that we get off relatively easy because my kids do not play competitive anything. And house league play means house league-level gear. 

A mom sidled up to me in the back alley. "Can you..." she stammered. "Do you think you could write about how boring it is playing with your kid?"

"I mean I love my kids," she continued. "It's just that playing with them is dull and makes me want to poke my eyes out."

I know, I get it. I'm sure there are some great moms out there who love playing little people for hours, can whip together a Transformer in no time flat, and want to set up train tracks and play train for the afternoon. And then there are the rest of us.