Conference Week - Are You Kidding Me?

My kids have had shortened school days this entire week so that the teachers can schedule parent conferences during normal hours.  My middle schooler literally attends classes for three hours per day.  Seriously?  What's the point?  By the time they return home, hungry for lunch, I've just finished putting their breakfast bowls and plates into the dishwasher.  Here's what I've learned this week:

1. One positive: I don't miss making lunches.  At all.  I love that they can come home and prepare their own meal and I don't have to stress over the carb-to-fruit ratio in their snack selections.
2. Clothes worn for three hours still end up in the laundry basket, same as all-day school clothes.  I say they should wear the same shirts and shorts every day of the week to achieve maximum filth allowance before I have to wash them.
3. My friends will say "the hell with this" and take their children on vacations, posting fabulous pictures on Facebook to make me jealous.  If you're gonna do that you have to keep it a secret for those of us doing extra dishes and laundry.
4. Even though my older son has bonus hours to do his homework he will still be up until 11 pm  working on it because he has more time to procrastinate. 
5. The school website does not offer any obvious information on how one would request a conference with a teacher.  They want to go home early and I don't blame them. (Have you been around middle schoolers lately? Shudder)  There are, of course, bright red links that will show me how to donate more money.
6. The elementary school runs a book fair during conference week so that my kids can bug me every day to spend more money on junk.  Not even books; they want the posters and pointers shaped like a little hand (Why? Is my kid giving a Power Point briefing to Mickey Mouse and needs to direct his attention to some important notation?)
7. The only thing my child is learning each day relates to who has mastered a new Rainbow Loom pattern for their armload of bracelets.  They're wearing so many of these I fear they'll get an injury.  Maybe I should make a video showing how to make a splint on the  Rainbow Loom. 
8. I can't catch up on all of my recorded shows in only three hours!  How am I supposed to watch The Walking Dead, Vampire Diaries, and Saturday Night Live before the kids walk in on an inappropriate scene?
9. My timing is all thrown off because they're out of school so early.  That margarita at 2:45 pm is probably not ok.  But at least the subsequent ones are sort of on track.

I was going make a list with 10 things I learned, but then I figured "Hey, if the schools can skip out on instructional time and leave things hanging, I can too!"  So there you go.  Thank goodness it's almost the weekend so my kids can recover from their stressful few hours of learning.