update on school situation

Well, I got my replies to my email to Chris' English teacher-----she is going to meet with me and his other core teachers later in the week, and she had the answers to my questions. Chris will not lose points for turning in his paper tomorrow instead of today, and I know know a little more about how she operates her classroom, so I can keep on top of him better. Not that he is going to like that.
I told Ben that I will give his school today to get a paper to me stating what is the deal with the Friday trip to MU. If he does not bring me home something, then tomorrow morning his principal's butt is going to need medical attention, because I will rip him a new one.
I started a thread on the local paper's forum page about the schools---apparently no one cares--no responses yet.

Sick and tired....

Of teachers and schools thinking they have total say over their students. I never gave them the right to do so. I have never ceded my rights as a parent to the school system.
Case in point: My 9th grader has to do something, by school mandate, called job shadowing. Ok, fine. Not a bad idea, especially as it may give him the chance to view his chosen profession through the eyes of someone actually in that profession. So first off, a month or so ago, when I first got the forms to fill out for him to do this, he was talking about the meeting the counselors had with the kids to go over the requirements. They also gave a list of jobs that would not be appropriate for shadowing--i.e. tattoo artist, etc...Then he told me that they were told that parents have no say in what jobs their own kids shadow. HELLO?????? I'm sorry, but yes I do have a say. I could have told my kids, fine, he could shadow me at my job. I could have said no to his choices. Fortunately they were pretty good choice. I told him that if he is ever told again by a school official of any kind that I don't have the right to have a say in anything to do with his education, then he needs to tell me, because you had best believe, I WILL tell THEM.
Second case: tonight my 7th grader comes home and tells me that he is going to the local univeristy on Friday for a version of a career fair. I ask where is the note, the permission slip? There is none. You had best believe I will be contacting the school in the morning to find out why. They had better have one hell of a reason.
Forget it---there is no good reason. The principal had better be prepared for a butt-reaming. I'm in just that kind of mood, after my 9th grader's English teacher informed his class that unless they turn in the homework assignment from today before they leave on job shadowing tomorrow, they will receive a zero on the assignment. She has an email waiting in her box, and I sense a meeting coming on between her, me, him, and the principal--both for the 9th grade and the school principal.
More to come, I'm sure.......

Is it just me.....

Is it just me or do people get stupider and stupider as time goes on? We have a city council member who states in a pre-election editorial that if the street levy doesn't pass, then the streets won't get paved because the previously enacted "user fee" was not meant to cover paving, just street maintainance. Hello? Anybody home? Doesn't maintainance include paving? I guess that since the levy failed by a very wide margin, that means it's time to tighten the suspension on my van for all the washboard streets we'll have.
Oh sorry, I mean the worse than any streets in the 3rd world. We already have washboard streets and my suspension is already about shot.

eve of election 2006

Well, it's finally that time. And the news stations are going nuts, practically doing exit polls already. That's ok, because I'm already prepared for the news that the liberal left has won it all, although I do hold out some hope that rational America will show up at the polls to do their part. With it being a mid-term election, though and the forecast in this region is for rain, I don't know. I can only pray at this point.

My oldest stepdaughter has done it again, turning someone eles'e tragedy into her own personal drama. Now the two boys killed in that wreck the other night--see prior entries--were her best friends and no one understands what she has been going through. Now before you blast me for being insensitive: The topic was only brought up after her dad had nailed her to the wall for other actions of hers that she had already been told to cease and desist on. Suddenly no one understood her, that she had had a horrible week because of this wreck, etc. Her dad pretty well told her to stifle it, mainly because she said the same thing last spring when two girls from her class were killed in a wreck, and the year before when a girl from her school was shot to death along with her prom date from the neighboring high school, after they were in the wrong place at the wrong time by their choice. They were all her best friends. I grant you she may have known them, but since none of these kids names were ever mentioned by her to any of us until something happened, we have our doubts as to how close they were. I don't doubt the tragedy of it all, I just doubt that any of the reasons behind any of it will sink in to her thick skull.

Apparently I'm not the only one with this trouble--a neighbor of mine has a daughter the same age at the same school, and she is persisting in learning her lessons the hard way too. And she has given her mom the same stories about the best friends thing after each of these incidents. So now I'm also left to wonder---was my generation just as hard headed in our day as these kids are today? My mom says I have always been stubborn--wonder where I get it from?Hmmmm----and I know I was, but I also had parents who were responsible enough to keep me reined in as needed. I wasn;'t allowed to take the car and run around at will. Heck they usually took me to my dances and picked me up from them. I won;t say they knew all my friends and their parents, but the effort was made, and they darn sure knew who I was with and why and where we were going to be until when, etc. I have already told my kids that they can hate me or not, but that is how I am going to be too. To the absolute best of my ability. I can do no less, and still be a responsible parent.

And that is what I am--a parent. Not a buddy or friend with my kids, although we have our buddy-buddy times, and as they get older, we can interact kind of as friends, but I am still MOM first and foremost. I look forward to being friends with them when they are older and going through all the adult experiences that would give us some common ground. But my job is to parent them until they get to that point. They don;t always understand that but I catch glimpses sometimes that show me that they respect that. And besides, I can always be the bad guy--the one to blame when they don;t want to do something or do something with their friends because of the risk of trouble being too great. My oldest son has done that since he was first asked out on a date by a girl in his class--in 6TH GRADE!! He just told her that it was his mom's thing that he not date just yet, sorry. Saved face for him and put the onus on me---and he knew that I wouldn't let him go out on a date at age 11. And he didn;t lie. He didn't have to "let her down easy" or anything, just had to say hey my mom won;'t let me.

the big black trash bag....

My kids' stuff is going to go the way of the big black trash bag. I get so tired of trying to keep MY stuff up and put away, then I have to take care of theirs too? Nope. They got the lecture again today about pick it up and keep it neat or lose it. I also told my husband I'm tired of always being to bad guy, the yeller, so he needed to start jumping in before it got to the point of me getting ready to lose it. Hey it's his house too. He can do this just like I can.
I think I have the 4 yr old straightened out for the moment--I expect to have to help her though. It's the teens and preteens I have the biggest trouble with. They would just as soon walk through fire as to take a step out of their way to pick up a piece of paper on the floor. If I say "hey who left this here?" I don;t get "Oops sorry, that was me." I get "It was so and so and I'm not cleaning up after that pig. Don;t even ask me too. They're slobs."
To put it bluntly--I DON'T CARE!!!!! It's your house,your space, too. Pick it up. If each of them would just pick up one or two things as they traipse through the house hollering they are bored, things would be so much neater.
Or the big black trash bag may have to take over, 'cause mama's tired.

more teen driver deaths...

So I go to the website of my local paper and the first headline I see is that last night 2 more of my kids' schoolmates have been killed in a wreck. This one at 10:30 at night apparetnly on the way to get a friend or go to the movies or something. 2 senior boys going around a curve and losing control.
Last spring it was 2 girls after a school dance and sleepover at a friend's house, on their way back home to go to work or something like that.
And my kids wonder why I am so not going to get them cars and let them loose at 15, 16, 17.
Never.....
nohow, no way, no when....
Need I go on?
Most of the time it is the other drivers I worry about. But then there is the lack of experience and judgment of teens in general. Is it more important to change the cd or radio station or yak with the friends in the car, or should you pay attention to your surroundings? I'm not claiming that I'm the best or most attentive driver at all times, but I do have the experience to know to keep a check on where and how I'm driving. I know in heavy traffic to keep my eyes open and always ready to hit the brake or scoot to the side if needed. That's when the radio goes down and the kids get told to stifle it for a few minutes. I don;t think most teens are taught how to judge distances and speed like we were in driver's ed.
Add to that the fact that---and I was a teen once too----most teens think they are invincible. "it won;t happen to me."
I bet these 4 kids thought that too.

election time stupidity

It never ceases to amaze me, that with all the ducation people purport to have, that they can lose all common sense and what few other brains they possess as election time draws closer.
Case in point: I go to the online version of my area's newspaper today and in the op-ed section there is a letter stating that a vote for Dems is a vote for abortion. As a follow up, in the online forum, some lady writes about the ignorance of the original letter writer. I couldn't resist---I had to respond, and my response was that ignorance abounds in both parties, but that the original writer had some points and all anyone had to do to find that out was to look at the voting records on both sides onthat issue. Golly-gee, Paw, I think that when brains was being handed out, these people thought it was trains and wanted to be on the slowest one possible. Where's my moonshine for my vote?
Which brings up another point---why in this day and age do we still have people who vote straight party ticket for either side? With all the access to news and reports and viewpoints from around the world, why would anyone NOT look at all sides of an issue or candidate and vote accordingly? Straight party voting is great if you are buying the votes of the constituents---I'll give ya a pint of 'shine if';n ya vote for me and all ya gotta do is push the lever for the top block on the paper.........PUH-LEEZE.
I've already decided that after this election, I'm going in to the county clerk's office and changing my registration----I registered Republican in this Democratic state as a protest against the forces that be---as well as the original clerk who actually had the gall to ask me if I wasn't going to register Democrat. I will now be putting my money----and my vote----where my mouth is and register as the independent I am. Apparently that is the only way things are going to change--is if people do and act accordingly.
Yeah Paw ya taught me right.