Destiny Skywalker

She insists she wants to finish the year out because she loves her teacher. Of all the things to be resilient about. I am so glad that we will never have to set foot in this horrible school again.

I was hoping to hear back from the superintendent, but it appears to have just been lip service.

Q was found to not be bullying because of the ridiculous criteria. It's clear they don't believe her side of the story but couldnt find any additional witnesses, and they've created a separation plan for the girls. Q went to the principal and asked why they didn't put a separation plan in place earlier when she had complained. It's clear they are protecting the other girl more than Q. I think it is because the mom is on the PTO and has 3 more kids at the school, while we are done in 9 weeks and they never have to see her again. The principal denied it, but I'm proud of her for advocating for herself.

When I was finally told the official complaint by the principal, I told her that even if it was true, it's definitely not bullying. Apparently the girl claims that Q walked up to her, and said, "Hey, do you know what rape is?" and the girl said no. Q then told the girl that it's when someone forces themselves on you, and the girl told her she needed space, and then Q yelled, "Why are you bullying me?" I can tell you in no universe did this ridiculous conversation take place because it doesn't even make sense. It's so bad it sounds like AI wrote it, or it's just a terrible attempt at a 12-year old lie and I absolutely cannot fathom why anyone even thinks this conversation was real. I'm told it is inappropriate to say "rape" at school at all. In all honesty, I could believe that part of the conversation happened if someone made an inappropriate comment about rape and Professor Q decided to bust out the dictionary definition, but Q insists the word rape was never said to this girl or anyone else. I also told the principal off because she tried to claim the girls were friends again. (Q told me she had hoped for it to be true, but its clear now it wasn't.) I told her that these girls were never her friends and that was a narrative the staff was pushing because they couldn't see through their behavior and wanted everything to be fine. The principal is tired of my shit because I keep calling them on their nonsense.

What Q did later admit to me, was she got 69 as an answer in math, pointed to it on her paper to the girl  and laughed. That's some realistic 12-year old stuff.

I suspect what actually happened is that the girl made an inappropriate comment at home and Q was her scapegoat. I forgot to tell you a month or so ago, the control freak mom who called Q a bad influence called up the other girl's mom (the one making the latest claims) and told her that HER daughter was a bad influence. The girls are still hanging out at school but the other girl was upset about it. This girl is the perfect example of pretends to be an angel in public but behind closed doors she is always instigating weird or sexual comments and seeing what she can get away with. Have fun with that one, mom. I'd rather have the kid with no filter who I can have open and honest conversations with.

So what did we do? Well we stayed at the Hilton Grand Vacations on the Las Vegas Strip. Realistically, it's at the northern edge of the strip next to Circus Circus. The good thing was it was a smoke free hotel. But the food options were pathetic and slow. They did have a surprisingly nice spa that I got to use for a few hours. The pool was good for kids. There was also a Deuce Bus stop right in front of the hotel so that was useful.

Dinners at a Brazilian steakhouse, Noodle Bar (chinese) at Sahara, pizza at Happy Camper, and a few meals at the new Fontainebleau food court since it was across the street. We also did Mexican one night but I can't remember the restaurant.

Cirque du Soleil Mystere at Treasure Island

Easter Brunch at the Wynn La Cave

Shark Reef Aquarium at Mandalay Bay

Fun Dungeon arcade at Excalibur (crap prizes)

NY NY arcade - good prizes but not that great of an arcade and the Rollercoaster was down that day because it was raining

Coke Store - my son walked in and said I need some merch! He cracks me up. Got him a Tervis tumbler. The fancy drinks were broken, so it was kind of worthless.

Hershey's Store - not that great, overpriced bulk Hershey's kisses and nothing too unique. The best part is getting a milkshake.

Pool time - E is skinny and got cold easily. It was not that warm of a week.

Adventuredome at Circus Circus. We did this the last day since we had to check out of the hotel at 11 and our flight wasn't until 9. This was probably my kids favorite activity. E is getting braver at riding Circus type rides, Q is a Rollercoaster junky but ate too much crap so she didn't feel that great. The buffet at Circus Circus is cheap but not that impressive (but my kids essentially got a home-cooked meal so that was a good thing). The arcade was also better than Fun Dungeon or NYNY, so it was a win. I pumped $40 into the stupid Minecraft Dungeons arcade game and E walked away happy. We got to watch a juggler and a clown during one of their hourly shows, so that was kind of fun too.

Overall it was a good trip, and everyone had fun.

I don't know, suing for emotional distress caused by bullying and the school and district continuing to sweep it under the rug? All these therapy bills I have to pay, the time off from work, private school tuition? This is ruining her life, and her therapist is really concerned that this long-term stress is going to be life-altering. Like, she will literally need therapy forever, and probably has PTSD or some long-standing trauma. A friend recommended a lawyer who helped them force their district to allow their son, who is on an IEP, to test for their gifted program. 

I got a thank you for bringing your concerns to light reply from the superintendent. Who I didn't email. He said he is going to meet with the principal. So hopefully someone is paying attention now and I don't have to lawyer up. But this needs to stop.

Is she going to continue to rail about this or will it be a one time chew out? (Guess it depends on if he gets caught again.)

We just got done with spring break, Q seemed relaxed. And then I got a call from the principal. One of the mean girls filed another bullying report. I'm considering legal action because the accusations are now stooping to defamation, and they certainly seem to be retaliation. I wrote to the deputy superintendent and the school board (her therapist recommended looping them in because of how this has been handled so far). If they find her guilty this time I am homeschooling her until the end of the year. 

My dad drove to Fredericksburg, Texas to watch it. He doesn't think he will be alive in 20 years for the next one. The 2017 one was total in his hometown and it was going good and then clouds rolled in at the last second. He was so disappointed.  This time he got the view, barely. When he sends pictures I will share them.

As for Seattle, we only had 20% totality, and clouds anyway. I didn't notice a thing.

On 3/29/2024 at 10:25 AM, Hobbes said:

4.  How do you navigate different in-groups perceptions of bias? 

I worked in a school that was predominantly Hispanic.  In trying to be inclusive in my communication, I used the term Latinx.  The overwhelming majority of the Hispanic families hated the term.  When I switched my communication to Latina and Latino, which was appreciated by the community, I brought this back to my grad school professors and higher ups in the district (most had higher degrees) I was accused of not being inclusive. 

Is Latinx just supposed to be a gender-inclusive term? Quite frankly, I think the community gets to decide what they want to be called, not someone outside of it. It's like the autistic vs "has autism" debate. It seems like many in the autism community have embraced being called autistic instead of using people first language that many in the disability advocacy community are trying to push. (On a related note, now it feels like I can't say disability or disabled anymore. "Differently abled" feels kind of pedantic to me.) Many autistic people have embraced it has part of their identity, as opposed to the advocacy community that says you shouldn't let a disability define someone.

I grabbed a few more dresses from Target since I was doing a pickup for shoes for Q. Ugh. Everything looked huge and ridiculous. I need to try on some of what I already own and see if I still fit it and if I can wear a cover with it to hide my scars.

I bought a dress for our vacation. I hate clothing shopping. My boobs fit nothing. I even went to the plus section to see if that would help. Then everything was just shaped like a garbage bag. And I need sleeves because my skin cancer scars are still so purple. People tell me I shouldn't worry about it but it scares my kids when they see them.

And floral is in again. FML. I hate patterns but I hate paisley and floral with a passion. Q tried so hard to pick out a floral dress for me, I didn't have the heart to tell her I hate floral.

We decided to keep it sideways because it actually worked better. And yes, the cabinet panels are pricy. We wanted to do them for our refrigerator and the cabinet company said no because they were worried they would break at the size we needed. Apparently you can't go much wider than 24 inches or something because the wood can twist and break if torqued too much, so we went with stainless steel panels. But it ended up being ok because the wine fridge has a big glass panel.

I think this is what we are picking for backsplash tile. I have some questions for the designer whether we should go up and down with the tile instead of sideways (I think yes). Second choice is the same tile but a more sage/matte.

We need to pick out a new mini fridge. The one we were going to pick has a lot of recent bad reviews. The problem is all the better choices are either 5 inches larger or 4 inches smaller. Smaller is going to look dumb because we have wide cabinets above it. So I need to talk to the designer about whether we have enough room to move out 5 more inches.

When we lived close to my mother-in-law, my husband would spend most of his weekends being her personal gardener. I'm pretty sure that's the entire reason she remarried after we moved away.

So they tore up the floors in the half bath/laundry area and it turns out the previous owners did linoleum on top of linoleum. God I hate them. We are going to try to redo the kids bathroom ourselves (really just floors and a new vanity), and they used the same ugly linoleum so I know what I have to look forward to.

Had my first outings to the laundromat this weekend. Saturday I dropped off and had them do all the work. 18 lbs x $2.38/lb plus tax came out to $48, and then the guy had a tip line. Ugh. So today I came back and did 2 loads myself and it came out to $25 plus a $0.98 convenience fee (worth it not to change $25 into quarters, honestly). But then Google Pay said they charged me $45 so wtf. So now I'm going to ask friends if I can come over in exchange for a bottle of wine. However, I was done in like 1 hrs 15 minutes with 2 loads, so that part was kind of great.

2-3 months, apparently for everything. I think the bathroom will be last because there's a lot of plumbing work to do. They are delivering cabinets in 2 weeks, and we are going on spring break. So I'm hoping to come back from spring break to all the cabinets done and maybe I can ask them to at least bring the oven back in. Since it's electric and not gas, I'm hoping they can bring the oven back in and let us plug that in. The new microwave/mini convention oven is built in so I don't think they will be able to get that hooked up that fast. I'm ok with getting food out of the fridge in the garage if I can have my oven back.

Took them 1 day to completely rip the kitchen out. We are going to donate most of the cabinets to Habitat for Humanity, but they want us to bring them to them. FML.

Today they started cutting holes into walls.

It begins!

Poor dude! I hope he is better soon.

I had a Girl Scout meeting tonight. You guys are way more interesting. 

Cerina, ughhh I'm super sorry about the account. We never use our debit cards anymore because I'm so worried about this happening. I wish the bank would issue us an old school ATM only card. Are you going to be able to recover the money?

She lost me in about the first 2 minutes with her fake emotional drama.

Q and I both have night skiing goggles. They're a very light green tint and block almost no light. I also have a pink pair for bluebird days. But since most of our skiing is at night, I don't use them super often. Truly, picking the right tint really helps. The green is better than no tint because it does block the glare from the lights and allows me to see the terrain in flat light.

Kids on blues is a game changer. It makes taking them so much more enjoyable.

That's so awesome! My family is ethnically Czech, and I need to take my dad to Prague before he gets too old to travel.

For sure, get it checked out. I never knew what a pinched nerve felt like, that's interesting. 

Now that I've had skin cancer, I get everything checked out too. So far it's been mostly fine (2 more big removals that were pre-cancerous), but getting checked out past 40 is like a part-time job. Ugh.

Took Q to Alpental tonight for the first time and it was glorious. No lift line longer than a 5 minute wait and much better conditions than Central lately. They got 3 feet of snow since last weekend and while it's not pristine corduroy, there were some glorious steep sections without moguls. We only skied 2 different runs because only the bottom half of the mountain was open for night skiing, next time I am going to try to get her to take Cascade Traverse so we can drop in on a few runs that are some really fun black diamond runs that are usually pretty powdery.

MRI? Is everything ok?

Mandatory retirement age for all of them, I'd be fine with 70. These people stay for the power and control, and nothing more.

Our permit was finally approved and we start our remodel in a week and a half. Here's to 2-3 months of no kitchen and no laundry. My husband tried to talk me into buying some sort of portable washing machine and I just gave him the sideeye and said I'd be dropping our laundry off every week and picking it up. Gonna be expensive but ain't nobody got time for this.