Destiny Skywalker

I was in a meeting yesterday with some guy who was impossible to interrupt. I got a phone call from the school that my son was sick and needed picked up. I tried to break in when this guy took a breath for a solid 5 minutes to excuse myself. Finally just interrupted to say I'll be back in 20 minutes. Came back 20 minutes later, didn't get to break in the rest of the meeting to say I was back. Finally IMed my teammate to tell him I'd been back for 10 minutes but this guy hasn't taken a breath.

Having a job and money make life easier, for the most part. Doesn't make you a chump, just a regular human in the modern age.

Ha, I love it. Picking based on who's making what. Sounds like you and the ex live reasonably close together that it's not hard for him to pop in, though? If so that will make this easier. And worst case, could he crash on the couch for a night? I get it, it's not a private space but it's a way of letting him know he's always welcome.

Yeah the K2s are lame. I remember when they used to have awesome designs. I'm not sure the demos I was on had the dark matter tech. I do remember them being fairly stiff but light. My leg is fine, has been for a good 2 weeks. Slushy is usually not too big of an issue, if anything I prefer it to ice or hard crust. Conditions have been amazing the last few weeks because it's actually been pretty cold and we even got some light lowland snow. We are weird and March is powder season out here, I swear its the best month of the season. So it was a pretty bad few weeks to miss out. I'm going to see if Q wants to go Friday or Sunday this weekend.

Found out tonight that my son's den leader is moving. They asked me to be assistant den leader. I said no. I just don't have the time for all the training and all the extra adult meetings. I've finally reached my limit with the volunteering. I'm happy to attend den meetings to make sure my son is focusing, I would even be glad to teach a single den meeting, but I'm done with everyone else getting to slide by while I do it all. And all the extra stuff that isn't actually working with the kids but checking boxes or listening to adults drone on about boring stuff like budgets.

Ugh that also sucks. Guess you need new skis anyway, then. I haven't made it up in 3 weeks. I think we are going to try to go days, there are only a few more weeks of night skiing and then the mountain is going to start shutting down at 5pm, so that will eliminate Fridays. Then after we get back from spring break, we might be lucky to see one more weekend. I'm going to try to go the first weekend of spring break since we don't leave until Monday. It feels like a short season this year. I'll pass on the details. I read the article, I can guess at what happened.

If it's not a robot vacuum it's not getting vacuumed here lol.

Well so far this batch has lasted 9 hours, which might beat the previous record, but not sure when the others died in the middle of the night.

Holy crap. This is why I don't think I'm ever going to make the leap to backcountry. I'm sorry about your losses. You doing ok?

Hmmm, the instructions didn't say anything about letting them sit out until they got to room temperature. I will ask for clarification when we go back.

Found out thie week that the principal is retiring. He's not gonna do squat. He's coasting. I reached out to him about how things are continuing to go and he glossed over all of it and then when I said look I am really not happy about the paper, he admitted that was "not her best moment". I met another mom at lacrosse practice who is a former teacher who volunteers in there regularly and within 5 minutes she was going off about the teacher, and I didn't say a thing to get her going. It sounds like they put all the kids who are behind in that class (and I'm assuming Q got dumped in there because I was upfront with her needing a 504). There's 30 kids, and they are super behind. Finished unit 2 in math and they are supposed to be on unit 6. So Q is bored and not learning anything new. They also have too much free time in class and not a lot of whole group instruction like Q is used to. The mom said Q is wiggly but nowhere near the worst. She said she is a good kid and she is really sorry the teacher is picking on her so much. I'm glad someone else sees it, and that we aren't the only one having issues and going to the useless principal. It's going to be a sucky year, folks. Q thinks she did well on the gifted assessment. I'm not sure about E. If I had to pick, I'd pick Q for it because E has a lot to work on with handwriting and following directions. If he doesn't get in, we will probably hold off until he is in middle school (and then it's really just math and everyone tests in to see where you are). E also finished vision therapy. He stopped making progress, so the optometrist said there wasn't much else he could do for him. That was kind of sad but I also don't miss 2 hours of driving for a 30 minute appointment every week. Nice to have my Thursday evenings back. Just in time to start lacrosse with 2 hour practices and an hour of driving back and forth. Yeeeyyyy.

Yeah, I'm thinking it was shock. The place has a 3 day guarantee. We will take them back tomorrow. We had them test the water ahead of time and they said it was fine. Supposedly they will need to test the water again but I'm really glad they tested it beforehand because if they come back and say our water was bad, that's sus. But when they gave us the bag it was super freaking warm, way hotter than what we read as the recommended temperature. So we may have to crank the tank up and bring it down over a few days. You can keep them at a warmer temperature but it makes their metabolism burn super fast and they can die sooner. But, it makes them look super active, which is what pet stores want you to see.

Today I woke up to 3 dead fish. I hate fish.

Today we finally got my son the fish to go in the fish tank he got for his birthday. His birthday is in April.

Well it will help if no one publishes him anymore. He's gone hard right in recent years, this isn't a one off. As a woman, I'm more bothered by his commentary about women and sex. The incels love him.

I'm really struggling with Q's teacher. She says all the right things about supports and accommodations, but this woman gets so angry with Q and it does anything but help the situation. I think the teacher has her own issues with impulse control and has higher expectations for Q than she does herself. In the past month she has called Q annoying to her face, went off on her for wanting to use the bathroom when she couldn't, told Q "process this" when she said she was having difficulty processing because the teacher was giving too many demands all at once, and then Friday accused Q of cheating after catching some other kids cheating and responded by ripping up Q's paper in front of everyone. I'm super pissed about the paper, way more than any cheating accusations. I feel like the teacher loses control of herself. I really want her out of this classroom but I don't think there's any place to go. I've placed a variance request for next year because I'm so sick of the culture at this school. It was all sorts of promises at the beginning and every person I've interacted with has failed to live up to what they say they do. It's like they've never seen a neurodiverse kid before.

If they took the money, you should be able to get reimbursed for the tow and impound. That's a load.

Well, I was 90% sure it was him, this kind of confirms it. I did have in my public profile that I was trying to figure out who my biological father was, so she already figured that much out. Since she is my closest match, I assume I am also her closest match. We share enough DNA for her to be my half-niece. She was trying to be nosy about my mom, but I just said look I think it's your grandpa and your mom is probably my half-sister. She was going to figure it out sooner or later. I suspect the family is a little trashy. I met a super cool 2nd cousin 1x removed through Ancestry who lived 3 blocks away from my old house, so I got that cool friendship out of it, but other than that, I'm really not looking to have a relationship with them. So it's probably going to cause a lot of drama, because my father was still legally married when I was conceived. Fingers crossed that they were already separated.

So I think my biological father's grand daughter found me on Ancestry. Yikes.

Did Noah start this week? I'm starting to think I need to get E evaluated for dyslexia. He can read just fine. But his spelling tests are atrocious. Sounding words out doesn't help. (Q also struggled with this, and still is not great at spelling.) My husband had dyslexia as well, but he is really reluctant to have the kids diagnosed with anything more, partially because he's already overwhelmed by all their issues, and also because he is worried all this stuff will be used to discriminate against them.

So my knee no longer hurts, but it's moved to my calf. I'm not sure if its from the same event or if it's a compensation injury.

Well I'm glad he got in! I think that's the less stressful option (for you). Personally I'm over here stressing because it's 3 months to soccer tryouts and I just want to know what team she is going to be on next year lol. I hate waiting for decisions. Walmart is great for uniforms but their shipping is super slow. Maybe just get enough for a few days (not sure how often you do laundry, but I'm definitely doing a load every 2 or 3 days because I mix all the clothes together) and see what he likes and order more? I like their polo shirts especially. All the colors, very durable. Q didn't really like pants so she wore skirts with leggings for a long time, but Noah won't have a choice. Can he wear shorts? Is that something he would like? Do you think his concerns are anxiety related? Is change hard for him? Tell him it's not public school it's a charter school.

For that price you definitely have to demo, don't just buy them. You'll need to figure out which length you are comfortable on, as well. Another thing you can do is look at the ski testers themselves. Find someone with a similar profile to you (weight, height, style, etc) and check out their tests.

I think some people get mad that I'm not constantly screaming at kids for their "behavior". I don't sweat the small stuff but I will call them out if they're being unkind or disrespectful to their troop mates. They're kids and they get enough of that at school. I try to do a lot of hands on activities but some of my girls are super fast, some are great at focus and finish, and some want to give up at the first sign of difficulty. I imagine it's a lot like a classroom, but I only have 9 (now 8) instead of 25. I find a lot of adults are just control freaks. They don't want to understand how to help, they just want control or for their life to be easy.

It's such a relief when toxic people decide to exit stage right out of your life because they realize you won't let them walk all over you. I've had this family in Scouts that I've had difficulty with for years. Mom doesn't want to lift a finger to help, Dad wants to control things and mansplain to all the women that he is a military veteran and knows more about the outdoors than anyone. (My co-leader is also a military veteran and was a survivalist Girl Scout growing up.) The girl is alright but I'm 90% sure she's neurodiverse with a healthy dose of anxiety and neither parent will acknowledge it. I've basically cut them out of any involvement for the past 2 years because their help is not help. Dad has interrupted meetings where we played trivia games to give his daughter the answer. A few months ago, mom decided to stay at an event while I waited outside for a straggler and she went off on a girl, accusing her of touching her daughter. Another volunteer who was present said she saw the whole thing and no one touched the other girl. The other girl's parents told me they were uncomfortable with the mom and their daughter was confused because she didn't touch the other girl. The girl has started missing meetings and dropped out of our big project because we didn't pick the topic she wanted us to cover. Today dad shows up early and sits in on the end of the meeting and interjects to tell us how he thinks the girls should spend their cookie money. It was a hard meeting even before that, and I had girls crawling on tables because they didnt have their ADHD meds, throwing trash on the floor, and doing anything but the budgeting project I gave them to prepare for their big project. I had to help the girl a lot and she was the last one to finish and the girls were waiting a long time for her, but they didn't say anything to her about it, they just let her finish and made chaos in the meantime. Dad pulled my co-leader outside and said they wanted to leave because of all of the "behavior issues" and saying it was rubbing off on his daughter. Came back inside and asked me for the badge she earned while I try to organize supplies and clean up. Bye Felicia. As soon as I got home I emailed them the list of open troops and told them how to switch her. Don't get me wrong, I say that I run the most neurodiverse troop in our area. There is a stimulant medication shortage and I had to call parents tonight about how their kid acted because I am not going to address that in front of other families. It's not the troop for everyone but these girls deserve a place too. I hope this girl does ok in another troop. She's not a bad kid but a little spoiled and a little sheltered by her helicopter parents. She needs Girl Scouts, too. I didn't mind her when her parents weren't around, and I realize her anxiety has been high since the pandemic. But I'm not letting her parents steamroll everyone into doing things the way their kid wants. Honestly, though, it's probably my last year leading a troop because of parents like this. I have another family that refuses to help with anything, but they won't leave. Dealing with people like this is exhausting, and it took me 4.5 years to finally wear them down.