Destiny Skywalker

Alright, I have a restorative justice question. One of the girls approached Q on Friday and said that she was sorry for how she had behaved and didn't realize how it was affecting Q. She said can we be friends again? Q was very uncomfortable and a classmate interrupted them with a joke so she didn't have to answer. I have a feeling they are going to find that the girls were indeed bullying, but they are going to have them do some sort of meeting where they apologize and hope everything goes back to sunshine and rainbows. However, Q's trust is completely broken. She isn't ready to be friends. I don't want her to be put into a situation where she has to listen to a bunch of potentially fake apologies and be forced to accept them. Because that puts the pressure on her to be the bigger person, when really all she wants is for the behavior to stop. We talked about forgiveness and how we don't have to grant it just because someone asks for it, and forgiveness is often not immediate and takes time and a history of changed behavior. I especially don't want her to be shamed for saying no I need time, because I think honesty is important and these girls should also learn that forgiveness is not automatic, nor should it be expected of the victim. (Bonus thought, because undiagnosed ADHD: I believe our culture expects and pushes for forgiveness because it allows people to not be accountable for our poor behavior. It's essentially a get out of jail free card that places more pressure on the victim than on the aggressor. And I do truly believe there are some offenses that cannot be forgiven: murder, rape, abuse, infidelity, etc. I think there's a difference between true forgiveness and letting go of your trauma so that it doesn't affect you as much. And that does not mean welcoming the person who wronged you into your life and acting like nothing happened.) Should I reach out to the principal preemptively to tell them not to put her into a situation where there is pressure on her to forgive them? I think I would also like to ask the principal to warn us if there is going to be any sort of meeting so I can help Q prepare for it instead of being taken by surprise.

Remember the bully soccer coach that drove Q off her long-time team? The club asked her to resign. Karma finally gets her.

Get rid of them and if she asks, you must've misplaced them, God knows what box they might be in. But if you'll find them, you'll put them up!

That's according to Garmin, apparently. There's a bit of standing in line and I stop a fair bit to check on Q and coach her a bit. She's a little sloppy this season, I think she's really lost her confidence after her injury. And just everything else going on. Pretty sure it's just pushing snow down the hill. As Quinn put it, there were a lot of n00bs out there with the pros. Lol she's funny. Last year I noticed they were primarily using snow making at the terrain park (which would make sense because you have lots of snow getting pushed down the hill, and also who cares if the snow there is icy as shit). We are supposed to get a decent storm this weekend. Might try to go up Sunday. If not, next Saturday it sounds like everything will be open after this storm.

We've had a lot of anxiety the last few days, school started back today. The girls left her alone and I told her that she needs to start pretending they don't exist. No engaging with them, no being friendly, nothing. Today went OK but 2 of the girls did go to the principal's office at the end of the day (the other one left early). So tomorrow might be less pleasant. I don't like that they essentially had 2 weeks to prepare and potentially make up lies. I wish I had raised that point earlier. Hopefully the girls shot themselves in the foot by confronting her. She says she doesn't want to do another mid-year switch. But I've also told her that I don't think she is going to do well at our local middle school. I am also concerned they are going to make HER move classrooms. She has a great teacher and if her teacher is out of the equation, there's honestly zero motivation to keep her there. I haven't brought this up to Q but if it happens that might change her mind about sticking out the year. There is an amazing Catholic high school in our neighborhood, and while I'm not Catholic whatsoever, I hear nothing but good things from people, even gender binary/non-conforming kids. But that's 9th grade, we gotta survive the rest of 6th and then 2 more years of middle school. We've toured one private K-8 school so far, as I mentioned. Its fairly conservative and Q had some issues with some language in the student agreement, but when we were there it felt like a good fit. The other concern was their hours conflict with Q's regular therapy appointments and they allow 15 absences a semester in a given class, Q would already be at 11, so there's almost no room for illness. We have a tour in 2 weeks at a K-8 Lutheran school (a little closer to our family's beliefs). They've already seen her 504 plan and said they only invite you to tour after you fill out an application, so apparently there was nothing too scary on there for them. It's not as convenient as the other school, but seems much less strict, and I could probably let her stay in after school care occasionally or make sure she's always signed up for an after school sport (hope you like basketball, kid). The other sort of out there option is a neighboring school district has a co-op education/parent partnership/home school program that has a STEM program that I believe counts as full credit but its only 3 days a week (it also has a Language Arts component, so she would still be getting that, but probably not history which I'm admittedly not worried about). One of our friends is sending her 7th grader there instead of the local middle school. However, she's a SAHM and I work 40 hours a week. She said she'd just give Q a ride since she's headed there anyway. I HATE depending on other people like that, but she has been a supportive friend the last few years and is the one that told me about the school district program for E. I don't think an online homeschooling curriculum would work for Q (when I asked her, she said that would be too socially isolating for her), but this type of in person program might be a good fit.

Happy birthday!

You have good attention to detail and you're good at cranking out tasks. You'd be perfect for escrow or mortgage work. Or everyone else will make you nuts lol. I've had friends work in the mortgage market, though, and they kept getting laid off so not sure I'd recommend that side of the house with mortgage rates being so high right now.

Have you thought about getting your license or working in escrow? I think you'd be awesome at it.

Q and I finally made it up yesterday. My car told me it was 65F on the way there. Snow level this week is 6500 ft. They are trying desperately to make it to 30 days so they don't have to refund people who bought the guarantee (I did not). We went to West because they were open later (Central closed at 5). Alpental and East aren't even open yet, Alpental is a maybe for next week and scheduled to open MLK weekend. Q was very nervous and wasn't even sure she wanted to go. She said no black diamonds but I did convince her because it was a fairly easy one. We literally ran over gravel a few times on the main blue run, RIP my skis. We stayed for about 4.5 hours with a 30 minute dinner break and my right knee was shredded by the end (not the one I hurt last year, fortunately, just my favorite side for turns). That said, the snow that existed wasn't that bad until later in the night when it got pretty crusty on the black run. The blue run was like thick sugar most of the night (why my knee was pissed). The terrain at West is lame, though. Our favorite run shut down at 5 and Q wanted to warm up first. We got in 8 runs total. Lines weren't terrible, definitely no worse than Central on a regular season Friday night. It's just a big wide open hill that's barely steep. The blues at Central are more interesting, at least. This season is going to suck. Q said she doesn't want to go back until Central or Alpental is open for night skiing (which is this coming Wednesday). I don't blame her. She has a soccer tournament next weekend (WTF Seattle youth soccer scene), so we wouldn't be able to make it up until Sunday anyway.

Do you know what has actually been the best gift so far? My dad has been here almost a week and not a single comment about The Gays or The Transgendered. It's a Christmas Miracle and I am so glad for it. ... I'm wondering if he said shit in the wrong place back home and got told off...

I'm going to admit that I could only handle so many poop jokes. My kids run jokes into the ground. I would so wear this to the next family gathering, if only to make a point.

Kids against maturity?

I overheard my daughter chatting with a friend today. She asked Q what her most expensive gift was. Ugh. I'm a little nauseated by Facebook and Instagram today. Look at me, In flying to Hawaii! Oooh we bought grandpa first class seats! Oh look at our penthouse. Meanwhile, my kid is enthralled with $25 spy goggles and a $15 minecraft toy.

That's hilarious. We got this for my son and actually managed to install it in his room while he slept. My husband is still fussing with it making sure it's installed into the studs because he never trusts wall anchors.

Alright tell me the best gifts you got and the worst gift you got. Best gift: Sno strip for leaning skis up against the car without them falling over and scratching your car. This has been on my Amazon list for 2 years now. Finally I dropped a heavy hint to my dad and he got it for me. Weirdest gift: these shoes. I think my in-laws went to the clearance section and grabbed something close to but not quite my size. Thankfully they are returnable and come with a gift receipt sticker.

Santa's been hitting the eggnog.

I would pay to see Tank at a Jimmy Buffet concert.

I think at first they just thought it was a normal conflict between a couple of girls. This literally started the second day of school and 2 of these girls were her friends last year. But this is why I've been documenting for 3 months, as well as attempting to ask the school to intervene in that time. Quite frankly, if someone get fired, I won't be sad. In my opinion, there are a lot of staff members culpable here. @Odine, unfortunately I agree with you that usually retaliation is the only way to stop bullying. In the case of girls, you usually have to embarass them. However, if Q resorted to violence, I can tell you it wouldn't end well for her and the school district would come down on her pretty hard. If they actually find these girls guilty of bullying, they will be ineligible for a lot of things.

Triple post

That sounds a lot like the system on my husband's Ford. Its been pretty nice but it also bitches at him a ton saying he isn't keeping his eyes on the road when I'm pretty sure he is. My Volvo has a "keeping it between the lines" function and smart cruise control, but that's it. E can't ride a bike straight so he's getting my car when he can drive.

Ugh

I'm a little disgusted with our new neighborhood. Q tells me the girls speak openly about being gold diggers and how they are going to marry for money, not love. They're 11 and 12, wtf. This is considered to be some of the nicest neighborhoods in the school district, but I would still call this neighborhood solidly middle class. But they seem to think they're rich, and I think that's the problem. I'm told our local middle school is very rough in the hallways, and the teachers don't do anything about it. The principal used to be the HS principal and then he badly bungled a sexual Harassment case and it made the local news where he made some really poorly chosen statements blaming the victim. E has been to a bunch of different schools. Honestly, I think the best one was the Title I school where most kids were on free lunch. Although E is now at a "better" school for once. I will say that his classmates are very inclusive and offer to help him when he's having a hard time with something. It's a good environment, hence why I asked Q to be transferred there. Q does have a 504. Most of her accommodations are for anxiety. And part of the basis for the HIB report was that she was being discriminated against for her sensory differences. I sent 3 pages of documentation from just this past school year alone. I didn't even include anything from last year, which is when this began, with 2 of the girls. I mean some of what I had to document was just ridiculous, their insults are just so terrible but they are clearly trying their hardest to be nasty. Like one of the girls called her a furry because she had a fox tail in her Roblox avatar or something. When Q asked her what she meant by that, she said it meant your dad went to store to get milk and never came back. It was really hard to keep a straight face when Q told me about it. But more damaging has been the insults about having acne and telling the class that she never showers. Part of the problem is Q is just very friendly naturally and continues to talk to some of these girls because they're her classmates and she's just good-natured and friendly. My other issue is that 1 of the moms is a substitute teacher in the district, and all 3 moms are heavy volunteers at the school, and one of the girls has absolutely used her mom's volunteer status to isolate Q when they tried a "distance" method at lunch (basically even if Q sat down first, the girl would tell a volunteer that they weren't allowed to sit by each other and make Q move to the boys table). This is why I requested a variance. There's no way the Harassment is going to stop with their moms being in the positions they are in. E had a pretty rough day yesterday, he couldn't even keep water down. He perked up a little bit today but then he's been napping for the past 4 hours. He doesn't even care that he's stuck in his room, he's so miserable.

Luna doing a concern for her smol hooman.

Rejected for the variance, twice. The special appeal board rejected in less than 3 hours, so you know they really agonized over that one. Filed a formal bullying complaint and 2 of the girls were dumb enough to harass Q about it, when she hadn't even been named as the victim. So that got added to the investigation. And now E has the flu.

Luna (or Isis) always gets a bully stick or a bone. She got kind of sick from a bone recently so might just get her a bully stick. She's not that into toys. Isis had a couple of favorite toys.