That's A Day I'll Never Get Back

Bullying training, today. Or, better yet, training to prevent bullying. My ADD kicked in about 2 1/2 hours after workshop commenced. Actually, I was on a row with three others who had lost consciousness. Because, seriously, I CAN'T sit still that long and have a meaningful experience. Oh, and we had another 4 hours to go.

I've already figured out who the problem is going to be this year. The child is a little awkward - but if you knew her mother, you'd understand why. The mother checks her child out of school every Wednesday early to go to her psychiatrist/psychologist appointment. She has the child on Prozac and Concerta. And this mom can't help but complain and gripe about everything. Timed math tests for her ADD child. How her child was bullied, beaten and picked on at her last school. How I have handed out an outdated reading assignment on passports - when I did so to prove a point about trusting sources - she emails me the State Department regulations on travel. WTF? I know what I'm doing, so stop second guessing me. (I can't imagine what she would have done if she had read that Hong Kong was still independent like it said in a Social Studies textbook I had to teach from for years.)

She has also loudly and publically stated that her ex-husband abused this child several years ago, but the daughter still has five hours of unsupervised visitation with this man.

Excuse me, but this woman is the definition of crazy. If I believed for one second that someone had abused my daughter, you can believe that she wouldn't be visiting him five hours a week. Unsupervised.

Still, I'm not going to let this woman bother me. I know what I'm doing. She doesn't.

How Long Until Christmas?

I can't say I wasn't warned. I feel like I've been swept through by a hurricane - and it's only September. Senior year, 8th grade, complete with honors classes and then, my entire year, turned upside down by the fact that I teach 68 5th graders everything there is to know about Language Arts and Reading. Cram in two or three meetings a week plus choir practice and everything else there is to do being a mom and there you have it: complete nervous breakdown.

I've spent all these days feeling overwhelmned, underloved and completely inadequate.

Thank heavens for a three day weekend.