Hmmmm.....

Hi! Happy No Whining Wednesday! What? I know it's Thursday, thanks for pointing out that I'm late, but I thought better late than never. Yesterday I was at home sick. I promise I didn't whine too much. Not anymore than was absolutely necessary to get the attention required to get all better. Other than that, NWW was pretty uneventful.

I'm not sure what to blog about tonight. My thoughts are all disjointed, no real train to them. Nothing really interesting has happened this week. Cause, you know, I'm all kinds of interesting every other week.

Things I would like to blog about but don't have attention span needed tonight:

1) Age inappropriate songs I would sing each and every word to as a youngster (the next edition of By Today's Standards)

2) Whether or not Canada should pull out of Afghanistan when our UN/NATO commitment is up in 2011. I read a newspaper article about a month ago that got me pretty riled up. And as the blog title would suggest, I have an opinion on the matter. Also, I'm a military spouse so, it's kind of a given.

3) A poem I wrote and have yet to finish (attention span) for NWW.

Oh! The kids started school yesterday. I'm not a parent who shoves my kids out the front door the first day of school and then thanks whatever brand of God I pray to that they are finally out of my hair. I like having my kids home. If I could afford it (and thought I was even close to being able to do them justice) I would home school them. So I'm always a little sad on the first day of school. So, my son gets off the school bus all long faced and glum yesterday afternoon. I ask him why the long face? Did he have a bad day? He tells me he got into trouble. I know my son. He's got the attention span of ....well a 9 year old boy (he leans a little toward 9 year old on chocolate, if I'm being honest, sweet, milky chocolate). He has to be engaged. He doesn't yet possess the will to concentrate on the task at hand without guidance. The other end of that is if he is interested, its hard to get him to notice anything else. I figured he got into trouble for goofing off. Not so much. He tells me they were asked to record a summer memory, but they can't use sentences. They have to use words and pictures (it took a number of questions before I got the gist of what he was told). He was having a hard time limiting himself to that. So there's a note in his agenda saying he didn't think he should have to follow instruction and I quote "Not a good start to grade 4". On the first day.

Last year, I tried to be super sweet. Last year, I tried to be nice. I wrote long notes spouting how much I agreed with the teachers point of view and how I thought it was important we communicate. I drilled my son every day. To no avail. My son got stressed, I got stressed and the teacher continued to be a bitch. Don't get me wrong, my son can be a challenge, and I can only imagine how much more challenging it becomes with 20 or so more very much like him. Fact is though, she teaches for a living. Is patience not listed as a job requirement? This year I said fuck it. I wrote a note back. I informed Mrs. Impatience that I thought she was being a little hasty with her judgement and requested she give the kids a chance to get back into a groove. I was not polite. What happened? She wrote a note back. It was full of butterflies and puppy kisses assuring me she wasn't judging.

So tell me this folks: why is it when I bend over backwards to be nice, I go out of my way trying to appease the unappeasable (hmm, not sure that's a word), I get jack for my efforts. I get a bit of a backbone, tell a person or two off and then people start treating me differently. With more respect. Ok, so let me see if I've got this straight: Nice Girl = Door Mat, Bitch = Respect? Nope, that ain't fucked up at all.

Well, I'm done spreading sunshine for this evening. I'll be back tomorrow cause I've got a job interview and I'm going to need someone to wallow in my pity with me or to help celebrate (let's hope for the latter). G'nite folks!