One of these fabulous friends I was just talking about, posted on facebook today about how when she hears a car door shut and the gate click shut, she half expects her husband to walk in the door. I can totally relate to that, as I'm sure all my military friends can. For me it's a neighbor who's car sounds like ours when he locks it with his remote. Most evenings I hear this guys truck door shut, then the beep sound, around the same time Trint usually comes home from work. On ocassion my heart will jump and for a split second I half expect him to walk through the front door. It's pretty amazing that even after being married for almost 14 years, my heart still jumps for my husband. Even more amazing is that he's not even here right now and yet still my heart jumps for him. Actually maybe even more while he's gone. It's a surprise every time the phone rings and it happens to be him. Again my heart races with joy.
I suppose my afternoon was just too good and I needed to be bumped back into the reality that I'm easily irritated by the small stuff. When I went to pick up the girls, for some unknown reason, I couldn't make my usual u-turn and park at the back of the school. They had cones up to block the side of the street I needed to be on in order to turn into the little parking area. There wasn't any construction on the road and nothing unusual down the entire street. Plus these were the only cones in place. Just down the street you could turn onto that same street from a side road. Unfortunately there's a median the entire length of the street. I guess they just decided, more than halfway through the school year, that we are no longer allowed to park there. I had to journey down the most crowded street ever to get to the front of the school. Seriously they did an injustice by closing it off. This side street isn't big to begin with and people were parked on both sides, including a bus. Yep, the big yellow oversized bus. This street is over a block long and people were trying to maneuver down it going both directions. I hate to think how many of the parked cars ended up with scratches down the sides of them. Since there are no parking signs down one side I guess it would serve them right. That's not nice to say, but I was so irritated. The bus was even parked on the wrong side. By the time I got down the street and found a place to park at the front of the school, three blocks away, the bell had already rang. The girls had to wait about 10 minutes after the bell until I could get there. Irritating!
The rest of the afternoon and evening were okay. Not great, but okay. I helped Shay and Tristan with some homework, had Gumbo for dinner which must have been yummy because everyone ate it and Tristan went back for more, treated the kids to home made orange juice popcicles that I made this morning, watched a movie and now I'm sitting in bed writing this. Oh, and I wrote a long detailed letter to Tristan's counselor and teachers about why I'm a very unhappy mom.
About Tristan's school...I checked his edline account today and was very disappointed to say the least. One of his teachers had down that Tristan had not done several of his Teen Biz assignments. For those that don't know what I'm talking about, edline is a site with their grades listed by class and Teen Biz is a site they use for homework. His teacher sends articles to their account and after they read them they have to answer questions. The site records all the information and the teachers log in to check the kids progress and get their grades for a particular article. I showed it to Tristan when he got home and he insisted he had done all of them. I had him log in to his account to prove it to me. Sure enough he had done them all. I had to go through one by one to print them all out. Then I had to go to a different place to get the date he completed them. It wouldn't let me print that page so I wrote it down on each grade printout for Tristan to take to school tomorrow. I then sat down and wrote the letter. Unfortunately I don't have the principals email so I requested the teachers to forward it to her and the superintendant. I let them know that if they didn't have the time for that I would gladly print it out and deliver it myself. I will be calling the principal tomorrow after school to see if she received the email. I'm just so fed up with the teachers having expectations for these kids, which they should, but not living up to the same expectations. Getting any correspondance from them is like pulling teeth and Tristan has been turned down when he's asked for help with something he didn't understand so many times that he won't even ask anymore and just won't do the work. UGH! I could go on and on about all the things they go about doing the wrong way, but I'll just leave it at that. I can assure you that I'm not letting these issues rest until something is done. I can't change Tristan's outlook about school when the teachers aren't willing to meet me halfway. I've told all his teachers numerous times that it takes communication on everyone's part to help a child succeed. One email just because I spoke to them isn't enough. It has to be ongoing communication. And not to put our schools in a different catagory from other schools, but these military kids really go through a lot in their young lives. They need acceptance from their teachers, help when they ask, and a little understanding when the child is having an off day after a parent deploys. Instead they are making it worse for these kids. They just tend to give up to some extent. Why do the work if the teacher is going to lose it or not grade it or tell them it's not good enough with no explanation about what they need to do different. Why excede on a paper when if they do the teacher tells them the work was too easy for them and gives the child extra work that's harder. They decide it's better to keep their efforts to a minimum then get extra work. What ever happend to telling a child they did a good job and they should be proud of the effort they put in to it. Okay, I'm done venting now, really I am.
One more thing before I go to sleep. I took a picture today of the top of my scrapbook cabinet. I just wanted to share one of the things that I have as a constant reminder that Trint will be home soon. He left a pair of his sunglasses on top of the cabinet before he left, along with an extra allergy tag he had. Those glasses and that tag will be right there waiting for him when he gets home. Every deployment there's something he left in the house that I leave there the whole time he's gone. The first deployment was an oversized glass bottle change bank that I left on top of the fridge. I hated that thing and it would always work it's way to the edge after the fridge doors were open enough, but I left it there. The second deployment was a jacket he left hanging on the back of a dining room chair. This deployment it's the sunglasses. We love you baby and we can't wait to see you wearing your sunglasses next year! MUAH!
