Welcome My Son. Welcome To The Machine.

Today's title is brought to you by Pink Floyd, purveyors of such fine words as "We Don't Need No Education" and "Mother's gonna put all of her fears into you."

I now have two ****ing schools to deal with. Both kids have to be there at the same time. I don't have a bus to take the Boy because
A) the transportation board wants me to pay for it, despite this being public school, which we pay taxes for, (at least every two years!) and they want a post dated cheque thing. We don't do post dated cheques. We're self employed. We never know when we're getting paid. We never know what'll be in the bank account. We just scramble to make sure the mortgage is covered. Therefore I refused to send these people a post dated cheque.
B) they want me to pay for it, but they think they can dictate the bus stop. My Boy is one of three kids that I know of coming from our school, going to the other school. Yet when all three of us parents asked for the first school to be a bus stop, we got stonewalled.
C) those Ass-hats at the transportation office have closed up shop and refuse to talk to us until three weeks from now. Their message tells us that no changes will be accepted until mid October.

Fine, Ass-hats.

Kids, here's your school bus:



I was a farm kid. The bus got us at the end of the lane. It took us to school. It took us home. Look both ways, cross the road, walk down lane and into house. No mucky muck, no grey areas, no creeps lurking at the bus stop. How hard is it to send a bus to a school, a supervised (supposely) place, to pick up at least three kids? No instead we have to take it on ourselves to spend gas money and fill the school parking lot with more vehicles.

Did I mention that I think it's wrong to pay for a bus to take my kid to a public school? It's not like I just flippantly decided to move him. He's in a Gifted program. He needs it. Regular school bores him. He'll drop out if he doesn't get want he needs. I know this because he decided two years ago that he was done.

BOY: I don't have to go to Grade Three. I already know how to read, and I can add and subtract, and that's just the long way to multiply and divide. I can just read about everything else I need to learn.

How can I argue with that? He's right! The thing is, this kid really does read up on stuff he wants to know about. I encourage that kind of thing.

You see, I love learning. I hate school.

Last year, for Grade Four, I had him in a one day a week program. It was great...except that it wasn't enough. Deciding to switch schools was a painful decision. He didn't want to leave his friends. Although they wouldn't admit it, he and the Girl didn't really want to be separated yet. Now they can't pretend to hate each other at recess.

For purely selfish reasons, I didn't want to move him. People. TWO schools. Gawd. Yeah I know at some point the Girl would go to high school, like two years from now, but that's Two Years From Now Mother's problem, not mine!

So we hopped in the Jetta and drove to the new school. The crazy haired mother in the Johnny Depp hoodie. The Dad with the hawaiian shirt and the long black hair. Two kids in their Audioslave hats. We found one of the friends for the Boy to hang with and off to the other school. Yes, we rolled in with our tunes thumping because we are REBELLIOUS and we DON'T CONFORM and we AREN'T NICE.

By the way, today's word is ASS-HAT. Like it? Try it: Kids, the people who run the schools are a bunch of ASS-HATS. Ding ding ding ding ding! Ass-hat! Ass-hat!

Yeah I'm bitter. I just deposited my children back into the machine. Back into the grind.

Jethro brought up some important points yesterday though.
A)The Girl has a teacher this year who already knows her and understands her. We don't have to break in a new teacher. We don't have to spend the first month explaining her.

B) The Boy will no longer be like Bart Simpson, with a metal bucket over his head, banging it with a hammer, going LAME LAME LAME.





Me?

Well.

I may not have told you about this. I got my package of books from the University of Guelph. I opened it. I got my ID # to enter the Distance Learning website. Correspondence means I don't have to leave my house to do it. I can throw laundry in while I work. I can get up and go for a walk if I have to get away from it.

All summer, especially when the charge showed up on my credit card bill, I wondered if I was making a mistake. I looked over my new books. I felt a thud of uncertainty. I thumped it back. Screw you, negative inner voice! Screw you!

EQUINE BUSINESS MANAGEMENT. I really, really, need to do this course.

So. They're off at school. I'm going to miss them. But I'll be keeping busy.

And after school today we're going to Sprawlville to pick up that new Audioslave record.