What's everyone up to right now?

[Angrboda]

Subscribing to more email newsletters from various news sources. I'm probably overdoing it, but I managed to add three conservative sites' newsletters today, which hopefully will give me a view into how those on the other side view things. Additionally, I was able to add some world coverage to offset the rather U.S.-centric bias of my current sources.

[Cecelia]

Enjoying a snow day!

In November!

[Angrboda]

Amazon just delivered my shiny new, red, Nalgene water bottle.  The delivery guy dropped it in front of my door, knocked, shouted "delivery," and went flying down the hallway like a rat squeezed through the aquaduct.

I hate when they do that.

[The Grand Nudger]

I've just finished up officially withdrawing my children from the public education system.  The process was relatively easy compared to the intimidating prospect of being solely responsible for the education of four little miscreants - but I've found a common core curriculum for each of their grade levels as well as a STEM booster that they just don't get here (for fear of angering the villagers and their religious sensibilities).  

Now I have to re-enroll them in all of their federal extra curricular activities as members of my new (paper) school, lol...find sports programs to replace the ones they'll be leaving, and arrange for some lunchtime party in each of their grades so that they can all say goodbye for now and leave their phone numbers with any friends that may not have them while I collect their academic records so that we're in compliance with state law and know where they stand with respect to to the same, to make any future transition back into the public education system seamless.    

So..you know..it's a thursday.
(monstrous sigh)

[Angrboda]

You're a good man, Charlie Brown.

[Duty]

I am in admiration of your taking on such an enormous extra responsibility. May I ask what it was about the local public education system which drove you take such a drastic step?

[Rev. Rye]

Woke up to find that my phone was at 30% after charging it overnight. I tried charging it somewhere other than my usual charging station and it worked. Then, I decided to change out the cables at my usual charging station. It did not work. Then I decided to change out the wall wart. This did not work, either. Then, after several minutes' worth of disassembling and reassembling my nightstand, I managed to swap out the extension cord it was plugged into. This finally worked. Just checking it now, and it seems like they're both still charging. That's troubleshooting for ya.

[Joods]

Kids had no school today. As soon as S's dad picked her up, K and I headed out to run necessary errands. The weather got progressively worse and I'm thankful for my 4WD. People just do not know how to drive in the snow. You don't fucking stop on a hill that you're trying to get up. I went around those people with ease. No one has time for that today.

Anyway... thinking about what I'm going to do with the rest of my day.

[Angrboda]

Checking the radar map on the Weather Channel website to see if I need to dress for rain. I could just look out the window and see that the sun is shining and there's not a cloud in the sky, but what fun would that be?

[The Grand Nudger]

Well, more than one thing...but The Wife and I discussed the merits of homeschooling before we ever had children.  We like to travel.  Our family is spread out all over the US..and there are certainly things we find lacking in the public education system, (which we're both a product of, to varying degrees).  We decided at the time (and up until now) that these concerns weren't nearly as pressing as a realistic expectation of ourselves as educators should be.  She and I both come from families bursting with teachers (and a couple of superintendents)...but there's a reason that neither of us chose that career path, knamean, lol?  

The scales have been tipping, slowly.  At this point we're dissatisfied with the amount of personal instruction that any of our children are receiving.  We regularly question the brood about one on one face time.... we've been tracking it - it's been going down and it was never very high to begin with.  

All of our children are excelling academically, to the point of boredom, with no realistic way of providing them greater challenges in their current setting.  They've all been straight A students...since entering school.  Not so much as a single B.  No test in which they didn't hit the top percentile.  This is a house with expectations, and my children's grades reflect that.

This has lead to behavioral issues..or, at least as far as a public school is concerned..behavioral issues of varying degrees of seriousness.  My eldest daughter, for example, has learned how to play hookey and spends alot of her time at school writing or reading whatever she wants, oblivious and unresponsive to the class.  

The first major crack happened a few years back, when my daughter turned in a mystery pill to the school and was, in effect, categorized as a potential drug dealer on account of it.  This lead to CPS auditing my home and a very nervous interaction with an off duty police officer making a little side scratch as an SRO who kept (mystifyingly) telling me to calm down and indicating that he felt threatened.  There were also some questionable interviews with my children with no parent or representative present.  They effectively tried to set each child against the other, us, and us against them.  This produced a serious problem of trust between all of us.  Wondering what fabulous story these interviewers were leading each child into next...and mommy losing sleep over whether or not she was going to find her children taken away and herself hauled up in front of a court on nightmare charges.

They tried everything they could to shift the blame for the fact that my daughter had somehow come into possession of pills on their watch, at their school..a fact that they couldn't account for in full CYA mode..and when it became clear to them that there was no way to pin this on us they entirely dropped the issue and to this day we've had no explanation for how this happened.  This interaction was fortuitously timed, for them (and us, if I'm being blunt, we were done with their shit), in that a new school was opening up to take the oveflow of kids...so they just shuffled all of our kids off to the new school.  Interactive and deeply concerned mommy and daddy problem solved, for them.  

The new school created a bussing issue, however.  New cliques for my clutch to deal with.  Then the bullying set in.  The body shaming set in.  Then it became pushing and shoving.  Eventually, my eldest son got tired of their shit, both being bullied himself and watching his sisters get bullied..and when one of those little mongrels put a hand on him..he jacked the kid in the face.  Flat out left him on the floor of the bus unconscious.  He's 7.  Like his daddy, he's a teddy bear, but a -big- teddy bear.  Suddenly everyone's perception of him changed.  I refused to scold him in front of them, and I refused to sign any paperwork to the effect that my son was ultimately responsible.  Had to do counseling.  We took his lumps, I privately stressed to him that he had to be mindful of how he could hurt somebody and he felt awful about it..but, otoh, he was just standing up for himself and his siblings.   So on my end, that was pretty much that and I was a secretly proud Papa.  

The lumps were supposed to be a temp suspension from the bus..but I started driving them to and fro instead.  Huge scheduling issues there between my wife and myself, spending at least two hours of every workday in the pickup line wasn't exactly working, but we were working with it.  That solved the bullying on the bus problem..but the bullying continued at school.  The next time the same kid (who apparently can't learn a lesson even if it hits him in the jaw like a hammer) pushed my son down the stairs at recess.  The administrators, working on the whole prior suspension bit, immediately defaulted to thinking that they had to defend this child and my son grasped the fact that the adults coming at him were certainly not on his side.  So he panicked, he threw a fit, and he started running from them screaming for his daddy.  They took him into the counselors office in tears where he said, without a full understanding..that sometimes (specifically times like this) he just wished he was dead.  Boom.  More counseling and an at-risk label..another few days off until we got a state certified counselor to say..in effect, "wtf, this kid is fine...."  Which we did.  

Now, though, he's got two strikes.  He's that kid.  Took all of a week for him to end up back in the counselors office.  After they had physically restrained him while he..again, screamed for his parents..this time complete with all of the creative cussing that you guys know and love me for, lol.  I particularly enjoyed their handwritten transcript, in chickenscratch font, completely absent of anything other than what they say he said - nothing about what they were doing or what they said.  I'm sure he said at least some of it..for example..things to the effect of.  

"Call my dad right now you fucker, let go of me, I know my dads number, he'll beat your ass you fuckers, let go of me let go of me let go of me..I'll fuck you up, I want my mom, call my mom, I know their numbers, please let go of me, fuck you you fucker let go of me, I want to go home.  I'll kill you, my dad will kill you."

-he's hitting the two men, the schools "Crisis Prevention and Intervention Team" , holding him down at this point, while sobbing and flailing around...so the transcript says, which I also completely believe happened.  

This time, in the counselors office, according to them (because ofc no one else was present and we were not notified)....he played out what they have creatively referred to as a school shooting fantasy.  Odd..since he's told me the same story he told them at least twenty times and it; most definitely not even in that wheelhouse.  They handed him a bunch of toys and he picked the legos and the army men cuz he loves legos and idolizes his daddy.  He told them a minecraft inspired story of a bank robbery where the bad guy eventually got caught by the army men.  Cops and robbers shit.  Boy shit.  Pewpewpew, you're dead, lay down.  They then asked him who all of these people were, the lego men and the army men..and searching for some explanation he made himself the robber with the diamond pickaxes and the "gunshooters" and his classmates and siblings and the neighbor kids the cops (also with "gunshooters") and the various folks who got run over or caught in crossfire in a high speed chase before they catch him or..depending on how he wants to end the story, before the robber escapes to fantasy island with all of his loot.  Which, for reference, is enough money to buy new puppies and a sword and live happily ever after with everyone he loves and who loves him.   

Everybody clutch your pearls....this kids about to go on a fucking killing spree!  Or so they flag him, and remove him from any public school until we get yet another counselor..and a different counselor..to say..again, "please, go fuck yourselves, kids fine - he has an imagination and ya kind of set the stage for this one."  Which we have done, and who counseled us that we may want to seek legal representation on account of the way this was all handled.  In their opinion, there was literally nothing right or even legal in how this all went down.  

Whatever, uninterested.  Khem Klan is peacing out..we already understand the futility of litigating the state in the states own fucking courthouse.  They've already framed the issue the way they needed to.  We're going to try and take this as an opportunity to do something we always wanted to do, improve the quality of our kids education (I love this state..but you don't exactly move your kids here for the schools)....and improve the environment and general mental health of my son (and his brother and sisters, too).  We also don't want to be standing here in another year with another one of our kids having gone through something like this, and another cps agent, and another rent-a-cop, and another CYAing admin, and another gaggle of counselors..because the states already 2/4 in giving our kids the greasy shaft and then forgetting about it at their earliest possible convenience. 

Any faith or trust we had in this counties schools is irrevocably broken.  There are no other public options, and the private options run the gamut of being jesus freak schools set up specifically to make children scientifically illiterate, or too pricey for us at the present moment.    

Long, fucked up story, I know...but that's because they're fuckers..and my son wasn't entirely wrong when he indicated that I might be filled with a burning desire to kill a motherfucker at this present moment.