Love Thy PTA

It's been a few days since I've posted any new non-craigslist related tripe, because, well, I have to wait for life to happen sometimes. While my life is full of stupid, yet mundane stuff, I can't just fill a blog with nothingness every night and I'm not going to write about my job in detail, well, because I'm just not. Being there for eight hours is enough. Writing about nothing for the hell of writing is what most people with blogs do, and I don't want my writing to be about complete nothing. I mean, some of it is about nothing, but it's a special kind of nothing that I find humorous and maybe relatable to other people. I think. So I have to wait for life to happen and then I can write about it.

Anyway, we are officially into the fifth week of school and I'm already sick of all this SHIT the PTA is sending home on what seems like a nightly basis. I've had enough, already. Stop slaughtering trees to tell me what you could be sending me in an email and what you are already telling me on facebook. Just fucking stop. Between the PTA and the regular school stuff, I don't even know what I've signed at this point, and I'm getting to where I don't care anymore. I'm extra annoyed that I'm getting this shit in duplicate, too, because now the younger daughter is in school. I think I may have suddenly developed an appreciation for home school - no PTA full of busy-body stay at home moms with nothing else to do except organize shit and try to backseat drive the school administration (because these women all majored in Elementary Education, but walked away from college with the infamous MRS. degree). Hey, how about I went to college part time for seven fucking years while I worked in some crazy and hellacious places for 8 to 16 hour shifts and now I use my degree? And no, smartasses who read this, I wasn't working a stripper pole. Even if I did pioneer the tramp stamp.

My older daughter is struggling with second grade, which means that I am struggling with second grade. I have suddenly developed a loathing of second grade, which is odd since I did well the first time I went through it. My older daughter did fine in first grade, or so I thought. I realize now that either she didn't retain that first grade knowledge, or she wasn't taught the first grade knowledge, or the separation during the second half of the first grade school year was more damaging than I thought it was. I've had a note sent home regarding her behavior, which has included playing with the shit in her desk when she's supposed to be doing work, playing with her lip gloss (what's wrong with that? That's exactly what I do at work. Duh.), not paying attention during reading time because she's playing with her little friends' hair (what's wrong with that? That's exactly what I do during meetings at work. Duh.), and a few other things. All of this was designed to make me feel instantaneously guilty and blame myself for getting a divorce, not being a good enough parent, having a career, signing her up for cheerleading, letting her watch Survivor, and so forth. But then I wonder if this is her checking out the boundaries to see what she can get away with, because she does that. She's a boundary checker, and she always will be. I can't blame her for that; I kind of am, too. I actually thought about taking her to our child psychologist to have her tested for ADHD, but that's not it and I know it. I know what ADHD looks like and it doesn't look like my older daughter. It doesn't look like either of my children, but might possibly look like the dumbass that I married.

I'm frustrated that second grade puts such an emphasis on spelling and punctuation. I sent a note back to the teacher last week to debate her scoring of two punctuation mistakes, because actually, one of the sentences could have ended with a period, question mark or exclamation mark. The teacher called me later that day to argue with me telephonically. Whatever. I made my point and I hope she knew at that point that I do actually read the shit they send home. Most of it. What I really wanted to do was explain to the teacher that I have this fabulous blog that's pretty much grammatically correct (even, though, I, am, addicted, to, commas,) and that if she checks my blog out, she might find a reference to herself in it. But that would be unnecessary and would undoubtedly make things even worse for my daughter. So a big shout out to my older daughter's prisspot teacher with 30 years experience, or something like that. Kiss my ass and you suck. But back to the phone call, even if she had folded to my argument and changed the grade, it wouldn't have mattered because my daughter had scored so far into the range of failing it still would have been a failing grade. So the next night, Mommy and children hauled off to our favorite big box book store to get three workbooks for additional work at home (not recommended by the teacher, by the way). I got a second grade workbook, but then realized the issue isn't the second grade knowledge, it's the fact that we don't have much first grade knowledge retention. So we also got two first grade workbooks. Geez. I haven't even bothered to discuss any of this with her father, other than the behavior shit, because I know he probably won't care, other than to make a pointed effort to blame me to my daughter. I'll send a workbook along in her bookbag for her to work on this weekend while she's at his house, but I am not holding out much hope that anything is going to get done in the workbook. That might cut into his WoW time. Jerkoff. I also know that he'll manage to blame all of this on me, and that this wouldn't be going on if I hadn't decided I didn't want to be married to him anymore.

I am also somewhat surprised at the level of reading that's expected in second grade. I remember second grade, and I know I wasn't reading the following story. Freddy the Frog lives with his family in a tree house in the woods. He likes to watch TV. His favorite thing to watch is the weather. His family knows he will be a weather reporter one day. [I've removed the paragraphs for the sake of space. Pardon.] "It looks like rain today," said Freddy to his mother. "It looks like a lot of rain! I better warn all my friends." Freddy went to see Betty the Bird. "Hello, Freddy. It's so nice to see you," smiled Betty. "It's going to rain today," said Freddy. "That's silly, Freddy. The weather is beautiful today," she replied. Freddy could see that Betty did not believe him, so he went to tell Robbie the Rabbit. Freddy got to Robbie the Rabbit's hole, and he pounded on the ground. "Hello, Freddy. I was just trying on my new jeans. I'm going to wear them to the park later," said Robbie. "It's going to rain today," said Freddy. "But the sun is shining. The weather is perfect," said Robbie. "Okay," said Freddy. "But I warned you!" Freddy went to tell Barry the Bear. The story goes on much longer, and discusses Rita the Raccoon, and what happens when it rains and Freddy rubs it in everyone's face that he was right and they were wrong. But he does it in a really nice, non-bullying, second grade kind of way.

Okay, I know I wasn't reading this shit in second grade. I was reading about Dick and Jane and Spot. In fact, I'm extra confident of this because another mother at the spirit night at the bouncy place tonight said the exact same thing. I guess this is all the hoopla about teaching to the SOLs or something. I'm hoping we can get over this hurdle and just have a good time in second grade and not be all stressed out about grades. It's too early to be stressed about grades. This is too much pressure for seven and eight year olds, for god's sake. I'm not looking forward to the parent-teacher conference in November, primarily because dickface will be there, but also because I'll walk out of that thing feeling even more incompetent, guilt ridden and full of self-doubt and self-blame than I have all school year, which I'm sure The Ex won't feed off of at all. I won't be one of those PTA moms who spends 30 hours a week at the school volunteering, because I decided early on, oh, at 18 or so, that having a career and not sponging off of a future husband was okay to do, and that it's okay to teach my daughters how to be independent, strong willed women who will rely on themselves first and foremost. I'm not meant to be a PTA mom and that's okay. I'm finally good with that.