Pick Up Problem

Half day of school for parent/teacher conferences. Then lunch with coworkers which I needed because I feel distanced sometimes now that I'm not a classroom teacher. Lots of laughs. BTW my roller derby name? PaigeofPain!

Then I show up to pick up DollFace. But she's not there. The teacher says she didn't come to school today. That means my scatterbrained SIL did not bother to contact me and tell me that DollFace didn't go to school. I felt like a fool. I do not get mad very often but I was furious. We had a short, clipped phone call. Which began with lame excuses, "We've had a lot going on, Stretch is going to need two surgeries" and which ended with her saying "Yes Ma'am" sarcastically. No apology, no promises that it will never happen again. More furious from me.

I found out later that E. was actually taking Stretch to the dr. And...hello....it only takes 60 seconds to make a phone call. There's really no excuse. I really want to back out of picking her up, but anything like that will punish the child not the adult. And I could see C. pulling her out of the program completely if it became to inconvenient and DollFace needs all the academic support she can get. She's not behind but she's not where I think she should be either. Education is just not a priority in C.'s mind and for me that is a huge problem.

When I talked to E. about it he was annoyed and,I think, embarrassed. He agreed to call me if she misses school IF, he knows about it. I feel very badly for DollFace. She has so much potential, it's not fair for her to begin her school career without the proper support.

Stretch broke her left index finger and will need a surgery to put pins in on Monday. She was playing volleyball and a boy jumped up and came down on her hand with his elbow. Not sure how this happened but for now she has a temporary cast. She seemed kind of excited when she was telling me all about it. Her permanent cast will be blue. She's already milking it for attention. She's a lefty and will have a hard time writing, etc.