well.. I wasn't looking for houses

That didn't stop Larry from emailing me from work last night a series of houses with descriptions of "needs serious TLC" and "additions and permits unknown"

That was after I told the real estate agent who called that I wasn't interested in looking at any houses for a while..

*sigh*

And it's back to the Monday grind here. I thought the kids had school, so we got up extra early to get them there on time and turns out.. no, there isn't school for another 2 weeks. Dang. So now I have tired/cranky kids and wasted the better part of 45 minutes driving to their school and back.

I have a calendar. I have school on it for today. I have the calendar from school, too. Unfortunately, it's color coded and mine is in black and white, so the days we have school I think are supposed to be orange, but today was "field trip" day which I think is yellow? So.. it looked the same shade of grey to my eyes.

Do we go to the field trips? usually- no. They have them at the local park usually, which has free admission, btw, and then charge the family $5 a person to go. So.. that'd be $25 for me to go to a park that is free. Is that a joke? And today was "PE day" so all they were going to do is run around and play relay races or something. If you want a drink, they'll sell you one, too... with drinks parents donated to the school.. for $1 each. They get public school tuition for every student enrolled. They have few facilities, they make the parents volunteer and donate and the majority of their cirruculum is stuff we download off the website and print ourselves. I have a feeling of being nickled and dimed by this school..

I was especially mad last month when they had a day long parent edutation confrence which would have counted for our mandatory volunteer hours. I get babysitter lined up, get there and it's been canceled. There was an email sent out 30 minutes before it was supposed to start that it was canceled. No reason given. ARGH ARGH ARGH. I am going to list the time I spent arranging babysitter, gettting there and driving home on my volunteer hour sheet and see what happens. I'm thinking of lising the entire time it was supposed to happen since it was unbelievably inconsiderate to cancel so late for no known reason.. other than the day or 2 prior the head CEO or other administrator was arrested for molesting a student at a different school (lovely, huh?) I think they wanted to keep everyone away in case reporters or police where there, but they could have sent out that email a few hours before it started.

Lest you think this is unusual, they cancel all sorts of things about 10 mintues before they start by email. Who is reading email from the car? Really. I have email on my phone even and I still don't find that appropriate or convenient. I usually don't participate in any of their stuff, so it just hasn't happened often to me.

And I dispise the fact that they seem to think I should be able to "call someone" to watch the kids so that I can volunteer and go to these confrences. I can't stand that phrase that everyone uses here. Maybe because I don't have someone to call- it's not like I have a neighborhood of stay-at-home moms to swap child watching with- I have a neighborhood hostile to kids and most of the moms I've met work. Or the other oddity here- the 2 stay at home moms I know of put their kids in daycare during the day.. which I could not afford, nor would I want to.

So...it's really pathetic, I know. And I'm reminded of that frequently. Maybe I should join the Mormon church.. branch out our circle of friends...???

Anyway.. I look forward to moving. I wish there was a way to screen neighbors for stay at home with kids status-- or better yet- homeschooling family of 6 status.. wish there was a real-estate tool to figure that out. I guess next best thing will be to knock on the neighbor's door and see who answers...