There really hasn't been all that much time for me to blog. Or I manage it poorly. Or both.
But as a personal discipline thing I 've found as soon as I turn on the computer - even for 'just one quick thing' that minutes suddenly evaporate. And that's a big reason for me to just.leave.it.off. I have internet/email/facebook on my phone and it is there to quickly check when I really only have a few minutes - like in the parent pick up line.. it's finite.
But today, my friends, I picked up kids from said parent pick up line (which itself could be several blog posts on terribly behaving parents) in reply to my question of "how was your day?" I got "TERRIBLE!"
Well, I've gotten that reply once before in response to pre-teen drama. Today was because of the standardized testing.
Of course this is my child that cannot guess if she doesn't know the answer. She NEEDS to know it's right before she'll click submit. I'm sure she'll need therapy and lots of it at some point.
But the question that tripped her up was "what 3 shots are required at 6 months?" and was based on a chart provided.
First of all.. it is 5 shots "required" at 6 months. 6 if you include the oral vaccine as a shot. 7 if you're going to have a 6 month old during flu vaccine season.
Second of all.. this is 3rd grade, not nursing school.
And this makes me wonder "what else are the testing them on?!?!!???" I would like to see a copy of said test, frankly.
In other news..
We survived the Firestorm of the Century. And while I'd like to never, ever go through that again I know full well that we may well enter into North Carolina just in time to experience the hurricane of the century.
If they are going to have another evacuate the school emergency I'd just as soon not be a part of it. Wednesday they evacuated several schools. Including our middle school and elementary school. What happened was the middle school was called first. I don't know what their procedure was but with flames at the driveway apparently they weren't checking IDs or anything. Those parents promptly drove down to the elementary school and started pickup up their younger kids.
However, the elementary has a brand new "you much have your ID checked against the master emergency contact card policy" which means.. it's not as simple as releasing the hounds. They have the parent stay in the tiny office while they page the kid. On a normal day it takes my kids 20 minutes to be released if I have to take them out early for an apt or something.
So.. you can imagine as it's snowing ashes on the school grounds the level of panic was building as the line of parents was out the door and down the road. literally.
I was blissfully unaware at work that there was any sort of thing going on until the manager looked especially panicked and asked if "I was OK?" and while working there often I have not OK days it wasn't the worst. I said "am I supposed to not be ok?" when she told me the county was on fire and they were waiting for instructions on what to do. About 10 minutes later my neighbor texted me the picture from her backyard of flames and told me she was getting her son, should she get mine, also?
I left. Right then. They couldn't find my last patient and I told them if they did find her, they had lost me, got in the car and hit Armageddon levels of traffic.
So.. what I had never planned for in all our "if it hits the fan" scenarios was what to do when all major roadways are gridlocked/closed due to fire. Most of the freeways were closed due to fires and it blocked the secondary roads. I'm a country girl. I know pretty much every secondary/tertiary/unimproved road, paved or no. But it still took an hour to get to the school.
Once there...
A little background - we live in the "country" here. This means that this is horse country. LOTS of horses and when you evacuate you take said horses with you. So.. at the school parking lot it looked like Noah's ark- trucks, horse trailers left any which way, everyone with a pet was up there. Dogs on leashes galore. No one could leave anything in a car since it was over 100 degrees... so just picture a line of 300 panicking parents, 100 barking dogs and horses and horse trailers in smoke and ash.. it was.. awesome.
While in said line, which of course moved up at a snails pace they decide to send out the emergency call to evacuate. This means that now EVERYONE has to be called and show up with ID and pick up their kid. There is no waiting until 2:30 to get in the drive though lane (which it jammed with horses) Pure chaos. We got home and later that evening we got a robo call from school 'thanking everyone for their patience as they followed their safety procedures' (well I was there there were alot of NOT patient people, I guess this is the new rule on changing parental behavior) and they were 'proud to announce all students were safely released to an emergency contact by 5 pm" Are you kidding?! it took them 5 hours?! What if this was an actual emergency??? Call 911??? I'd actually be surprised if there weren't parents calling 911 from the back of the line.
Yet another check in the "homeschool next year" column. Because in the unlikely event of an actual emergency you just can't depend on them handling it they way you'd like them to.
And now I bet they will add a new drill to the school drills- fire, earthquake, lockdown and now fire-surrounding-the-school drills.
So.. since our earthy possessions were not reduced to ash I have started culling and packing things. The fire and packing the cars to evacuate gave real perspective on life, though - everything priceless and irreplaceable easily fit in the car. The rest is mostly for sale on Craiglist.
Edited to Add: Bragging moment:
One of my kids tested highest in his class on all the standardized tests. Of both classes. His sister was close behind.
While I don't usually take this testing stuff seriously or brag about it- this time it means something because of THAT other parent. You know the one that on an open house night with EVERYOTHER parent there she has to make sure she asks if the teacher it up to teaching her more advanced children? Because they're so brilliant and all.. And she asks several times in a few different ways because they need to be taught more and challenged, etc... etc... YES. My twins beat your twins.!! But I won't be making any announcement to the class. just here. Although I guess next year those top spots will be open again for her kids.. bah.
