Sunday, September 3, 2017

Entry 392: Week One Is In The Books

Lil' S1's first week at his new school went pretty well.  He adapted almost seamlessly, but  the same cannot be said for his mother.  She can get so stressed over things like this.  I know why.  She says why.  It's because she has "working mom guilt," and she feels like if everything doesn't go perfectly (and it never does) it's somehow her fault (even though it's not).  I understand this.  Women are unfairly held to a much higher standard when it comes to parenting than men are.  If a woman sends her kid to school in dirty clothes, she gets the side eye; if a man does it, he gets applauded for taking his kid to school.  It doesn't help that the daycare we use reinforces this double standard.  Both S and I are there once a day, but whenever there's a problem the workers always talk to her about it -- even if it's about me!  I usually do drop-off in the morning, and once I read the weather report wrong (I got Columbia, SC, where S's parents live confused with Columbia, MD, where I work), so I dressed Lil' S2 in too little clothing, and I didn't bring a jacket.  On this particular day, I also was doing pickup, so I went there and got him, and they didn't say anything to me, and then I took him back the next day (appropriately dressed this time), and they still didn't say anything to me, and then when S picked him up, they told her that yesterday I didn't dress him properly.  They had two chances to tell me directly, but instead they put in on S.

That's the type of shit she has to deal with, so I try to be sympathetic, but it's not always easy, because a) sympathy is not my strong suit; b) sometimes she takes it out on me, like if I don't do everything exactly the way she wants it done, then she gets mad at me.  As an example, Lil' S1 apparently has "homework" that he has to do during aftercare and then turn in the next day.  So, one morning last week, I inadvertently take it out of his backpack before school, and S sees it when she gets home and gets annoyed and tells me to make sure it gets handed in the next day.  Fine.  I make sure it's in his backpack the next morning.  But then that evening, S notices that it's still in there.  It never got handed in.  So she gets really annoyed with me because I didn't physically hand the paper to his teacher.  So I get annoyed back because I think she's way overreacting.  It's just a stupid worksheet for a kindergartner -- how important could it be?  Also, why is it incumbent on me to hand in his homework?  How is it helping the student if the parent is the one responsible for it?  Commonsensically, one would assume that if this homework is really important to his teacher then she would ask him to hand it in, no?

Anyway, the next day, I told his teacher explicitly that his homework was in his backpack, and she was like, "Oh... yeah... okay... well, I'll have to get him a folder... uh, I'll take care of it... we'll get it sorted."  It was obviously as important to her as I figured.  There also was a mix-up with school lunch one day last week, but I won't go into it, other than to say Lil' S1 did not go hungry.

I think S is feeling especially guilty right now because she has to go to Africa for about a week for work on Wednesday.  This trip cropped up quickly, so we didn't have time to bring in reinforcements (her parents) like we usually do when she goes away.  It's just going to be me -- which is fine, I actually don't mind at all.  One week isn't that long.  It won't be that much more work for me.  But she feels guilty about it, so she volunteered to get the kids out of the house for a few hours everyday this long weekend and let me have some free time.  I certainly won't say no to that!  That's actually how I prefer to work, in general.  I like to work really intensely for a while and then take long a break.  That was one of my favorite parts about school.  I wish I could work on that schedule now, like put in 60 hour weeks for a month and then take two weeks off.  It's tough to do with kids, though, and it's even tougher to do when you work for a company that won't let you do it.

In other news, I turned 40 recently.  It's cool.  I don't really get excited by birthdays or round numbers, though.  I'm generally happy with my life, which is the most important thing.  I don't mind getting older.  I don't like the random aches and pains, but that's about it.  I do kinda wish I had thrown a big 40th birthday party for myself while I was in the Sea-Tac region, just so that I could get a bunch of friends and family in one place, a rarity these days, but I also hate planning, so it didn't happen.  Maybe I'll do it next year.  It would be kinda funny to celebrate 41 as if it's some great milestone.  It's just as good as 40, if you think about it.

Alright, that's all I got today.  Until next time...

No comments:

Post a Comment