His Phoenix

NOT! The server that hosts my blog crashed today due to another blog getting too much traffic. Problem is fixed… so back to normal broadcasting now. More later… I am just too tired to post anything else right now.

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I just have been under some stress the last few weeks, and these days I tend to crawl under a rock, instead of letting it bother me… which means of course, that I don’t write much… or call anyone for that matter. I feel like I might catch someone at the wrong time… and in my mothers case… she has changed her number so much lately, that I didn’t have the right one for a couple of days.

I get chastised for not writing e-mails… but somehow that seems impersonal and it is hard to get the intended feelings correct. To put it in as few words as possible, I have been just a little depressed. It is the same ole SS, DD and it grates on me at times. I don’t want to be a whiner here… and I try my best to keep things upbeat, so when I get down… I hide.

Anywhooo, the kid made it through his ISS with flying colors. He didn’t do all the school work that he was supposed to do, but I only received one complaint on that and that came from his reading teacher. (He deems that less important than say math or science.) The other kid is back in school AND back on the bus, but apparently has been told under no circumstances is he to start more trouble… and this comes from not only the school staff, but also from a few of my sons, ummm… searching for right word here… “tougher” friends. Yea, we will just leave it at that, m-kay?

We just went through… and sorta still are going through a pricing change at work and that has kept me busier than a bee in a flower patch. We have certain customers that have been given extensions on the increase and I have had to keep my head on somewhat straight to make sure I don’t mess up when I am invoicing them. I also had to put in some extra hours to help with that AND to make the hours I lost when I had to leave early to pick up the kid at school. So I worked on the weekend last week and that kept me away from here and family as well, in more ways than one.

Another thing I did to to fill my “I got nothing but whine” time… is read. I heard a lot about this series, and I had already read one of her other novels and LOVED it… so I treated myself to these:

The twilight Saga… all four novels! I didn’t buy the box set, but, I read all 4 books NOVELS in 5 days! I could not put them down! This had to be a first for me and I cried, laughed and just fell in love with these books. I also ordered the movie guide and the soundtrack to be delivered upon release and I am planning a small party of people to go with me when the movie is released to the theaters. Yes, I was impressed.

In other news: My orchid is still in bloom and here is the 5th bloom that came out:

Also, my water lily bloomed, so here is 2 pics of that for your viewing enjoyment:

It now has 2 blooms on it, but I have not taken any pics yet…

Well, this is as much as I can dish for one sitting… more to come later!

Today I called the school and made an appointment with the principal (spelled it right this time Carlo! lol). My meeting time was not until 2:45, so I had plenty to stew over. The reason for making this appointment, besides the obvious, was because I received a call from the assistant principal almost as soon as I got in to work. It appears that the bus driver did not see the beginnings of the fight… just the end of it and because the fight took place 50 feet from her bus, she was told to write it up. Of course, as I said, she only saw the end of it. She wrote that my son instigated the fight. I was, once again, flabbergasted… and highly pissed to say the least.

It turns out that the principal is totally on our side, but he is bound by the rules of the school. If one gets in a fight… the other is punished too. My son did a few things wrong that he now knows better than to do next time.

1. He didn’t report the threat to the principal when he saw him the day before.
2. He put his books down in a perceived acceptance of the fight, even though he did it to save them from getting scattered.
3. He threatened, in the heat of anger, AFTER he was hit, to “kill” the boy. (A terroristic threat is a huge no-no… and he has be extremely chastised for that by me.)

Per #1: After the councilor fiasco, the principal has been going to bat for my son. He told him that he would not hunt him down, but that he wanted my son to check in with him every few days to make sure he was doing OK. My son remembered to go see him on Wednesday, but neglected to tell the principal about the threats. The principal left to go out of town that evening and so was caught off guard by the reports that he got from the school concerning my son.

Per #2: He was not aware of the no putting the books down rule.

Per #3: He got realllllll stupid in his anger and said something that he should not have and now regrets it. The principal knows it was said in anger and is not taking the threat seriously.

My son now is sort of banned from the bus. The principal told us that he wants my son to succeed and needs my son to show him that he is not making a mistake by taking the chance with him.

The new rules are:

1. He is in Alternative School at the high school for another 7 days, instead of out of school suspension. He cannot goof off, fall asleep or doodle. He has to be working on his school work at all times. He will be checked in on periodically.
2. He can ride the bus to school, but cannot ride it home. The suspension from the bus for only a half day is a concession by the school to help me out so I don’t lose my job. Also, there is hardly any gas to be had here, STILL. If a station gets gas, the lines are genormous.  They are telling us now that it will take another 2 weeks for things to get back to normal. (This means that I have to get up early in the morning to find gas before the lines start. I am below half a tank and with having to pick up the kid everyday from school, my gas will only last 2 more days. BUT, at least it has gotten me through the first two weeks of this fiasco…)
3. I have to be there to pick him up everyday by 4:30, which means I am only losing 30 minutes of work… and I worked it out to work extra over the weekend to make up my time, instead of losing a vacation day.
4. IF the youngin does not follow the rules at Alt School for the next 7 days, he will receive the remainder of his suspension at home.
5. IF he gets into trouble on the bus in the next 7 days, he will be suspended from the bus for the remainder of this quarter… until January!

Please add us to your prayers. I hope that the youngin learned from this. I know he wants to prove everyone wrong… that he is a good kid and is trying his best to do the right thing. Just 7 days more… without incident.

BTW - The other child received a much greater punishment than my child did. Much worse and he apparently is in trouble with his probation officer… yes, you read that right… his probation officer. I imagine that he will be doing some Juvy jail time before he gets to come back to school. If my guesses are correct he is doing 9 days OSS and is banned from the bus for the remainder of this quarter, beyond the trouble he is in with his probation officer. He may also be sent to another alternative school… but this is all just a guess.

David, from Sugarloaf Mountain graced us with some of his energy and water saving tips over at Going Green. Please go by and check it out!
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Today is a day to remember a special man, Paul Newman. Gone at the young age of 83.

Who could forget Cool Hand Luke, Hud, and one of my favorites: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. He had the most startling blue eyes that melted the heats of a nation of women and a smile that made the whole world light up.

Rest in Peace, Paul. You will be missed.

There should be better measures in place to protect the innocent child. I spent the last two days trying to straighten out a mess that should never have occured. I have been frustrated, angry and just down right perplexed at how the system can keep failing my son.

For the last week my son has been harrassed and bullied by a kid of the same age as he is, but he is in a grade higher… he is a freshman in high school, while my son is still struggling through the 8th grade. Men instill in their boys a sense of honor that states that you don’t tell or snitch on another kid. Boys grow up with the fear that they will be ridiculed by their peers if they tell on someone. This stupidity frustrates me to no end.

If he can come home and tell us that this boy has been threatening to beat him up, but refuses to give a name up… what is a parent to do. It is very difficult to go to the powers that be in the school, if you don’t have a name, especially in the school where he is. These kids are expected to be perfect little angels and they are not. Kids will be kids. BUT, when a child is bullied it becomes another matter.

I made the mistake of thinking that the threats were just talk. Kids are going to fight, but it is another thing when a child goes out of his way to start a fight, and this is what happened on Thursday.

The youngin’ was walking to the bus and trying to avoid this other child. It didn’t work and this other child found him and started pushing him in the back hard enough to make my child stumble. He had his arms full of his school books and was afraid they would scatter, so he tried to get away from him. A teacher saw this other child push him once and asked them if there was a problem. The other kid backed off and said that they were just playing. My child took this opportunity to hide amongst the crowd of kids at the bus stop.

The other kid then got on the bus and asked the other kids if my son was on the bus. When he saw that he wasn’t, he got off the bus and went to look for him. (Getting off the bus, once on it, is against the rules… but he wasn’t stopped. My son was suspended last year for the very same thing.)

The other kid found my son, walked up behind him and started pushing him again. My son almost fell and almost lost his books again, so he put them down. Apparently according to the rule book, if you put your books down, you are inviting the fight. That was not his reasons for doing that. As soon as he put down his books the other kid started to taunt him. Another boy called out to my son and as he turned to look, the bully attacked him, hitting him in the temple. My son then covered his face trying to avoid the punches. As soon as that happened a teacher stepped in and pulled the bully off.

This next part is what bothers me. Both boys were taken to the office and both were given 9 days out of school suspension. I didn’t know this until I arrived at the school. I went ballistic after she told me this. I explained that this boy has been taunting my son for a week with threats to beat him up. This same boy is one of the kids that got one of my puppies… but I didn’t know who he was until after I got my son home… and I got the whole story from my son and some of the witnesses.

My son never threw a punch. He never did anything except try to protect himself and they were going to punish him too? I called the school and explained the whole story this morning… and I then received a call back. The principle was out of town but they managed to contact him. They changed my sons punnishment to in school suspension over at the high school, because they know how hard my son has worked trying to pass this year. As soon as the principle gets back, we are going to have a long chat about this kid and the threats he made all week. I am going to ask that the ISS be removed from my son so he can keep up with his schoolwork. I am also going to explain how this kid purpously stalked my son and started this fight.

Since the fight I have heard nothing from my old man but ranting and raving about how bad the system is over there at the school. He has done nothing but yell about this for the last 24 hours. I also had to listen to how he wasn’t going to tell the youngin not to fight anymore. He told him that if a kid starts on him again to just punch him and get it over with. I then had to do a lot of repair to the kids esteem and told him that I trusted him to do the right thing, no matter what his dad told him. I also told him that I couldn’t take this anymore. The stress is becoming too much for me and it is one of the reasons that my hair has started to fall out.

The toll from this whole nightmare I am living in is starting to show. I look older than I am. I can’t lose weight, I can’t stop smoking and I have heartburn constantly and again, my hair is failling out. Today at work the heartburn was so bad that I couldn’t tell if it was chest pains or heartburn. I haven’t hurt this bad since before my gallbladder was taken out.

I am at my wits end. I thought many times over this weekend that maybe I should just leave the whole mess behind and try to get my life back together. Get my health back and try to find some sense of peace. I cried and prayed all last night, and I always come back to the same conclusion… that until my son is of age… he needs me. He needs my stability and my sense of right and wrong. He needs me to remind him that he has his own mind and can think for himself. He needs my council when no one else will give him the right answers. He NEEDS me to get him through these last few years of childhood, through school and into college and I will stay to do just that.

I just hope that my health will hold out until then… I so need a miracle.

Handbag Planet! They are giving away a handbag every hour on October 15th! Go over and check it out!!

I got the scoop from Leanne over at Intricate Art. Every girl can use an extra handbag, right?

Going Green. This weeks post is about gardening and some tips to help maximize your food output. Take a gander if you dare.

Be careful though… you might catch a green thumb or something…