I am finding myself embroiled in another mini-drama with administrative types at Kate's school. They are disallowing an assignment she turned in ages ago to the quintessential absent-minded substitute. They can't find the assignment, etc., etc. She redid the assignment, Mac and I have sworn that she did the assignment initially and turned it in, yet... The administration says it's "past the deadline". I'm so teed off about this. It's in science, which had been her reliable A class (as in, above 95% average), and now with this assignment and the previous one she screwed up on... She will be lucky to squeak by with a C. And I'm just plain mad on principle. I'm the first one to say that my kid needs to be penalized to the full extent of the system if it's her mistake. If she's not paying attention in class, and misses something important, that's totally on Kate. But in this case... It just makes me so mad. And it reminded me of why I never went into teaching. I just don't have the temperament for it. I took an ed class in college and I hated it with a passion. I hated the condescending professor who treated us like middle schoolers. I hated how he chewed me out for arriving late to class one time, AND pulled me aside after class to tell me again in case I missed it the first time in front of the whole class. (I had to walk over a mile to get to that class from my Physics class, in about 8 minutes.) Every run-in I've had with the administration at this school has been just frustrating. This time I'm going through the "center for the highly gifted" administrator rather than the actual school admin. Maybe that will be better? My gripes this year include:

*Bus drivers who disperse opinions about how unfair we are as parents. That's the tip of the inappropriate comments made iceburg.
*Security guards kicking kids off the bus for *gasp* waving out the windows. Then leaving the kids at the curb of the school for someone to pick them up from school, knowing full well we live in an area where over 90% of the kids have no one at home after school.
*VP of the school telling the kids to get involved in fights to try to break them up. Idiot.
*Teachers only give negative feedback about Kate. I've yet to hear anything positive about her. It's all, "she doesn't participate in class", and "she doesn't put forth any effort." And then when a teacher was handing back results from some standardized test, and saw that Kate again was in the 99th percentile for the reading, the teacher looked shocked, incredulous, and doubtful... And then there's the teacher who yelled at Kate for smiling at her friend (you know how middle schoolers have a zilliion inside jokes) and the teacher went off on how Kate is a "rude girl". :huh:

I just feel like this whole middle school thing has been a twilight zone experience. Common sense has left the building. The administrators and teachers seem to have the expectation that the kids will behave like 10th or 11th graders. And there is a world of difference between an 11 year old and a 16 year old. I just don't think the kids in general are ready to meet those expectations. They are still tweeners: impulsive, immature, self-centered, hormonal, insecure... I'm ready for summer.

Anyway, in other news on the spectrum of incompetence, the test results of my titre have been confirmed to be only 1:16. This is clinically significant, since for my blood incompatibility issue the benchmark at which the OB's kick you over to the high risk category is 1:32. That's when they start the amnio, the more regular monitoring, etc., etc. Turns out my first titre, which originally registered at 1:32, actually was 1:16. So this means all this time I should have just been having my titres measured and not had to worry about the extra ultrasounds, extra doctor appointments, etc., etc. I'm not off the hook, of course, because my titre very well could increase at any time, but still. I just wish I had the last 6 weeks back to not be overly concerned. I think I won't tell my parents about this new development, though. It will just increase the pressure for me to somehow convince the doctors that I can travel late in my pregnancy, when at the bottom of my heart I know that won't do any good at all.

I had a really strange dream the other night. I have very vivid, realistic dreams when I'm pregnant. When I was pregnant with Luke, I dreamed that Mac was having an affair. I was so mad, I woke him up and started to chew him out. I was ready to kick his sorry rear end out of my life forever. He was, of course, totally bewildered. It was so bizarre. (He wasn't having an affair, of course, which I knew when I thought about it...) So this last dream was that my dad had died rather suddenly, but from a health issue like a heart attack perhaps. He owns 3 medical clinics and has something like 25 employees. So, these businesses were going downhill, because he's a major micro-manager. My mom and sister were basically in a daze, and not doing anything about the clinics. It was so frustrating, that I woke up almost crying. It took me about 20 minutes to sort out that it was a dream. :huh:

In other news, today is finally sunny and nice. We had monsoon-like rains! Our backyard is useless b/c of the mud, but hopefully the sun and wind will dry it out a bit. I'll take the sun anyway. I hope the rain stays away for a while! Enough already!