Parenting Without A License

Blog Stew

Posted by Kimberly on November 1st, 2007 — Posted in The Ladies, Kipple, Blah Blah Blog, No Pudding Until You Finish Your Meat, NaBloPoMo

I’m still coming off of last night’s sugar rush–both mine and The Ladies–so today’s entry is going to be more of a bunch of unrelated snippets than a cohesive narrative.

Trick or treating was a little strange for us this year. Because I only take The Ladies to houses I know and our route is designed so that we end up at Grandma’s house, we ending up cruising the “old neighbourhood” surrounding Diva Girl’s former school. I used to do this trip four times a day, minimum, but I have to confess, the walk to her old school just about kicked my ass. Other than that it was mostly a treat, seeing the familiar faces we’ve been missing since we stopped hanging out on this side of the street. More often than not The Ladies were greeted with hugs to go along with their Hershey’s Kisses and more than one mom slipped them an extra helping of candy before we headed off to the next house.

Negotiating the Old Babysitter’s house was a bit tricky, though. I thought it would be weird to make The Ladies skip it altogether, especially since we don’t really go to all that many houses, and in past years she’s just left a bowl full of candy on the porch while she and Buddy went out, so I figured it wouldn’t be too much of a drama. I was wrong. When we turned on to their street we could see the bowl sitting there, waiting for the pirates and princesses roaming the neighbourhood to help themselves. Unfortunately, we could also see Buddy and the Babysitter in the window. Which wasn’t the most awkward part. That came when The Zen Baby admonished, loud enough for all the assorted trick or treaters and their chaperones to hear, “You stay back here, Mummy. We don’t want you to get into another big fight with Buddy’s Mom!” before running up to collect her candy. I have never in my life wished so hard that I was wearing a costume that included a full facemask. She made up for it when she offered to share her candy with me though. Poor, naive child. She has no idea that I’m totally going to steal it while she’s sleeping.
On the school front, Diva Girl’s teacher apologized to her yesterday. I hadn’t yet stormed the office filled with righteous maternal indignation (the principal was away at a conference), and with this new development I have to rethink that approach. If she hadn’t acknowledged that she’d been wrong in preventing Diva Girl from calling home I would have been all over demanding a meeting (and possibly her head on a platter), but she did and that changes things.

At this point I think I’m comfortable sending an email (cc’d to the principal) that at least on the surface seeks to inform and not blame in this situation. Although I’m pretty sure they’ll get the threat implied in the statement, “should this situation occur again, Sabrina will most likely have to wait until I can make the 2 bus trip up to the school to get her.” As to the custody stuff, I’m still undecided. One of the sucky things about changing schools is having to run through all the solo mom stuff again–mail addressed to “Mr. & Mrs. Rastin,” fielding the “where’s your dad?” questions, and explaining de facto custody. I may just save that one for the Parent-Teacher interview.

I’m sorry that this isn’t the best start ever to NaBloPoMo, but I promise I’ll try and do better from now on. Oh, and speaking of NaBloPoMo, did you see the snazzy badge over there in the sidebar? I put it there all by myself and I didn’t even break the blog. It doesn’t link to the actual site, but you know, baby steps. I’m not convinced that NaBloPoMo itself is a baby step, or even a good idea for me–I’ve never been very good with either deadlines or self discipline–but I’m trying to break out of the box a little this year and try some personal growth. Sure, it’s nearly a decade too late to help me with that procrastination problem I had in University, but I like to believe that every prof who ever granted me an extension (which would, um, be every prof I ever had) is cheering me on.

I wonder if moving the old Sanity and the Solo Mom archives over here counts as posting? No? I didn’t think so. Still, I’ll be doing that this month, so if your feed reader starts going crazy, just relax. I’m not going to bring everything over–the work to rule memes and the Daily Mom content can languish in whatever sort of internet purgatory iVillage deems appropriate–but there are many posts that I’m proud of and would hate to lose. They’re not letting me bring the comments though, so if you happen to see something in the old stuff that catches your fancy, feel free.

I’m off to raid the peanut butter cups.