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After two reminder emails to my list of PTB (“Powers That Be”), Julia was picked up this morning in time to get to school on time. Her case manager texted me that her bus was on time and she was not marked late during first period. I’m holding out for a week before I ‘get off my high horse,’ as my grandma used to say.
However, just because nothing is ever sweet and easy—This morning we went to the door three minutes before her ride has been scheduled to find the bus waiting. I don’t quite know when it got there and I hadn’t received any word that she would be picked up sooner than her scheduled time. I really don’t mean to look a gift horse in the mouth (Barb, lots of horse idiots today!), but it felt that it was just a wee bit passive aggressive to reschedule the pick up without any word to me. Because the bus has been coming late, we have been going to the door just on time. If we had this morning, the bus would have probably left. I’ll swallow this complaint right here, because I know what response I would get. I’m not even going to add to my thank you that a schedule getting Julia to school on time should have been worked out before school started. Continue reading
Last weekend of the summer.
This morning, 6 a.m., I dropped her off at school and she climbed onto a yellow bus filled with enthusiastic, yet somewhat drowsy cheerleaders each with identical shorts and tee shirts. Cheer camp weekend! The team will arrive at a high school a few towns over before 8, register and begin their very scheduled day at 9. Warm ups, chant class, dance class, stunt class, jump class, private coaching, cheer class and evaluation until 9:30 p.m., to be repeated tomorrow until they board the bus again at 9:00 p.m. In between, they will sleep on the gym floor.
Yesterday, on the month anniversary of the massacre by a 19-year old using a semi-automatic style weapon at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, which left 17 dead and 14 injured, students all over the United States walked out of class to protest gun violence and to demand action by their lawmakers. These clear, young eyes see the NRA’s emasculation of the GOP, the party which controls all three branches of our federal government and 33 state houses across the USA. They see that the best the GOP president can do is host a roundtable discussion about violent video games after the NRA made him walk back his gun control comments. I’ve heard and read “grown-ups” criticizing students for meddling in issues they do not understand and insinuating that the protesters only wanted to get out of classes, but possibly those “grown-ups” know a very different kind of student than I know. I applaud the students who organized demonstrations of all sorts yesterday and who intend to demand more from the rest of us to end gun violence with gun control. 
Saturday: My second basketball game in as many days. No, I haven’t gone over to the dark side (excuse me, my basketball-loving Hoosier friends). Julia is cheering. Not perfectly by any means although pompoms hide many a sin, cheerleaders stand to one side of the basket and cheer from the side, and most folks are here for the basketball players. She is very happy. Tonight she doesn’t even have ear plugs in. The gym’s echo is quite pronounced and the buzzer is incredibly loud and annoying. No complaints from the girl.
There is snow on the roof this morning. Just the smallest of sprinklings which will disappear in the morning rain. It is almost 8 a.m. and Julia is still asleep. She loves the first snow and I puzzle whether to wake her. But she so infrequently sleeps this long and we were out late last night. I let her sleep.