Friday, September 4, 2009

Days of Whine and Roses (Minus the Roses)

Today has been such a fine day that I’d like to sleep the entire long weekend just to get away from it. Have they invented a time eraser yet? A daily rewind button?

Most of this terribly fun calendar square involved protracted dealings with the city school district. Let me reiterate that my son just turned 5, and not even a full time student, and already I get to do battle. I’m betting they took my picture and stapled it in a book they keep of all headache inducing parents, and every time they see me coming from now on, they’ll come up with some way to spit in my food, so to speak.

I think I’ve mentioned before that a few years back, we discovered that Sammy had a mild hearing loss that impaired his language development, so he has been the lucky recipient of speech education through the district. Up until now, that has always involved going to a school several days a week for some kind of class with other kids his age. But last spring, when we thought we’d be told he could enter into the pre-kindergarten program (especially designed for special needs kids), we found out that because he would turn 5 6 whole days before the arbitrary cutoff date, he could only go to kindergarten, and if he didn’t get the hang of it, hey, he could always repeat. Um, no. I’m not setting him up for failure. Not that I don’t think he could do it. I just know that even kindergarten these days has a set of requirements that I’m not sure I could pass, much less my son who is still learning to respond to questions more complicates than with a simple yes or no. He needs to develop his self-confidence, not challenge it this strongly at this point. And every person I asked, including the school assistant principal who couldn’t verbally say it but sure as heck did with her eyes, told me to wait. Besides, he was actually 4 when school started.

He still qualifies as a special needs child, and is therefore eligible for some kind of service, so that’s what I went to find out about today. I’d been given bits and pieces of information over the past few weeks, and I was really apprehensive going in (that’s not completely accurate – I was in complete half empty mode, pretty sure they were out to make me quit, so I had my hackles up). It went down pretty much like I expected, changing the game plan from what they defined back in May and making it next to impossible to coordinate with his preschool. After an in person meeting and several phone calls, I was pretty much deflated. My favorite parts: that these services are a courtesy to my son, and that he’s not considered a student. So he’s something of a stepchild that’s being tolerated. Gee, thanks.

I do have to say things got a little better with a final phone call offering me a slight change in plan that, while far, far from ideal, at least keeps me from making 2 extra round trips a week and entertaining an energetic 17 month old in an office lobby for half an hour twice a week. Of course, as of this posting, I haven’t heard back that this is a done deal, and a fully expect a phone call Tuesday pulling the rug out from under me. See, half empty. But if that happens, I’m sure they’ll enjoy their biweekly dose of Sabrina havoc in their administrative building. Anyway, cross your fingers.

Just as I was dealing with all of this, Chris walks in with a giant packet of information about the changes to our medical insurance coverage for next year. Let me just sum it up by saying that if the HR mouthpiece tells you the new system stinks, you know you’re in trouble.

The rest of the day went like this: a letter upping the cost of our home owner’s insurance, a computer divorcing itself from the CD drive, and a lovely trip over toys left out in the dark.

I know, I know, these are mostly whiny problems, and yes, I realize there are much bigger issues in the world. I’ll get past all of this and on to new irritations in the very near future. But tonight, I’m drinking a glass of wine, eating whatever sugar I can lay my hands on, and throwing the biggest pity party I can. I’m accepting all chocolate donations.

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