learn how to ignore hurtful useless comments

that I’m ridding myself of….thank the Lord….held up my tuition reimbursement paperwork so she could get in her last zinger about my curriculum not being turned in. Because I didn’t want to burn bridges, I did not tell her that because writing curriculum, which was an EXTRA duty I considered and not written specifically into our contract language, was NOT my first priority, that being mindfully present in my CLASSROOM to teach the kids was what I was under contract for, is why I haven’t turned in my curriculum. When I told her I would turn it in June 29, and she gave me this litany about it shouldn’t be turned into a reader because she doesn’t like to ask them to take their summer to read curriculum, I said to her, well, it’s not problem to ask a writer to take their evenings and weekends away from their families in order to write curriculum – what’s the difference? I’m so glad to be out of there; if I didn’t get out when I did, I would have said something totally inappropriate that probably would have gotten me fired!

sensitive when someone tells me that I’m part of the reason the educational system is “fucked,” as someone here has put it.

I wonder if people really know how much money I’ve invested in my education so I can teach their “fucked” children? And when those parents come to parent/teacher conferences, do I point out the ways they have “fucked” their children? No…..

I’m pretty good about ignoring hurtful useless comments….except here, where I think I can vent a little about how that hurts me.

Nevertheless, I do need to get over someone totally bashing the field I have poured my blood, sweat, and tears in because they feel that I’m a poor teacher, without even knowing me….

I sure hope the world can do with less judgment and more helping hands. It must be a very heavy burden to carry all that bitterness.

I, for one, am getting better at letting that go, even if I do vent.

Ah….that made me feel better. Now I can go back and take more “shit” in my classroom…..

Never, never share anything about yourself in public.

Trust no one – sad!

this would be the longest entry in history…as if I don’t already have them.

Let’s suffice it to say that I must attract all the wack job psychologists in the world…..

The one I just took my two kids to – crazy, just certifiably crazy….

You all would think so, too, if I told the story…which is just soooo wack for words here that I’m not sure I could do it succinctly!

But – let’s just say I need to learn to chalk people off…and I was successful with this one, lemme tell ya!

her games drive me crazy.

She sends little tokens to the kids…and I don’t mean to be ungreatful, but she’s so damn cheap, and then she thinks we should shower her with love for being an old maid basically.

She won’t talk to me because I told her off about my boundaries with my dad, so now, she writes the kids letters saying Please write…

Like I’m gonna let my kids get involved in my crazy family shit…

Yeah – uh-huh – you know how I just love manipulation! Why can’t I just ignore it like my other sisters do? My youngest sister just kisses her fakely on the cheek and then goes and talks behind her back….

Noooo…..not me, I have to open my big mouth!

My mother-in-law (and yes, you can insert monster in there) means well…well, I’m not all that sure anymore…but she just inserts her foot in her mouth….and after 18 years of marriage – 20 years of knowing her, I think she does it just to be spiteful.

I sent out newsletters with my Christmas Cards this year. Now, many of you know that I struggled to get this task done, and nevertheless, before the bells of Christmas rang, got them out the door in time.

It took a lot of creative energy to get this done. I asked hubby to look it over, but I’m a better editor than him, so it didn’t do any good. I was tired, I was cranky, and I wanted to cross this damn goal off my list! :-)

So, they got sent out – not with a spelling error, but with a graphic error. I used a pre-formatted newsletter design template from Microsoft – now, it was like 4 pages. So I cut and deleted and changed – and whittled it to front and back. The table of contents, if you will, was a little blurb on the front with page numbers listing.

I filled that out immediately, but after rejiggering the page flows, I didn’t go back to readjusting the numbers. The table of contents just showed my kids’ names with page numbers by them.

My MIL takes it out (first of all, I never go over there because of these things – so for me to even be there to accept the comments is pretty brave enough) and says, “I have a few questions about this newsletter. T (my SIL who was in town, and drives me crazy, too) and I just didn’t understand what this meant…that can’t be the kids’ ages…is it the number of things they did this year? We were confused….”

I felt like saying: “Look, biatch, it was all I could do to send these freakin’ things out this year, and be glad you got something!” But I gritted (sic??) my teeth, and sighed through a stilted smile, “Well, it’s probably an error – I was very tired this year,” and dismissed it.

I made sure though to let my hubby know that those insipid remarks is why I love his mother so dearly! :-)

here’s another great one. And I wasn’t too successful at ignoring it.

But this does prove that there are people here who are obnoxious and don’t use the site to their good advantages.

Who cares whether my “chores” are simple and I use big fonts. First off, I didn’t intend to, but then when it came out that way, I thought – ok – this should really get MY attention and help me actually do these things instead of procrastinating.

What a punk – gawd – anyway – I should have ignored it, but I didn’t….proof positive that I do need to work on other goals besides just “pissweak” chores that my life seems to be reduced by…..

Hmmmm – walking a mile in others’ shoes? Perhaps that oughta be a top goal here on this site.

Just when I think begin to dig 43things and think it’s helping me, one bad apple comes along….

when my MIL hounded me about when we were going to be there for dinner tonight….and I told her that I was helping church out to serve dinner – I told her we’d be there when we could – that people were waiting on us to eat their only cooked meal that day. I did not bite back; I just hope she could understand. Today at Christmas at their house, I ignored a lot of the little insidious comments (like the one where she commented her sister-in-law broke up her nephew’s marriage – I did not say – well, what do you think you are doing to mine?) – and we got along pretty famously….

not so much useless and hurtful, but my son’s math teacher waits UNTIL Thanksgiving Break to give me a progress note with his grade – 54% because he hasn’t turned in any homework. This from a boy who scored in the 98th percentile in Math and his test grades in the class are a 91%. I emailed her in the beginning of school to let her know that he traditionally does a 2nd quarter nosedive, but that we have to keep close tabs on him to keep it from snowballing.

I just about went off on her. For Chris’ sake! I teach in the same district – how hard would it be to email me before it gets this bad????? I can’t rely on the boy to tell me the truth about h/w because he says it’s against his religion (yeah – I know – real funny). So I took EVERY blank paper out of his backpack and made him work for HOURS Thanksgiving Day. I told him he couldn’t eat at our cousin’s until it was done.

Then I timed him on one of the pages – it took him 53 minutes a side. That’s homework? Sounds more like torture to me.

He’s not in high school yet – I think that asking a young kid to do ONE page of homework for 53 minutes alone is a bit unreasonable.

I have to really, really, really bite my tongue with this teacher.

Although I did email her a response to the progress note, kindly telling her what I thought of her methods of keeping up with him were, and cc’ed it to the principal.

My hubby is going to go in Monday and show him the LACK of work we receive back so as to give him feedback (could be because he isn’t doing the rest) and the timed pages we did with him this weekend and discuss the fact that we have NO way of knowing what he has for homework that day or anyday with this teacher. My email also alluded to the fact that I had contacted her earlier in the year and asked her to keep me in the loop if he bombed.

Arrrrggggghhhh – it’s taking ALL my self-control NOT to get angry!

I still can’t stop obsessing about those stupid Ebay boards…..grrrr!

I need to go do something else.