lovely little gifts

I love my purr purry kitties, most of the time. And I know they love me. Is it the head butting my hand for a little scratch or the purrs in my face early in the morning that tells me this? Nope. It's the lovely little gifts I find outside on the porch. Now I don't mind too much the dead little moles Aurora likes to bring me, they are easily disposed of without to much of a shudder. This morning however was the best gift, like ever. A big fat still wriggling mole, the biggest I have seen! And that princess Aurora sat by that wriggling fat mole until I opened the curtains and she saw that I saw her gift. Then she trotted over to that mole, scooped him up in her mouth and trotted off in to the woods to enjoy her snack. Insert huge body shudder here. Gross! And what a great way to start my morning.

Back to my morning, it was a little harder to get myself motivated out of bed. I slept until 8:15 despite having fallen asleep at 9:30 last night. I didn't even watch LOST I was so tired! Sleeping in may have had something to do with waking up with the husband's alarm this morning. I hate when that happens, and I contemplated just getting up at 4am. But, yeah I am smarter than that. So when I finally did wake up and log on to facebook the first thing I read this morning was that my boyfriend of 20 years, Corey Haim, had died this morning of a drug overdose. I couldn't help but think how lonely he was, how lost he was. That is truly the tragic part of this, that he was alone and weak. Motivation hit me. Ok ok so I am no drug addict and I am certainly not alone but if I continue my lazy ass ways I could end up lonely and certainly not healthy.

Out of bed I jumped and downstairs I ran, carrying my knitting and laptop along. I set up the tea pot for my after workout tea and got out eggs for my after workout protein breakfast. And then, I worked out for a second day in a row. I can't say that this workout I did today was fabulous, it was slightly confusing to keep up in certain parts. Face it I am uncoordinated and when you try to make me do 5 different steps all at once I am bound to look like a baboon trying to line dance. It's not pretty, but I stuck it out and I kept trying, I didn't give up. The ab work while short was seriously intense and I LOVE love ab work. I can't explain why but it is really the part of the work outs I look most forward to and yesterdays work out really lacked that ab work I desire but was far easier to follow along with. 30 minutes went pretty quickly this morning, and then I whipped up my eggs and brewed my tea and sat down on my ass to blog.

I have a busy day planned, I hope for enough energy and clarity to handle it. A trip downtown again to buy this awesome knitting stitch book and perhaps a few minutes playing at the park, it is a beautiful day so far! The highlight of my day however is the meeting with the middle school's principal to discuss skipping Jared to 8th instead of going in to 7th. This boy is crazy smart and thrives on challenge, something he is not getting. The beginning of the year the school told us "we don't have tests to skip students so we let them in the classroom for a few weeks and let the teachers observe and then recommend skipping or not." Ok, except his teacher? This is his first year teaching so he is inexperienced and lacking in some serious confidence. Talked to the principle again and she says "we'll see what the teacher thinks" and we don't hear from her again. This is where I become the squeaky wheel. I go down to the office again and say look, Jared is finishing all of his classwork and his homework in class and still finishing before everyone else, he is bored! He needs to be challenged and his teacher simply cannot keep up with him and take care of the other 30 students. Principal tells me oh yea yea we have testing now we can do. Hmm magically they now have a test? Nice. So Jared takes the tests and we wait. And wait. Seriously? Dropping the ball again? Awesome! Squeaky wheel goes back to the office. Oh yes that's right Jared took the tests here are his scores, his writing is a bit below grade level and his reading is just at, but I see he is way ahead in math and science. So we talk about skipping and she thinks since his writing is behind that we should only bump him up to 7th grade math (I forgot to mention he is currently in 6th but he should be in 7th based on the homeschool work we were doing) because she worried that if we bump him up a full grade that he might fail and be right back where he started.

I tell her that we are going to discuss it at home and we will get back to her. I am pretty ticked. Ok first of all you don't let a child's handwriting hold them back from advancing for pete's sake! If the child is ahead of everyone else in his class and bored and begging to be taught, begging to learn then don't you do everything in your power to help that child?! Obviously not at this school. So we compromised and had him put in to 7th grade math, which turned out to be a total joke. There are 13 students in his class. On the 1st day he was in there they had a pop quiz, guess he got an A? Yup. Couple of weeks ago there was another test, only 3 passed, guess who had the highest grade? You guessed it. He is still not being challenged, still being taught down to and still bored! So today I am just bypassing this way too young to be a principal principal, and going to the other middle school. Hopefully this principle will be more open to challenging a student. And honestly if he fails then he fails, no harm no foul. Do I think the boy will fail? Not on his life. When he is given a challenge he meets it. If he isn't afraid of failure why should we be? The only way to succeed is to fail and how will he ever succeed if he isn't even given the chance to fail? I know that sounds weird, wait what you want your child to fail? Well, no. I have every confidence that he will do just as well in skipping a grade level as he would if he stayed in the grade they have decided he belongs in. Only by skipping he might actually have a chance at you know, learning something.

The icing on the cake with the school he is attending, aside from the way too young principal who doesn't believe in challenging students? The basketball coach. Would you believe Jared's couch had the nerve to tell him OBJ (the school I am trying to advance him to) doesn't have sports as a way to discourage him from skipping a grade? What the fuck is that? The school has a HUGE sports program! Soccer, Basketball, football! To say I was pissed is an understatement and I have half a mind to say something to this coach, and maybe I will, after Jared has been approved to switch schools and skip a grade.

oh, my tea is done steeping, time to go get my energy boost, get my shower and get moving out of the house!