parents vs the school vs the bullies

 holy fuck. today was a mostly positive day, but it's been overshadowed by mr smear's bullying situation and i can't stop fretting and second-guessing how we're handling it (or how we've been handling it).

parenting is fucking hard.

so in today's entry in the bullying saga, one of the kids who was harrassing mr smear on friday tried to kick a football to his face. fortunately mr smear managed to dodge, but the fact that there was no staff around when they know there's a violence issue just blows my mind.

i wrote a letter to the new principal to warn her that from this point onwards, if any kid hurts my child physically we're going straight to the police. tomorrow morning we're going to send the same warning to the bully's mother (in french, because she's french so it's easier for gd to "connect").

*heavy sigh*

this is so fucked up. and i keep thinking of the kind of fuckery we saw in the series black space.

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the above kinda takes the wind outta my sails, but i'll try to express how good today was anyway. i mean, it started shitty, with a fight with mr smear because he didn't understand that i didn't understand that his mouth was in pain from waiting for me to wash my hands when he hadn't finished brushing my teeth. we got through that, but it was unpleasant, and then on the way to school he started whining (as usual) that he was too sick to go (his cough has mostly gone, so i don't know if he was putting on a show or coughing for real at the time).

but it was the class party to say farewell to their homeroom teacher, so he couldn't miss it.

it also ended on a shitty note (separate from the bullying stuff) because he didn't want to do his homework, also as usual. but gd and i both threatened him, and yelled at him, and then yelled and threatened that if he doesn't learn how to learn and cooperate he not going to be able to do any of the crazy stuff he wants to do, and he eventually - sulkily - got through it.

brilliantly, i might add. learning math in a different language is hard, and when he stops fighting he's actually really good with the material. it would just be a lot easier for everyone if we didn't need to go through a shit ceremony every day.

parenting is fucking hard.

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right, now i can finally talk about the good stuff. i've hit a kind of internal reset button, and i've got my mind around where i am and what i need to do. and what i need to do is work hard, and extra. that... that feels different.

lesson one: being amongst the earliest in the office in the morning means that the coffee machine doesn't coffee because it's not warmed up.

i had a meeting with my boss and lead, and both of them seemed happy with what i'm doing and how i'm doing it, which was very reassuring. i had a 1-on-1 with the woman who sits next to me, and aside from getting a handle on what she's about she was very appreciative of my approach to things, which was very reassuring.

over lunch i learned the ages of some of my coworkers, and one of them may have been slightly offended by me referring to them as "children"... but by the end of the day i was pretty sure we're cool. partially because i passed on the earworm for dumb ways to die which someone else had given me earlier.

i made really good progress, and i ended the day essentially having achieved my stated goal for the day. amongst other things. that felt really good. not least of which because the article i published two days ago proved crucial to understanding the problem i needed to solve 🤘

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oh, and today i came up with a programming dad joke in hebrew that i'm particularly proud of:

אם אתה דופק את הקומפיילר, זה אומר שאתה מהדרפאקר?

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i'm tired, but i've watched a fun episode of monk with gd and i'm going to try to make some script magic before going to bed. god knows if i'll be able to sleep tonight anyway.

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while trying to publish this post, i received a message from mr smear's teacher, who claims that this is just another case of mr smear misinterpreting an "accident".

not today.