I'd Really, Really, Rather Be on a Hot Tropical Island Somewhere

Instead I'm sitting here, landlocked, in Arkansas with an 11 yr old boy who's in some deep dodo with his Nanaw and his Math and Spelling teacher.

He was selected by his homeroom teacher to be Student of the Month for October. Great news, isn't it? I was elated for him; ready to do backflips except for the possibility of having to have a crane service come pick me up afterwards. ,,, Then I checked his grades. Since October 30th, he's managed to lose the the two A's he had (one all the way down to a D), and drop down to D's in a couple of his previous B classes. So he was already in hot water around here.

On Friday I got a call from the elementary councilor. It seems that Mr. Zach didn't do his homework on Wednesday night or Thursday night. It also seems that this same young man, talked one of his friends into allowing him to copy his Wednesday night homework so that he wouldn't get into trouble for not doing it. Someone told on them and they both got in trouble. Zach had a note to bring home for me to sign, and was to miss lunch recess for 3 days.

Do you think he learned the lesson he should have from this? You'd think, huh?

Not this child. He decided that getting in trouble at school was punishment enough, so he signed the note with my initials then took it back. He also decided not to do his homework for Thursday night for the two classes taught by the teacher he was in trouble with. (I'm still trying to figure out if he thought this was going to punish her in some way. What's the deal??)

So, on Friday I get the call, and in addition to the punishment for his first educational crime, he got a paddling from the principal for forging my initials. Which I think is far easier to deal with than my punishment; I've made him redo all of the Math homework for last week, and tomorrow he's to do 3 pages of review problems that cover the chapter that he's having a test on Tuesday. He also has to complete all of next weeks assignments in Spelling instead of waiting until next week to do them.

I love him more than life, but I sure don't like him very much right now.

So, I'm just beginning to calm myself down a bit today; I was just busy trying to keep Zach seated long enough to do all of that work, when in walks my Uncle Tommy. About 2 minutes after we hug and ask how everyone's doing he mentions that he needs to take a trip down to Fort Walton Beach, FL around Thanksgiving to check on another uncle who's been ill for years, and who he has not been able to reach through his family. About a minute after this announcement he mentions how hard those long drives are on him. (he's in his early 80's so heck yeah they're hard on him, they're hard on me!).

After we'd talked a little more about what was going on with my Florida uncle, I told him if he could wait until the day after Thanksgiving and come back that Sunday or Monday, I'd go with him to help with the drive down and back.

So now, it's wait and see time cause he'll have to check with all the sick uncles here to see if someone will be around to help out with them if he leaves during that time. I'm not looking forward to the trip because I have a strong suspicion that we'll have to get confrontational with Florida Uncle's family down there about their not answering their phones when his Arkansas family calls.

Ok, that's it from me today. I hope everyone's having a much happier weekend than it's been so far around here.