Weekend Begins...

Happy Friday!  I think it actually is a weekend around here, too.  As far as I can remember right now, we don't have anything work related we have to do this weekend.  So I'm starting off the weekend right with a small DQ Blizzard and fuzzy socks.

Kaylee wore one of her new shirts today, looked good, felt good, had no homework, and got her report card back finally from first semester.  All A's, and the rest that don't have grades were "O" for "Outstanding" or "P" for "Proficient".  So we have to come up with some kind of positive reinforcement reward for that one.  She said "I got an A- in Math at the end there", and I said "Now you have something to work on for next semester--all A+'s."  She groaned and said "Great".  ;)  So after I picked her up, she wanted to go to DQ, which sounds good to me.  We're munching on chocolate ice cream when Kaylee says "Did you ever see Gulligan's Island?" I pause... "You mean GILLIGAN'S Island?" "Yeah, that's it. We watched an episode of that in school. It was pretty goofy. Reminded me of The Three Henchmen." I burst out laughing. "You mean The Three STOOGES??" She rolls her eyes at me and huffs and says, "Stooges, Muskateers, Blind Mice, Henchmen...WhatEVER!"  I can't decide if I'm more amused at what she called them or bothered that she didn't know what they were.  Gulligan's Island took me a second because my first thought was Gulliver's Travels.  But Three Henchmen?!  Now that's just funny.  And by the way, why are they showing episodes of Gilligan's Island in school??  *I* could be that kind of teacher at home.

We were driving home when a beat up pickup truck in the other lane suddenly sped up and went by us.  Kaylee said "Mom, that guy just flipped us off."  Apparently Mr. Manners had wanted over in our lane, but didn't put on any signal or give any indication of such desire, then when he didn't get in, he became unhappy about it.  I was promptly filled with a desire to give him a piece of my mind over gesturing towards my 11-year-old daughter, but decided that responding with said 11-year-old on board observing would be a poor parental example.  We did have eye contact at one point after that and it wouldn't surprise me if he caught my opinion of his behavior by the look on my face, though.

A woman called my phone four times one right after the other today, leaving two messages about how I’d said I would help them months and months and months ago and how nobody was answering her and nobody was helping and she was calling the FSMA on me to tell them I wasn’t doing anything (on no!), and somebody needed to call her back Right Away and let her know if this would be taken care of, etc. I looked up everything before I called her back, and the hang up was not on my end. When I told her I hadn’t had any communication from anyone since the initial contact, no invoice, no other phone calls before today, no emails, no anything, and that I would be happy to take care of the issue if the other party was ready, she wanted to know my full name, address, phone number, and exactly what time I was planning on calling the other people to take care of it. She was very...abrupt and unpleasant. This is a person who applied to SMA Support for help with something. I am always happy to help, but I don't do real well with people being buttheads, nor do I think having or even losing a child with SMA is an excuse for being a butthead. The thought popped into my head to tell her she's not the only one who has ever had to deal with this, but that would be unprofessional. So I just took care of it. When I contacted the other party, they said they had a bunch of messages from her in one day as well. When I called her back, I let her know it was taken care of, and told her that I was sorry for what she and her family was going through. At that point, the demanding, harsh woman started crying. Grief is a strange animal, and anger is definitely a part of it, I know. I hope she can learn how to deal with people respectfully anyway, and I hope she gets a little peace from having this issue taken care of.

We are in the midst of determining Kaylee's birthday activities, and Spring Break, too. She has a couple of ideas, but we'll have to see if they will work out.  One year and 10 days until she's an official teenager.  How wild is that??