Mondays, Huh?

Well, yesterday was a bit of a downer.

In no special order --

- the temporary secretary at the guidance office hadn't scheduled the mento, so he was off at a study hall. By the time I realized he wasn't coming, it was too late to call him down. When I mentioned to one of the guidance people that the parents never got in touch with me about meeting regularly with the kid on weekends, he said, effectively, Yeah, they're like that.

- the hospital called to tell me that since they didn't know if they were going to do the annual employee event, due to concerns about swine flu, they were just going to have an employee on standby to be Santa. (This really frosted me, because I really like doing it.)

- my sudden availablility for Santa-ing means I actually could be Santa at an office party where I used to work, or at the homeless shelter. Neither of those is something I want to do. Realizing that, particularly the last, makes me feel pretty cheap.

- I went to a meeting about color guard to see what my daughter might be getting into, and it turned out to be for people new to it, full of lavish praise for the wonderfulness that is the program director. Memories of what was said makes me ill, twelve hours later. After forty five minutes of what was supposed to be a thirty minute meeting, when they got to the point of saying that kids in CG love it (true, usually) to the point where if they are not doing well in school, threatening to pull them out will motivate them to boost their grades (not true), I had to leave. I felt less than mature at not being able to handle that kind of thing. My wife can, I can't. And less than honest for not pointing out the time committment that they ask -- but, I tell myself, nobody there wanted to hear that. Probably. After I got home, thinking about that motivation thing made me wonder if its just me -- that the comment is true, I just am not up to the task of motivating the kiddo.

- A kid at the high school killed himself. Nothing to do with me, but it horrified and chunked me. Yes, I know thats not a word. Neither were my inchoate feelings of despair at learning that.


Yuck.