Today is Kick a Ginger Day. Did anyone else get the memo? I think I am staying inside. I’ve been kicked enough recently.

Yesterday was my daughter’s school’s annual Thanksgiving lunch for parents and students. I missed the memo on this as it was sent home while my daughter was home with H1N1. I might have actually gotten the note but I rarely read them. If there is something really important the school will send out automated calls and another note will come home with the child.

Because of the H1N1 and all the time daughter was home sick I have gotten behind on a lot of work, as did she. We were still making up the assignments she had missed while sick. When I had the parent/teacher conference last week I was given a packet of her missed homework assignments.  12 worksheets, all math.We’d been working on them each night in addition to her current homework. Something you all know I don’t appreciate at this age. Homework for first graders is really just homework for the parent. I graduated, I don’t have to do homework anymore. I’m a little resentful about the whole thing.

I have to back up a bit here. When I met with my daughter’s teacher last week she mentioned that my daughter was sometimes a challenge. I already knew this but was curious to hear her side of things. Apparently my daughter decided to inject a little humor into the class picture by sticking her tongue out when the photo was snapped.

There were no retakes.

When the teacher told me this I laughed.

BECAUSE IT WAS FUNNY.

The teacher didn’t think so.

“We have to live with this picture for eternity” was how she responded to my daughter when it happened, and to me when when I laughed.

Let me just say here that I like this teacher (in case my daughter has told her about my blog) and she is a good teacher as well. She is able to get my daughter to focus on the task at hand and my daughter enjoys her class.

I might not have much of a sense of humor if I had to teach 30 first graders either. I can cut her a break for not seeing the humor in the picture/tongue incident.

Getting back to the Thanksgiving lunch. I had not gotten the memo, and daughter didn’t mention it before school. At about 10:30 I got a call from my cousin whose youngest child happens to go to the same school. The kids used to be in the same class (both redheads I might add) but they were separated this year and are in different classes. My cousin asked if I was going to the luncheon. I told her I didn’t know about it and she gave me the skinny on it. I quickly dropped everything I was working on, showered, dressed and ran over to the school to have lunch with my daughter who was not expecting me. She was thrilled I was there, which made the whole thing more than worthwhile.

As we were finishing up and clearing our trays the teacher stopped to talk to me. She mentioned that I had not gotten the homework in yet. She did give me credit for the one work sheet I had sent with the daughter to hand in but gave me that look of disappointment for the other 11 I had not handed in yet. I mentioned that I had been swamped lately, often working until 11pm or later and that the homework would get made up soon.

“Just bring them in and I will do them with your daughter”  She said.

Them are fightin’ words.

Under no circumstance will I admit to anyone (except you people here) that I do not have my parenting responsibilities under control.

The teacher did not know I was PMSing, that I had just dropped everything to be there, that I was under serious pressure from work and did not understand that I had just endured 45 minutes in a crowded lunch room filled with happy moms and dads, all wearing wedding rings, happily enjoying family time at school, and looking remarkably rested while I, the only single mom in the room it seemed, was wondering if I had put on deodorant, and if that was the reason no one else wanted to sit with us.

That teacher doesn’t know how close she came to a smack down right there in the middle of the cafeteria. Luckily for her I suffer from, among other things, Minnesota Nice and smack downs are not allowed.

But it was close.

I got the homework completed last night around 10:30. If my daughter is a bit tired, maybe a little cranky, and sticks her tongue out I hope the teacher can see the humor in it.

Today might be Kick a Ginger day but yesterday sure felt like it.

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