life’s little reminders

Just when I was telling myself that I’m not bipolar.  I’ve been relatively stable for some time now, gee, maybe I should think about going off the meds…

I notice that I’m up all night long again.  Meds aren’t putting me to sleep.  Moods are swinging hard and fast.  I feel very grateful that I have a relatively minor disorder and that I’m not so far gone that I don’t recognize this for what it is.  Or maybe I’ve just been burned one too many times and I’m finally taking it seriously.  I’m not going to let it get out of control this time.  This is usually this start of the crash and burn.  I don’t have the fun mania’s that I hear about.  I get goofy but it’s short lived.  It quickly turns into irritable hypomania then into darkness.

Seroquel isn’t knocking me out.  I could take more but Seroquel is a weight gainer.  Always a trade off.  Sanity or vanity, or diabetes or heart disease or tardive dyskinesia…Topamax is my mood stabilizer.  Could increase that I suppose but could I get any dumber?  Topamax has the nickname Dopamax because of its cognitive side effects.  I have been getting more and more depressed, but delusional me wanted to deny that and go off meds.  Antidepressants backfire on me.  No relief there.  Perhaps a lobotomy would work.

Enough of that.  I just baked a batch of cookies.  From the Cooks Illustrated Family Cookbook.  Last week I baked their Snickerdoodle recipe and I must say it was delicious.  I give it 3 thumbs up.  Tonight, at midnight, I made the sugar cookie recipe.  This one was not my favorite sugar cookie recipe. I give it a raspberry and 1/2 a knuckle.  It called for all the yummy cookie ingredients, real butter, eggs, vanilla.  Maybe my technique was off.  I like my gramma’s better, but it feeds an army.  Her’s calls for shortening and butter and is just divine.

So I think I’m going to knit my sister’s penis shaped lip balm cozies for Christmas, that is if I can muster up enough talent to do it.  I’ve tried to knit my daughter a shawl with this yarn called Noro Kureyon.  It looks like Margaret the Trash Heap.  This yarn sucks.  I read reviews about it, rave reviews.  The colors are beautiful! Yarn is lovely,  wonderful to work with.  HAH!  The yarn has little pieces of sticks in it.  It’s spun so poorly that it’s like chunks of roving and then it goes to tight string like lengths of yarn.  It’s wool, itchy, stick laden wool.  I will never buy Noro Noro “>Kureyon again.  I made a scarf out of Noro Silk Garden and I liked that stuff, not Kureyon.  Now I have to frog Margaret the Trash Heap and figure out what to do with all that crappy yarn.

I wonder if it’s a “mom” thing, this protective drive we have.  It’s almost primal.  I become Wonder Woman when it comes to my son.

I’ve been working on the follow up letter to send to the district.  I do not appreciate the threat against voicing my concerns about the teacher refusing to implement my son’s IEP.  I don’t appreciate being told not to worry about failing grades, that they are meaningless.  I don’t appreciate being told by the teacher that she knows better than the SPED team what my son needs when he is failing her class.

This also goes against my nature.  I don’t like making waves.  And I’m not looking  forward to fighting her retaliation.  I didn’t go to college and I don’t remember much of anything about composition so I’m having a hard time putting the letter together.  I have good advice, though, from a very good LD/SPED forum, and  I’m very grateful to the kind, experienced and very intelligent people there.

I’m trying not to let my emotions get in the way.  I’m trying to lay out the facts.  I tried to do that at conferences, too, and I actually did OK, even amid the “squeaky wheel” accusations and “shouting’ accusations.  It wasn’t until that story about DS that made me cry that I lost it.  That shook me because I couldn’t stop, and I mean I couldn’t stop for hours.  I have to get a handle on the crying if I’m to fight this, and it looks like this will be a royal battle.

Squeak

I am so pissed, so flabbergasted, almost speechless.  Almost.

Battling the freaking SCHOOL of all things.

I got into an argument with the teacher at conferences today.  First of all, she claimed that DS wasn’t in her class.  We go to her room, she asked who we were, we said, DS’s parent’s and she said that she didn’t think that she had DS in her class.  I said, “oh yes you do…” (I said it like that, too.)

Not a good start.  She dug out the grade sheet and realized that DS is a SPED kid and I am a “squeaky wheel” (her term, I later found out) so she called in SPED case manager and SPED support teacher.

Start going through grades, groups and I begin to disagree with her methods.  She is not used to people disagreeing with her.  She gets defensive.  I point out an “F” that he gets in a paper in which he is to find “irony” – tough concept for ASD kids, and this is a group assignment, another tough thing for ASD kids.  I think that since he is having enough trouble with the concepts, since he is barely passing, that perhaps he shouldn’t be in the group that he is in.  Teacher disagrees, citing another assignment in which DS received  “D-” and this clearly shows …WHAT?? I don’t know?

I then say A D MINUS?? a little too loudly and teacher of the year accuses me of shouting at her.  I was not shouting.  Trust me, the whole damn school would have known if I was shouting.  She then rants at me about being a “squeaky wheel” and how my being a squeaky wheel is causing resentment and retaliation and that it can create unfairness, that SPED para has to give DS undue attention that she could be giving other students because I am being a squeaky wheel. Teacher doesn’t elaborate as to what retaliation we can expect.

I tell TOTY that I will NEVER apologize for being a squeaky wheel.  Teach says that I should apologize and I then tell her that perhaps she can no longer teach DS objectively.  This pisses off TOTY to no end and she proceeds to tell me that she goes out of her way to teach these students, by which she means kids with ASD, I think, and has for many years and that she knows how to cater to their needs, blah blah blah. More blah, blah, blah.

As my eyes glaze over, I tell her that I apologize for raising my voice, I tell her I don’t want an adversarial relationship with her, however I will NEVER apologize for being the squeaky wheel.  I then ask if we can we discuss my son’s academic progress and get us back on track.

So I ask what modifications she is using with his classwork.  She said there aren’t any in his IEP.  I say, yes there are.  She said, no there aren’t.  I ask if anyone has a copy of his IEP as I didn’t bring one.  SPED para has one.  She gets out the list of mods written into his IEP. (I practiced restraint and didn’t get a smug look on my face, either, when I have clearly proven her wrong.)  We go over them one by one. Teacher tells me why DS doesn’t need the modifications.  Teacher tells me that most 9th graders struggle with the same issues that my son struggles with. I didn’t realize teacher has the qualifications to diagnose or prescribe educational interventions.  This last sentence is dripping with sarcasm.

Para tells me what modifications she uses with my son.  They see that I am open to discussion about the modifications and that what we really need are accommodations to the work and the hostility lessens somewhat. (And yes, it really was a hostile atmosphere.) They tell me not to look at actual GRADES.   You know, all the “F’s” and “D-’s”  WTF????  Just listen to what they TELL you, it will all be all right.  Everything is just fine.  I don’t understand this one at all.  There is no problem, he’s just like everyone else.   Someone explain this to me.

We end the conference with SPED teacher commenting that my son is a sensitive kid, a young kid and that it’s scary for parents to trust teachers with their kids especially when they transition into High School.  Sort of excusing my assertiveness (perceived aggressiveness?).  I tell them, quite honestly, that I AM protective .  I WILL BE the squeaky wheel.  I tell them that I know that DS needs SOMETHING but that I don’t always know WHAT that is and that is frustrating.

Then SPED case manager tells a story about DS’s sensitivity that gets me crying and I can’t stop so that probably reinforces the idea that I’m just an unstable, overprotective blowhard.

I don’t tell them that I resent the hell out of that teacher trying to tell me that advocating for my son is a bad thing, will create resentment and an unfair advantage, cause him to resent me and some sort of unknown retaliation.  I really wonder if she CAN teach him objectively.  The stupid BITCH.

And now I feel like a total failure.  I’m second guessing myself.  My inclination is to bash myself and let shame beat me up.  My addict self would love to use this as a lethal weapon but I wont allow it.  This is so damn hard…when you get kicked for doing the right thing.  This fucking sucks.

Oh, the Squeaky Wheel label?  As far as I can tell, it is because of 4 emails regarding concerns about her class.  All due to her not reading or following his IEP  I assume this because she did not know about the modifications, and he is getting a D- to an F in her class and this concerns me.  Silly me, I should just shut the hell up and let her teach.