MY BOGGY BLOG: find your way through the murk

Rat on My Shoulder

Happy Halloween! October has not been a particularly bloggy month for
me, mainly because of the slump I've been in. Yes, the bogginess of
depression, and dealing with school issues, mainly younger DS's class.
After he'd been in school a month, and we'd had a very positive
conference with his very nice teacher, she unexpectedly quit the next
week. This alone was hard to deal with, but then the principal
replaced her with a brand new, just out of college teacher, who really
has no experience. She seems very nice, but there are some difficult
kids in this class and the room has been very chaotic, with lots of
behavior problems. I've spent some time in the room, shared my
concerns with the principal, and he really wants to give this teacher
a chance. I've felt a lot of anger and disappointment and
powerlessness. At this point I'm willing to see if it gets better. I
just want my son to have a good year, to learn and be challenged! I
really hope this will be the case.

I had a little Halloween fun this morning, taking our albino rat
Snowball to school, just riding on my shoulder. She has been a bit
neglected in the getting played with department for awhile, and I had
to bring in a paper that older DS had left at home, so I figured, if
you can't walk around with a rat on your shoulder on Halloween, when
can you? She did pretty good, seemed to like the stimulation, and I
visited each of my kids' classrooms, surprising everybody. Some people
get freaked out about rats, and others just do the "she's so cute"
thing. Our science teacher friend had always told us that rats were
great pets, very intelligent and affectionate and all, and I really
didn't believe her until we had Snowball. We've had gerbils and still
have a hamster, but the rat is definitely the one with the most
personality, the one who springs to life when you walk by her cage,
begging to be played with. Too bad I wasn't yet wearing my vampire
costume, too!