Funnily enough, after filling out and sending in my application for middle school and mentioning to a school mom friend how I was strategizing it, I discovered I had done everything wrong and had in fact been wrong about the whole process for years. Ha. As would make more sense, you don’t actually apply for middle school every year. You apply the year before you go. Duh. But what you’re supposed to do is apply for elementary school magnet programs you know you can’t possibly get into so you can be waitlisted and rack up points. You won’t even be considered for most good middle school magnets if you don’t have points in your pocket. So you basically have to figure out which these coveted elementary schools are and apply year after year - if you’re wrong and you get accepted and decline, you lose points. Huh. So in a roundabout way my application may actually help me - I accidentally applied for Eagle Rock Elementary, but most likely we won’t get in and I’ll get those points. So…yay? In the Eagle Rock Jr/Sr High zoom, I learned a lot. Most importantly, I learned that while their magnet program is highly coveted, their regular school is excellent, too, and still part of the International Baccalaureate program. So as much as my kid, who is white, stands a good chance of not making it into the magnet, I can still easily get a permit to be allowed into the regular school population and get all the benefits of attending there. This was at the end of a two hour zoom. I was like, why didn’t you just tell me that in the first place? Fuck the magnet program! But at least now I’ll have a plan. B will stay on at this elementary through 6th grade, and that year I’ll apply to the magnet, and if he doesn’t make it (most likely), I’ll go the permit route. And if for whatever reason that fails, he can start at one of two or three other middle schools for 7th grade. And I can keep trying to get him into that school for high school, which is also a possibility. So at least there’s a plan of action now. Funny how no one ever in all these years just simply told me you apply to impossible to get into elementary schools every year in order to rack up points for the one chance you get to apply to middle school. That would have made everything make way more sense and I would have started applying in 2nd grade like I was supposed to. Ugh.
In other news, kids may be able to get their shots as soon as end of this week or the week after! So excited. Everyone is buzzing about it, but I know vaccination rates for little kids are going to be very low. Well, we’ll be part of it. Sign me up.
After several attempts, I finally spoke to the wedding planner, and everything that came out of that conversation was terrible and disappointing. First, she told me to expect to at least double my wedding budget. Gulp. Then she poo-pooed our idea of a taco truck - referred to them as “fuck you tacos”, as in, we get all these people to drive out to the desert and dress up and then serve them two tacos on a paper plate, fuck you - and then said the catering company we were thinking of will charge us double what was quoted and probably will show up hours late if they show up at all. And didn’t offer any alternatives or other ideas. Then said she had sixteen weddings in the next two weeks so she wouldn’t be available to talk until then, but I really need to mail down a caterer right away, also hair and makeup (ugh). Then said she’d send me a list of the expenses I can expect at this particular venue which she’s worked several times so I could see all the unexpected costs - she never sent it. Now, I can call other wedding planners, and probably will. But the whole conversation was a huge shock, and I’ve been paralyzed ever since. I told the F about it and he said we need to cancel that venue, lose our $10,000 deposit, and start over. I said absolutely not. Like most men, he has zero concept of what things actually cost and how the world actually works. Such as, you don’t get to dictate the terms of a contract when you hire a catering company - they do what they want and you pay or end up in court. He thinks we can get an iron clad contract with the caterer in which we won’t pay one penny more than they quote us. I said it doesn’t work like that. They’ll build in a million caveats in which they can charge more on the day of if they see fit. We came to a stalemate on it. Nothing has happened all week. But recognizing this is now going to cost life changing more money than I’ve anticipated, I sat down and re-wrote an entire new budget for the next thirty years, which no longer includes paying off the house early (sigh), but does include a college fund for the kids, which was the whole purpose of paying off the house anyway. So seeing that made me feel better about everything. Yes, in principle I hate spending a ton of money on a wedding; it’s stupid and wasteful. But we’re committed to this venue, and this venue comes with costs. And the reality is weddings are expensive unless you go tiny, and even if we did cancel and move to somewhere cheap and local and boring, we probably wouldn’t save that much anyway. So, fuck it.
In other “men don’t understand how things work” news, my desert contractor was supposed to start last week, said he’d start next week. Then last night he texted me he’s still closing out his dad’s home (I guess the dad is the one who died of covid) and he needs more time. He still says he’ll finish the place by Thanksgiving. But…all these delays. The F is convinced he’s a complete con artist who is never going to do the job and just robbed us with the full intention of never doing the job. I highly doubt this. I think his life is a mess and he can’t get his shit together. And what do you say to someone who’s dad died of covid?? Unless it’s all an elaborate lie, but honestly, if he really only intended to rob us he would have disappeared ages ago. I still have faith he’ll finish up, I just think it’s going to take fucking forever. And, again, every single weekend for the entire rest of the year is full of stuff to do so we couldn’t go out there before January anyway. It’s telling the F, who’s full of rage about this and convinced we’ve been conned, that’s the hard part. I absolutely hate those conversations. He just doesn’t get it because he’s never hired a contractor for anything ever. Everyone else I tell this story to says “sounds about right”. Sigh.
Here’s a picture of Theo his teacher sent me from the school’s no-parents Halloween parade.
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