Me, Whining. Again.

I'm a pretty boring person I think.  Conventional.  Married, three kids, suburbs.  Brown hair.  Brown eyes.  Nonathletic.  Not wealthy.  No criminal record.  Not one to make waves.

Except for sometimes.

Without meaning to.

My children and their education--it may be the death of me.  When I decided on a sunny day on the drive from Concord, California to my little apartment in East Bay that I would indeed homeschool Braeden, I don't think I knew what I was in for.

I know I didn't.

But here I am.  Homeschooling.  Divergent.  Constantly have to explain.  Some people approach my homeschooling like I'm crazy/have the plague.  Some people give me misplaced praise, saying things like, "I could NEVER do that."  They probably could.  I mean, I can.  Most people don't really care either way.

And I like that.

Now that I find myself trying to have both my older children attend school in unconventional ways, I'm feeling even more aberrant.  I'm stuck in a net of bureaucracy with different officials telling me different information with different levels of nice.

One kind lady at the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI for us lucky enough to be interacting with them), told me about a bulletin I could find online that would have information I needed.  Yay!  A definitive source of information.  Something to arm myself with when I return to talk to Ms. Unhelpful (and not nice).

When I located it and printed it off, it seemed like the script the adults used in Peanuts cartoons.  Unintelligible.  At least to the likes of me.  I knew Adam would be able to decipher it so I set it aside for him to contemplate when he got home (along with Braeden's algebra...it isn't always easy being me, or having to admit my deficits to my teenage son).

All afternoon, I chided myself, "Why do I have to be different?  Why can't I just do things like everyone else and not have to lock horns with Ms. Unhelpful (and not nice)?

I don't know.

I don't.

But there it is.