P.S. 158

Yes - I'm talking you.  The foul tempered and overly mean and rude woman who works in the office on the second floor.  Yes, it is your responsibility to post "acceptable" times to drop off kindergarten applications.  There is a flyer downstairs with the police woman that clearly states we can come by today, February 20, 2013 between the hours of 9 am and 12 noon.  Do not tell me otherwise.  I have a picture of the flyer and it still resides downstairs in the "official" binder.

First off, nowhere on THIS page does it say that you can set your own hours on when you choose to accept applications!

Second, I understand that you're dealing with a mountain of paperwork.  I am in no way oblivious to the fact.  However, that is YOUR JOB!!!  You take the applications, you enter them into whatever system you have.  Let me repeat - my application in no way changes the fact that your job requires you to enter all the paperwork into the system.  Whether you take my application yesterday, today or tomorrow - it still must be entered.  Forcing parents to come when it's convenient for you is a total farce.

When I follow the HOW TO APPLY directions from the DOE, you should be capable of accepting a stack of papers and incorporating it into your existing stack.  It's not rocket science.  It's your JOB.  I chose a different career.  You chose to work within the infrastructure of the public school system.  Yes, without a doubt, registration is a pain in your yearly job details - but so be it.

Oh look.  Fantastic.  It looks like you did actually update your actual school's page to remove today's date from your list of acceptable times to drop off an application.  For those of us that are new to NYC -  we visit the DOE website,  not each individual school's website.  No where on the DOE site does it indicate that you should visit each school's website on the off chance that they've decided only to accept applications during 42 hours over the course of 6 weeks.

Seriously, 42 hours.

I'm livid.  There is absolutely no reason for you to be rude or mean tempered.  It's not exactly a walk in the park to get your child registered for kindergarten and even less pleasant of an experience when the staff is behaving worse than the children they're supposed to be teaching.

A Fright.

Yesterday was one for the books.  As I was cleaning up from dinner, I noticed that the kids were awfully quiet.  I called back to see what they were doing and one of them told me to come check out the "froggy".  Huh... I went back to Atticus's room and FREAKED out.  There is a frog humidifier that sits on a side table next to a lamp.  These two items are then plugged in to the wall along with a night light, an alarm clock, the standing fan....

The kids had picked up the water reservoir section of the humidifier and the water was glug glug glugging out of the frog.  It was within 1/8 of an inch of overflowing all over the electrical gadgets.  I tossed the kids out of the room and immediately unplugged everything.  One crisis and potential life threatening narrowly averted.

So... while I was mopping up water and thanking my lucky stars that the water hadn't overflowed... the kids were sitting on the couch waiting to be reprimanded.  I came back to the living room and started talking to the kids.  I wanted to let them know that I playing with the humidifier is a big time no touch and that they had really scared me.  Well, I suppose I was stern enough - because I quite literally scared the piss out of Wren.  Sigh... Just before the freak out, Wren had gone poo in the potty all by herself.  I thought, eh... it's almost bath time, she can just wear her panties for now.  No problem...  Well, I can tell you that the baking soda gets rid of the smell -- but now I have to get two cushions dry cleaned.  Ugh.  I have the feeling that we will need a non dry clean only slip cover for this sofa soon...

The kids are now in bed - and I try to prep for my interview.  And the printer is kaput.  Fantastic.

But... the day did start out well.  Wren and I took advantage of a relatively mild morning and she and I dropped Atticus at preschool and headed out to Citi Pond at Bryant Park for some ice skating.  She didn't freak out nearly as much as her brother did when her feet touched the ice.  I was able to skate while standing behind her and holding her arms out for balance.  Her little feet were going in every direction for the first few moments, but she caught on.  Although after each lap of the rink, we took a break.  After the second lap, we sat down just off the rink.  There were two other kids with cupcakes and it was game over.  Wren didn't want to skate anymore, she wanted a cupcake.  After a few discussions, she wasn't budging - so we packed up and headed to lunch.  A pretty good first outing...