Busted

It has been quite a week. I had some trouble at work, but I made it through. Now I can look back and kind of laugh and know I lived. It was good to have a couple of days off. I got some time to get a few things done and relax for a minute. The next two weeks I have Monday and Tuesday off. Then I am off to Georgia. I have made some new friends and am sure that I will meet some more people in Georgia.

Carolynn has had herself quite a week. On Tuesday evening she informed me that this Saturday she would have to go to Saturday school. According to her report, she was with her friend Diamond who was ill. She was just being a friend and walked her to the bathroom and stayed with her while she was barfing. While they were in there, a campus proctor caught them and gave them both Saturday school, despite the fact that the campus proctor could obviously see that Diamond was sick. Carolynn admitted that she should have gone right to the nurse, but she was just trying to be a friend. According to the paper she gave me to sign, she was caught ditching. The paper also seemed to say that it was the fourth time she had an unexcused absence in that class. I almost believed her. I didn’t think my Carolynn was a ditcher and I did think she would try to be a friend. I also thought I was reading the paper wrong. I thought they just meant she ditched fourth period not four times. But something told me that maybe I should investigate further. (It was probably the fact that I had ditched classes in my day and fed my mom a line when caught… Just like my mom did in her time.)

So yesterday morning I went over to the school to find out the details. After all, if they are handing out punishment for being sick, I need to get involved. I managed to speak with both the proctor who discovered her and the administrator who wrote the referral, as well as the school secretary who had some insight. As it turns out, the proctor discovered Carolynn and three of her friends not in the bathroom and no one was sick. It was in fact the fourth time Carolynn has been absent from this class since they returned from Winter Break. Amazingly enough, the other girls were missing from their classes for that period too. I also found out that the other girls involved actually miss classes pretty often and that this wasn’t the first time that the other girls had been caught and given Saturday school. I also learned that when discovered, Carolynn was the only one who was upset about getting in trouble. On the incident report she had to write, Carolynn wrote “I made a bad choice. I was being a follower instead of a leader.”

Needless to say, she was in big trouble when she got home yesterday. I gave her a chance to come clean, but she still insisted she would never ditch class. After I informed her that I knew for sure she did, she admitted to ditching and hanging with her friends. Why? She doesn’t know. Where do they go? She doesn’t know. So now, she is grounded until after Spring Break. I took her phone, her TV, her laptop, her video game privileges, and I am making her do some hard labor. I did find out today that her friends, and fellow ditchers, didn’t get in trouble. That they lied to their parents and said they were going to Saturday school because they wanted some extra study time. I think Carolynn needs to make some new friend choices.
Today I went to lunch with my mom and we got our nails done. Carolynn was so jealous. She has wanted to get her nails done for awhile. She is also upset that my mom was planning to take the girls to see Coraline on Saturday and now Carolynn will have to miss it.

David has had some excitement too. He started classes this week. He is going to Texas in April to visit his family. He is returning with a vehicle. That will be so great. Apple Valley was not built for the car-free kind of people. Sure, we have a bus system here, but it isn’t great. It does not run early morning or late nights. It doesn’t run Sunday or on holidays. And it doesn’t go everywhere a person might like to go. All that, and the nearest bus stop to our house is over two miles away. It can be a long cold walk or a long hot walk. A vehicle will be so much more convenient. It can also help him get a better job.

That is all I have to update for now. Tomorrow I go back to work. I will try and update more. I promise.