OK ladies, I need to talk. I feel like an emotionally out of control freak!! I don't know if it's the pain or what but my emotions are all over the place. HMMM maybe it's the birth control pills that I started last week making me nuts but whatever it is I feel like a hormonal rollercoaster. Anyone else wanna ride..it's quite a trip!
Ok here goes. My rant. Well the remnants of my rant. Monday evening DD brought home a permission slip for a field trip. No biggie right?! Wrong. They want $30 from each parent per child (I feel for the one woman that has a set of triplets in the 4th grade) to take the kids to Monticello. It's only $4 admission to the place. The other $26 is going to rent a charter bus to take approx. 100 4th graders up there. Now let's do the math. There are 4 classes of 4th graders with an average of 24 students per class. That's 96 students. $30 per student= $2,880 for this one field trip! The total for admission for the students is $384. That leaves $2496. Now because the elementary, middle and high schools share buses here they can't spare the reg. school buses to take the kids so they are going to charter buses. ( I called the charter company to get these prices, cause of course they didn't tell us any of this) This is going to cost $1886. $2496-$1886=$610 left. We have to send lunch with them and they aren't getting any souveniers so where is the rest of this money going? Ok on top of that they sent home the permission slip Mon night and want the money by next Tues. A weeks' notice! I don't know how I am going to have enough gas money to get us through til DH gets paid again and they want this money by next week! We can't afford this!! So I had to tell DD that she can't go and I called the teacher and asked what happens if DD can't go and her whole class as well as all of the other 4th graders are gone. Where will she go for the day. Oh they'll put her in the office and give her enough work to keep her busy all day. So she'll be working all day while everybody else is having fun!! Anyway, I put in a call to the school board to complain about the way this field trip was being handled ,and had to wait to be phoned back. So while waiting I called DD's principal. The woman had no idea that the parents were having to pay this amount ( the teachers submitted the requisition forms to the proper people at the school board and got it approved and just let the principal know that the trip was approved), and she had no idea that we were only given a weeks notice. She got heated at this too. I explained to her that we couldn't afford this and DD wouldn't be able to go, and that I was upset about the fact that she would have to do work all day while everyone else was having fun and that I was wondering if there wasn't some other way we could handle her day, maybe I could keep her home and have it still be counted as excused because of the situation. And then she went and did something I would have never expected in a million years. She told me that she wants me to send in the permission slip to her, not the teacher, filled out and ready to go, and she's going to take the money out of the schools petty cash fund and make sure that DD can go, cause it isn't fair for her to be excluded because of the teachers poor planning and that she plans to have a discussion with them about the fact that it is inconsiderate to expect parents to come up with that much money for a field trip especially on short notice! I was so shocked by this woman's understanding and helpfullness that I cried. And she was very considerate of me also. She said that no one except me and her will know where the money came from. Not even the teacher and that any time we need help with paying for something like this just to call her and it would honor her to be able to help cause even though it's my daughter she's one of her kids too. Well I called the school board back and told the lady to nevermind my message that everything had been taken care of. And then I sat down and cried some more. Well then I had to call Social Services because I am trying to get some help with heating our home. Our heating unit went out right before winter last year. We used some space heaters to heat the house last year but the problem is that if we plug in the space heaters and use anything else in the house (including the fridge) it trips out the circut breakers. So me and the kids spent most of last winter in my bedroom with one of the heaters trying to stay warm and not trip off the breakers. I can't do that this year because we don't have a tv in there anymore, and I don't have room in there for them to play either and a 2 yo and 4yo cooped up in one room all day with nothing to do isn't going to work. Well they only take into account gross pay before taxes, and they don't allow for the amount you spend on bills per month or anything...so we make too much money according to their guidelines even though we have apprx $3000 a month going out per month on bills (not including gas, or incidentals like that extra loaf of bread when we run out, or diapers when we run out..etc..) and we only have about $3100 coming in per month. I know we have more money coming in than alot of people but we also have alot going out! And that doesn't matter. They don't look at that, so I don't know how we are going to keep this house warm enough for these kids this winter cause we don't qualify for any help getting or heating unit fixed. It's already getting down into the 40's and 50's here and my kids are already spending most of the day bundled in blankets. I don't know what to do when real winter sets in. Then at the dentist yesterday they charged me $100 copay to have my tooth pulled instead of $50 (which is what it's supposed to be) cuase they said that's what their computer said my copay was. They wouldn't call the insurance. They said that after the insurance pays on the claim if the copay was wrong tey'll refund the other 50 but doesn't help right now. I am so sorry this is so long, but I really needed to talk. Other than Dh you guys are the only friends I've got (literally I don't have not one other friend or person to talk to). I feel so down and lost and don't know what to do. We are trying so hard to take care of our family but right now we need some help and can't get any. They one good thing that I'm hanging on to right now, is the kindness that DD's principal has shown. If it weren't for that I think I'd have a complete breakdown. Well all I'm about to start crying agin so I'm gonna go. Thanks guys for listening. I'm sorry it's so long and not very happy.