Arriving Late and Leaving Early

I attended my first session of Adventure Engineering today, at the Colorado School of Mines. Of course, the first session for everyone else was on Monday, but on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, I was at Facilitating Elementary Achievement Through Science (FEATS- and a FABULOUS match for my job description. My principal paid $500 for the three days. I paid $90 for one credit hour.)

That's why last Thursday and Friday mornings, I was up at Mines for a compressed version of the three days that I would be missing. (Incidentally, it was very accommodating of this Professor to arrange that for me. It is an 8 day class, free, with 4 credit hours. I had to miss the first 3 days, and certainly did not expect to be participating at all.) It was clear to me last Thursday that: A) I was truly going to be the lowest common denominator in the group, and B) School of Mines is a great example of that Ivory Tower.

I was completely baffled by the pretest, which they told me would take about 15 minutes. I quickly realized that I was already finished by the time I wrote my name on it, as I knew NONE OF THE ANSWERS. But hey, a pretest. Think of the growth I can demonstrate. Anyway, every single move I made that morning required extreme concentration. I was actually helpful to the course designers- they were frantically rewriting the schedule to add time to the activities. So, on the one hand, I felt sheepishly ill-matched to the work, and on the other hand, I felt squintingly superior in terms of walking in the real world.

ANYWAY, that was the first day that I talked to the transportation dispatcher at Denver Public Schools. I had asked them to keep my daughter at school, as I needed to pick her up to take her to her Social Skills class. But I was late- construction, car trouble- and they put her on the bus. I could not get anyone at her actual SCHOOL to answer the phone, so I didn't know she was on the bus. I was trying to call and tell them I would be late, but THEY HAVE A TEMPORARY PHONE NUMBER, since it's summer school. I talked to the DPS switchboard operator twice, a crabby man at the permanent number once, left THREE messages for the summer school principal, and finally ended up talking to the transportation hotline. Who talked to the bus driver, who told me that she tried to tell the summer school staff that Rose wasn't supposed to get on, but since I wasn't there, they made the bus driver take her. (Do I need to lead you through my dissection of that logic? No? I didn't think so.) So, I turned around- yes, at that point I was closer to the summer school than the bus stop- and went back the other direction. The bus driver and the para on the bus both took special care to tell me that Rose was crying and arguing and trying to explain that she wasn't supposed to get on.

Just rewriting this makes me sick.

Today, I was, as I said, at School of Mines. Peter and Andy were at the Yankees/Rockies game (??? can anyone explain the outcome of THAT series? Is hell freezing over?) I check the message on my phone and saw that I had received a message approximately 25 minutes earlier: this is transportation- someone needs to pick up Rose. What the...? I am RACING to the car

• I called the babysitter- no answer.
• I called home... no answer.
• I returned the transportation phone call- they had Rose at the bus barn.
  
• Called my accommodating professor and left a message saying that I wouldn't be back for the rest of the afternoon. (At this point, I have attended half a day out of the first 4 days...)
  
• Received a call from the babysitter, who was panting and crying, and who had been waiting at the bus stop for over an hour for the bus to drop off Rose. She had already reached Peter, who was leaving the baseball stadium with his heart in his throat.
• I called Peter and told him to go sit back down (not that he could pay attention to the game), found the place, got Rose,
• talked to the dispatcher, who realized that Rose's original driver had adjusted the route without permission or making it official and then encouraged me to talk to
• the route manager, who really tried to understand and realized that she better put me down the hall to
• her supervisor, who listened very nicely as my tears were starting and finally walked me across the building to
  
• the BIG manager, who basically assumed culpability, listened to all of my concerns, and gave Rose a stuffed animal and me a tissue.

Then, I went to DQ and got blizzards for Rose, the babysitter and myself. After I reassured the shaken babysitter, I drove her home, took Rose with me to the car wash, came home and collapsed in that drugged stupor that can only mean cortisol poisoning.

I don't know what else to say. I still feel sick.