Tales from the Steppes

2004-03-18

1:49 p.m.
Tantrums, and Turks, and Bores, Oh my!

This morning started out with a bang - major hysterical meltdown by EM. She did not want to go to school because her throat was hurting. I checked it out and found no swelling or redness, but gave her an Advil anyway, as I know a throat can hurt even without swelling. After I calmly explain that even with a sore throat, she has to go to school. The hysteria then shifts into a rant about kids teasing her and calling her stupid. I sympathize, but tell her she still has to go to school. She is too wound up to actually have a conversation about this subject so I can't find out more. On another day, I might have given in. But today, barring extreme sickness, I must go to work. So I play my trump card. I tell her that if she doesn't go to school, I will not take her to Reston for ballet on Saturday. If she cannot deal with her required obligations, she does not get to do the fun stuff. Then I walk out and get the boys into the car to get them to school. Within 2 minutes she has grabbed her backpack and made it into the car. I knew this would work, since it did on Tuesday, when she was having a similar fit about going to her regular ballet class.

Can I get some advice, please?? I understand she has an anxiety situation, but this just seems manipulative.

Between this, the cat crapping on the carpet, being late, late, late to work again, and breaking the temporary crown on the tooth from hell (so named by my dentist), the day was shaping up pretty poorly. But then, a ray of sunshine. I was able to resolve an irritating problem involving census numbers that do not match up. Trivial but annoying, and one that we have been pestered about at the Planning Board. And the dental assistant was able to fix my temporary in fairly short order. Strangely, this seems to balance things out for the day. We'll see what happens at the Planning Board this afternoon.

Last night, I met with my group at school. We were *supposed* to have individually come up with a bunch of design concepts, to then choose three from for further development by the group on Friday morning. Instead, I arrived at school to find that my little friends had decided instead that we would divide into three groups and each group would be responsible for developing a concept. And they hard already picked out subgroups. Sigh. Basically, these guys don't want to work with anyone that is going to challenge their viewpoint or disagree with them. One of them has already stated that he will not change his design based on what the group has to say. So I was told that I am supposed to be working with this architecture student who missed our last two group meetings and last class. She has no transportation and expects that I will drive 35 minutes to her apartment to work on this project. In this, she is just SOL. Tonight I am not leaving my family, while they are still awake. I will come up with an option on my own to present on Friday. And am actually pretty happy about it. I like to work in groups, but I know what I am doing and can crank out the work and do it well in the timeframe given without anyone else. I was a bit peeved that my buddies wasted at least 3 hours of my time last night, but hey, it seems like a small price to pay to get to work this out on my own. And if Sweta can make it to my house, great.

Probably just as well that I will not be seeing my group until tomorrow afternoon. I have a low tolerance for sexism and machismo and these gentlemen are ignoring the subtle comments I have made. The longer I can put off my asserting my equality, nicely but forcefully, the better. There is a limit to the amount of minimization I will tolerate before I put my foot down. Hopefully, I will be able to choose my moment. These guys are pretty predictable, so I think I can forsee where they are going. After Friday, they want to choose two of the options to go forward with. I suspect that no matter what I do, they will not want to use my work. At which point, I am going to insist that we grade each option using the criteria we originally developed. And use that as a way to decide. They will object, as they just want to follow their concepts. I will probably have to resort to calling in the professor, as there are more of them than me, but I think I can get them to follow procedure on this.

Bored yet? Yeah, well, me too. But I am waiting for my Planning Board item and don't have anything else to work on.