It's Almost Halloween. . .

And believe it or not, I don't even have costumes ready. They were going to be Alice and the (new) Mad Hatter, but I had a feeling this would happen (I would run out of time), and I didn't want to waste such awesomeness on lousy costumes. So they'll be those next year. And it will be AMAZING! Feel the power of my awesome costume-making abilities. Muahahaha!

The weather here has been nice for the last few days, as nice as weather in 50s, windy and overcast can be. Ha. At least it isn't in the 30s or 40s and overcast, windy and freezing. Especially because that means more park time for the kids.

Mr. A is due to start school on Monday, which is exciting! The way it works in this borough is we have to send an application to the council, which will then contact the schools and find an opening. They recommend you contact the council before filling out the application to find out which schools actually have openings. Which, if you know me, you know we did. They gave us the names of three schools. Two were secular, one was either Catholic or Church of England (CoE).

I put two of the schools down on our application, dropped it off IN PERSON on the 16th of September, and very stupidly expected a reply within two weeks. After about two weeks, I hadn't heard anything, so I called. I was told the woman handling Mr. A's case wasn't in, but that they had so many applications, it was going to take three weeks to get to his. Aaaand she just had to mention, "I don't think they have any openings at [school #1]." Uh, ok. You're the ones who told me they did.

M was getting really frustrated by this point, because Mr. A had already missed almost a month of school. Not to worry, M, I said. They'll get back to us in about another week.

TWO more weeks go by, and I call again. This time, I spoke to the woman in charge of Mr. A's application. She said, "We're just waiting to hear back about the two openings at [school #1]. Once we hear back from those at the top of the list, your son will be. . . .oh, wait. He's #30 on the list." The end. Seriously, it was silent. Sometimes I think I fail at interactions here. Finally, I said, "Well, that's not going to do. I've already told you, he's not in school at all. This is a problem. I don't care at this point WHERE you put him, but he needs to start school."

She said, "I see you also have down [school #2]. Oh! There's no waiting list there, and they've got an open spot for Year 4." If it were possible to strangle someone through the phone, this might have been a prime opportunity. They were going to leave him on a 30-person-long waiting list when the other school on our application had places the whole time?

(Mr. A took this one -- not bad for a little guy!)

I'll cover his actual new school on Monday, on his first day. It's fun.