Bullying, Part 2

Well, apparently the bullying has turned physical. Last night Rachel told us that the two 5th grade boys asked her for her snacks. She said no, and they punched her in the face and took the snacks anyway. The said the person in charge of after care gave her some ice and told the boys to leave Rachel alone.

I spent last night angry and upset and ready to cry, and Drew was absolutely furious. (At first Rachel told us the after-care people hadn't done anything, but it turned out they had). Nevertheless, Drew is going to have a talk with them on Monday (we're both scheduled to have a parent teacher conference with Rachel's teacher, which already has been cancelled twice because of weather, and we're expecting snow on Monday, and if it gets cancelled again I'm going to resign myself to not knowing anything about how my daughter's doing in school until, oh, July). And he's going to get the names of those punk-ass kids and call their parents, and I feel sorry for The Wrath of Drew that will fall upon them when he orders them to keep their crappy little shits away from our daughter.

(Sorry, I'm a little emotional about this).

Anyway...another thing I did last night was check out a synagogue that is a five-minute drive from our house. It's huge -- 1,500 families and 900 kids in religious school, apparently the largest religious school in the country. Rachel can start going to religious school on Sunday mornings, which we are seriously considering because when we mentioned it at dinner this week, she said, "Yay! Hebrew school! Yay! Hebrew school!" and I, for one, would really like to meet some Jewish families around here. We are going to a Purim carnival there tomorrow. Before I make a decision, though, I want to check out some other synagogues -- there's one in Fairfax and one in Alexandria. We will join one as soon as I get full- or part-time (steady) work, which, fingers crossed, will be sooner rather than later.