I'm NOT Your Bitch....Or Am I?

This morning I was catching up on current events via Facebook when I got a message.  The messages back and forth when like this:

Friend:  Betty's 40th birthday is right around the corner.  We need to do something!
Me:  What ideas do you have in mind?
Friend:  I don't know.  Maybe dinner, Girls Night Out, or mani/pedis & lunch.  But with everyone's schedules I just don't know what would work.
Me:  Well, what do you suggest.
***long pause with no response***  (I guess if you wait long enough that's also considered an answer?)
Me:  I'll send out an email and see what everyone else thinks.
Friend:  K.  Her family probably has dinner plans, but she didn't say anything for sure.  Let me know!

Here is where my complaint lies...  If "Friend" has the epiphany that we should do something fabulous for "Betty's" birthday, and the date is quickly approaching..."Friend" should put on her big girl panties and ORGANIZE the fucking thing!!!  Further, if she's going to send ME a message and throw it out there, it seems prudent that she should also have some thought or a few ideas in mind for what we could do.  I;m just thinking out loud though.

The fly in the ointment....  Ever since we moved into our current neighborhood, I have spearheaded parties, holiday gatherings, baby showers, meals for neighbors when there was a death in the family, and even formed a book club.  This is all great and good, but there are some shit heads that take this social happiness to mean that I might want to do it ALL.  But, alas, I do not.  I do not want you to email me and drop comments like, "Do you think we should do a Christmas party for the street again this year?" or "Is there anything in the works for a baby shower?  You know Darla's baby is due in two months."

NO. No.  NONONONONONONO!!  I reserve the right to punk out if I want to.

In this particular case, I will end up biting the bullet and put something together for "Betty".  She is one of my besties, and she deserves to be celebrated and adored on her birthday.  I don't like feeling like someone's trick pony, but I DO want Betty to have a nice birthday.....a fact that "Friend" is apparently keenly aware of.  Thus the message.

As for "Friend"...she's on my shit list.

Indefinitely.

~Ethel~

We Split the Sheets

Today I'm linking up with Mama Kat's Writers Workshop. My inspiration for this post came from Prompt #1 - Have you ever had a fight with a long time best friend and never made up?

~~~~~~~~~~

You may be thinking, "Hey, this post supposed to be about a friendship gone wrong, but "splitting the sheets" is a reference to divorcing, splitting up, or separating". WHATEVER! It got ugly. She was a bitch. And there's not enough thread on the spool to mend the mess that our friendship became...so we split the sheets.

**The curtain raises**

This story begins with me starting a new job, in a new field that I was going to learn from the bottom up. I also didn't happen to know a single soul at the company, so it was exciting to be befriended by someone fairly quickly after arriving on the scene. Ashley and I were similar in age, and were both married with no kids.  We seemed to have a lot in common - similar interests, lived on the same side of town, and she had only been with the company less than a year herself.  We would eat lunch together, seemed to work well together, and even became friends outside of the office as well.

After we had been working together for about six months the drama started. If I wasn't doing my work exactly like she thought I should, she would run to MY BOSS's office and make it sound like I was completely incompetent.  For crying out loud - I WAS LEARNING!!  I also began to hear, through the grapevine, that she was talking smack to other coworkers about me.  She rarely ever addressed her gripes with me directly - she would just gripe to everyone else.  Nice, huh?

In addition to the childish antics of tattle-tailing and her playground politics, began to get even WEIRDER!  When I started trying to get pregnant...low and behold, Ashley decided to go off the pill, too. Fred bought me a really nice dress for my birthday...and amazingly, Ashley found almost an exact match to my dress, that she absolutely HAD to have for the company Christmas party. I got pregnant right away...and wouldn't you know it, she started taking the ovulation tests and ended up getting pregnant three months after I did. It was WEIRD!! There were countless other creepy instances, but you get the idea. She was a nut.

The movie Single White Female came out around this time, which was unnerving, because it felt like Ashley was becoming a complete copycat like the psycho in the movie.  All of this "let's do this together" bullshit was way more than I could handle!  Anyone who really knows me, knows that I am totally a "my space....your space" person. We can hang out, and it's cool that we have similar interests, but we ARE NOT going to plan on wearing our yellow shirts and pink Converse to yoga class tomorrow. Got it? Ain't gonna happen. You do your own shit, and I'll do mine. Too much togetherness makes me uncomfortable and feel suffocated.

As time passed, her copycat routine one minute, and naggy co-worker the next, began to wear on me.  We would argue, distance ourselves from each other, eventually "make up", and then attempt to be friends again. This cycle of behavior continued for a couple of years, until she took a job offer from another company and put in her resignation. OH HAPPY DAY!! My problems were solved! She was finally gone.  I could breathe again.  My life felt joyfully absent of a needy shadow....and it was GREAT.

Unfortunately, existing peacefully didn't last forever, because it wasn't long before she realized that the grass wasn't greener on the other side.  Much to my dismay, and the dismay of some others, upper management let the psycho back in the front doors, gave her a desk, and put her crazy ass back to work. Ugh.

It didn't take long for the final installment of our friendship to blow a PERMANENT fuse. It got ugly, obnoxious, unsavory, and spiteful. I pulled out all the stops to sever every last shred of friendship and harmony that we had ever built. I didn't want there to be any question in her little pea sized brain at the end of the day that there might be hope for continued friendship. I wasn't just DONE, I was FINISHED and out for blood.  I wanted my space back, respect for the work that I did, and to live a life that was absent of her presence.

We kept the battle generally under wraps and relatively civil while we were at work. She moved to another department which helped, but the real "cut" came when I quit after having one of my kids.  I quit answering her phone calls and didn't respond to emails.

Do I think about her? Yeah, I'd be lying if I said that I didn't.  We had become, in my opinion, really good friends in the beginning.  And I liked Ashley a lot, but as time passed it became more of a codependent, needy relationship.  And Homey don't play that!

Do I wish that we would reconnect and ice things over? ABSOLUTELY NOT.

~Ethel~

The Insufferable Family of Assholes

Hi.

My name is Laverne. And I have a problem with Insufferable Assholes.

(Hi, Laverne)

A few weeks ago, Lucy and Ethel kindly asked me to write a guest post, surely in the hopes that I would bring my hilarious wit and wisdom to this fair blog. Not that I think they need it, I just like to toot my own horn here people. I quickly RSVP'd with a "frackin' absolutely" and then, like any etiquette-minded woman of the south would do, I buried it in my inbox and promptly forgot.

Obviously, I do not have much room to talk about rudeness here. But, let's pretend that I do, okay? Because, I feel obliged to tell you all about my traumatic experience at the local picture show Saturday morning featuring none other than The Insufferable Family of Assholes.

Here's how it started.


My oldest son's orthodontist was kind enough to rent out four screens at the movie theater in order to let his patients see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows free of charge. Pretty sweet, huh? Parents were allowed to reserve as many tickets as they wanted and upon receipt, I discovered that we would also be getting a large popcorn and drink. For free. Not a bad deal, especially for opening weekend.

Me being the nerd that I am, snapped up three tickets. One for me, one for Boy Number One and one for BNO's best friend, though feeling a tad bit guilty over our three whopping tickets. After a few minutes of internal debate, I decided that I'd probably paid for those three tickets more than enough over the course of BNO's orthodontia experience. And apparently, I was not the only person who felt this way.

The theater was a madhouse. Packed to the gills for 8:30 on a Saturday morning. The three of us quickly grabbed our snacks, made a break for the potties and then headed for theater eight.

Now, I should point out here that I am an awesome mom. Awesome. Because, even though it made me absolutely, terrifyingly nauseated, I let the boys pick their seats in the middle of the second row. I did not encourage them to sit in the back, where my feeble eyes could see. I did not ask them to anything equally lame, like hold my purse. I even hid my tears when Dobby died (look, if I'm giving something away at this point in the game, it's your problem, not mine).

So, we sit down and I immediately take note of the Insufferable Family Of Assholes sitting in the row in front of us. That's right. Insufferable. Family. Assholes. This adequately describes the scene.

Honestly, it's not like you could miss them. A family of six. All roughly 350lbs. All squeezed into their seats with their tubby little hands clamped down on the popcorn like someone was about to steal it right out from under them. Little boy whining because he wanted more soda. Parents fighting over who has to go to the bathroom before the movie starts. Yelling. Cursing. General bad behavior that would have embarrassed Grandmama had she stopped making love to her damn pickle for two minutes and taken notice. Pretty sure someone smelled too.

And as if that weren't enough, they made four (yes, that's quatro for our Spanish speaking friends) trips out to the lobby for more popcorn and drinks in the twenty minutes before Harry, Ron and Hermione made their appearance onto the screen.

Yes. Really.

Satisfied, though apparently not stuffed to the gills because they all kept complaining, they settled in just as the theater went dark. And that's when it started.

You know how when you're in a movie and you're tryin' to get all comfortable and you might accidentally lean back too far and smush the poor person behind you? And, you think to yourself, "well crap, that was kinda rude...my bad." Yeah. Apparently, Grandpa didn't have the good sense (or human decency, your pick) to stop doing it.

The first time, I let it go.

The second time, I might have sighed or rolled my eyes.

The third time, I cleared my throat.

The fourth time, I loudly whispered "seriously?!"

The fifth time? I kicked him back.

By the time Junior got scared and started whining to sit with Grandmama (which caused all of them to heave themselves from the chair and change places), I was ready to scream. I may have also been gearing up to kick some Insufferable Asshole hiney. But then, Nagini the snake jumped out and scared the living daylights (and possibly a few other things) out of me and I'd momentarily thought about excusing myself and running to the Southern Belle's Room.

Thankfully, that shut them the hell up and the rest of the movie was relatively pleasant.

I hope they thanked their damn lucky stars.


So, let's recap here.

Someone does something nice for you, which makes the following things unacceptable:

Inviting the entire county to this free event.

Enjoying an all you can eat buffet at the expense of the host and other guests.

Irritating a room of 300 people by yelling, "MAKE HIM TAKE A PISS ALREADY!"

Airing out your dentures (although, this is basically never okay in public).

Using your cell phone to text the person next to you, check Facebook or Tweet that you're watching Harry Potter for free and wish you could have another pickle.

Ramming the woman behind you in the knees with your seat to the point where she's about ready to beat the shit out of you with her hot pink Croc.

~Laverne~

*Disclaimer: I'm not hating on fat people. I am one. Though, I'd describe myself as cherubic, chubby, adorable, pleasantly plumped, voluptuous. Surely you get where I'm going here.

Ahhh... The Holidays are Upon Us!

Every year, our families ask for Christmas lists for the kids.  I always have a few items written down to dispense upon request, but I never just give out the list.  I know times are hard and I don't expect anything from anyone.  If requested, I will provide a list.

My sister-in-law emailed me the other day requesting a list for both kids.  I complied by suggesting a DS game for Little Ricky and a tutu and/or ballet slippers for Sprout.  I thought those were reasonable suggestions.  A few days later, she called and spoke to my husband and suggested she get those items AND a trampoline for the kids.

Now, we go through this EVERY CHRISTMAS.  EVERY FLIPPING YEAR SHE WANTS TO BUY THEM A TRAMPOLINE AND EVERY YEAR I REMIND HER THAT OUR YARD IS TOO SMALL TO ACCOMODATE ONE.  It's like she doesn't believe me (and she's seen our yard).  And then, to further drive the point home, I also tell her ( EVERY DAMNED YEAR) that while it might be warm where she is almost year-round, here, they would not be able to play with the trampoline until at the very earliest March, but most likely, April.  Who wants a Christmas gift they can't play with for three months?

I was not home, so Ricky told her he would talk to me about it.  Just like he does EVERY YEAR because he doesn't want to be the one to fight with her, leaving it up to me to look like I just don't want to let her get a trampoline.  Fuck.  I am sick of this shit!

So, I politely called her and reminded her (ONE MORE TIME) that it would not fit in the yard and even if it did, they couldn't play with it until spring.. blah blah blah.  So, she asked me to come up with something equivalent because she wanted to get them a joint big gift in addition to their small gifts.  I said I would think about it and let her know.

The next day, I emailed her and told her that the television in Noah's room has finally died, and perhaps she could get him a little 19" flat screen tv because they can be purchased for about the same price as a trampoline.  She agreed and hung up.

She called back last night because she knew my husband was home and she spoke to him.  He said she is going to send US the money to pick out the television (more work for us- YAY) and then began to complain about how her husband didn't work for six months and although he is working now, money is really tight.  Then, she implied that I was asking too much but she would send us the money anyway.  HOLY SHIT!  I didn't ask for A SINGLE THING.  She asked ME what to get and I suggested small things.... and she was unhappy with that, so I suggested something bigger.  GODDAMMIT I cannot fucking win!  And I don't know why this shocks me because we have been married twelve years and I have never been able to make her happy.  Someday I will have to tell you the story about how she made our wedding miserable and managed to make it all about HER and was successful in focusing all the attention on herself for the rehearsal dinner and the reception.

But, for now.. Happy Holidays... I can't fucking wait.

~Lucy