Feisty Repartee

No Good Deed

Tee Hee. Have you ever been happy to be ostracized? That's where I'm at, happily, blissfully, over-the-moon ecstatic to be purposefully left out.

This is a longish sort of story, so if you are intrigued, read on after the jump.

I live in one of those neighborhoods where the majority of the families are starting out. Some are very comfortable. Others are just getting by or worse, scraping by narrowly by the hair of their teeth.

My situation is very comfortable. Both my husband and I work and we make a very good living. I have friends in the neighborhood who are stay-at-home moms and others who are working moms. Just for the record, I have no personal feelings about either. Being a mom is hard work, as is being a wife and the keeper of a home. So, I mean no disrespect when I tell you the following story.

I have a "friend" who is sort of, well..., I don't know how to describe her. She's mean. She's a user. She's self-centered. And she's kind of a b-word.

She is a stay-at-home mom. Of course, she was a housewife before that. When she and her husband moved to the neighborhood she decided to not work outside of the home anymore. A couple of years later she became a mother and continued to stay at home.

Before this, however, she would complain - loudly - about not being able to find work. Except, if you delved into the complaining, you would find that she was really complaining about the fact that people expected you to work for that paycheck. Lots of time has passed since then and I have come to discover that she is the laziest person I've ever met.

To this day, she sleeps until 9 or 10 am. Did I mention that she has a 1-year-old child? How is this possible? Oftentimes, she is not even out of her pajamas by 5 pm. I mean, come on!

She's so lazy, in fact, that the baby shower / girls night out that she had for a mutual friend - was actually planned by the guest of honor. Because she couldn't be bothered. Moreover, she even refused to be a driver to the event (despite having a minivan that seats 7) claiming that there was something wrong with her brakes. Brakes, I should point out that have been the excuse for her not driving for 2 years, but which are not so bad that she can't drive 40 miles/day with her child in the car. Getting the picture?

I have invited her and her husband to many gatherings at our home. The last four or five invitations over the last 18 months were rebuffed and specifically I was told that "it isn't [their] thing." Fine.

Now, I told you all of that to put the rest of the story in context.

When I had the baby, this woman would perpetually complain to me that she and her husband weren't making enough money. Eventually she asked me if she could watch my daughter while I was at work. Ask is not the right word. She begged me to let her watch our daughter. I had mixed feelings about this, but finally my husband suggested we help them out. As soon as could be arranged she began caring for my child in her home.

However, right from the start it became clear that she'd really like us to pay her to not watch our daughter. Suddenly there were all of these conflicts that had to be worked around. She had noon hair appointments every month that couldn't be moved. Every Friday she had weight watchers meetings that couldn't be moved. Her child had doctor's appointments once/week. It was pretty inconvenient.

Finally, she called me one Friday to tell me that she couldn't watch my daughter the whole next week because her friend was moving and she needed to help her pack. I agreed to make other arrangements and start anew on the Tuesday following Labor Day. There was no uncertainty in the arrangements. We would simply return to the normal schedule following the long weekend.

I was out of town that weekend, but I didn't concern myself about reconfirming the arrangements because they were already set. That Tuesday morning, my husband walked down the street to deliver our child. Just as he was 2 houses away, she pulls out of her driveway, looks right at him, and drives away. He immediately dials her cell phone and she doesn't answer. He keeps dialing her cell phone and her house phone, leaving messages, until he is hot as a $2 pistol and he calls me.

The man is livid.

I arrange for alternate care for the day and then proceed to leave my own messages for her by cell phone, house phone, and email. No response. No response, in fact, until 8 pm that night. That is when she calls me to "apologize" for the "confusion." When she didn't hear from me over the weekend (when I was out of town), she made other arrangements for the week.

I was livid at this point, so I politely told her I would make other arrangements.

The next day I get an email from her outlining all of these changes that she's going to be making. She intends to open a regular day care, but not for children under 4 (mine was not even a year old at this point). Then she talks about how she wants to take these children on daily field trips because she doesn't want them in the house and isn't getting her shopping done. Trips, I should point out, that will be taken in the vehicle with the bad-two-years brakes. And, she wants more money when I'm already paying top dollar for inconvenient, irregular, in-home care that she wants to move to the carseat.

I printed the email and took it to my husband and asked him if perhaps we could find alternate childcare because my good will had been tested to the breaking point.

His words - "Tell her to go to hell."

So, I sent her a polite but succinct message stating that we would find other arrangements elsewhere as our child was clearly under her age limit and the fact that I didn't really want my child growing up in a carseat.

Whereupon I was flooded with "oh that's not what I meant" messages which I politely responded to, but only insofar as to rebuff her. We made other arrangements and have been completely happy with our new childcare provider ever since.

My husband, however, is still a bit pissed at the lazy lady though. In fact, he has told me that he doesn't want her in our home. Specifically, I was told that I could invite her husband to our Christmas Cocktail Party, but not her.

Which is ridiculous, so I invited neither of them.

Now, I did mention to mutual friends about the situation and why an invitation wasn't being extended. I didn't feel it would be a big deal, however, because they always refuse the invitations anyway.

But, as you might expect, news of the party did reach her. The person who told her did so casually, explaining that almost the entire neighborhood had been invited. True enough.

This lady did not email or call me to ask about the party and the missing invitation, however. I figured they weren't interested and so no explanation was required from me. Honestly, even had my husband not insisted we ban her, I doubt I would have invited her. She's mean to just about everybody in the neighborhood and I wanted to send an unspoken message about unacceptable behavior.

It seems that she's sending me a message though. She's planning (yeah, right!) another girls' night out and I have been explicitly uninvited. I've never been so pleased to be excluded. I'm tempted to send her a thank you, I'm so happy.

Of course, I have to wonder who is going to drive!

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