Burning Questions

Why is it that I end up bitching and berating myself every Sunday for “not getting anything done”, when in fact, between Friday and Monday, I:

1. attended a political rally

2. went shopping for a birthday gift

3. stopped at the card store for a group card/gift that somehow I – the one with the longest days and commute – ended up being responsible for

4. spent 3 hours decorating for a banquet, including lifting/carrying/assembling large, heavy objects

5. prepared two breakfasts, two lunches and two dinners for four people

6. went grocery shopping

7. put the groceries away (the part I hate)

8. did some minor housecleaning

9. wrapped presents

10. gathered signatures on the aforementioned group card/gift

11. printed photos said gift

12. took the girl to a birthday party, and

13. did five loads of laundry

Meanwhile, my husband doesn’t seem to be at all bothered by the fact that he did almost nothing to reduce the giant pile of renovations that need to be finished. Sure, he hung some Roman shades, and that was apparently enough work to require him to do a lot of resting.

I guess I should giver him credit for getting up off his ass (after I called and warned him I was on my way) and helped carry in the groceries. It would have been nicer if he hadn’t gone immediately back to the couch where he had been laying while I put them all away.

And the rousing, snoring napfest while I cook dinner is always a lot of fun, too.

And why can’t he think once in a while and anticipate things. Like if I am at the store, I might come home with bags that need to be carried. Or that if I am not home and the boy is at a friends, that perhaps he should keep the phone handy in case anyone calls. You know, instead of heading into the basement for hours with the phone way upstairs out of hearing range so the friend’s mom has top call and call and call at exactly the time she said she would call before bringing him home, causing her to worry that no one was there and screwing up her schedule. You know – stuff like that.

And I wonder why he can’t take the kids nonsense for more than 5 minutes. As long as everyone is behaving – fine. But when they act up, as kids do, all it takes is five minutes and he’s either screaming or giving in to something he should not. Like he’s the only person in the place who gets irritated. He’s also the only one who hates traffic, gets frustrated with crowds and is annoyed by slow service. Or at least he thinks he is. He doesn’t seem to understand that we are ALL affected by such thing, but the rest of us choose not to act like big babies and just fucking deal with it.

And the “giving in” thing? Will end on one of our deaths one day (I’ll leave that up to you to guess whose). Because I don’t like to hear the whining and crying and begging and pleading, wither. But I can far more easily ignore it, take the child into her room (repeatedly) and hold fast. Not him. He can’t ignore it, because the noise is interfering with his hockey-viewing pleasure. And taking her to her room would require him to get up off his ass and also walk away from the game. So, first he tries screaming, which makes everyone in the house who is not a four year old girl nervous and anxious about the impending volcanic eruption of misery (and just pisses off the four year old), and then eventually he just gives her what she wants, thus rewarding her asshole behavior and training her to do it more. Which, of course makes it hard for me – primary caregiver (though equally working outside of the home). I love that.

He’s also training his 11 year old son to leave his clothes all over the bathroom every morning. That’s fun, too.

Ok, I’m done.

And I know you are sick of hearing about Jane, but I have one more thing. We had the banquet on Saturday and afterwards we were cleaning everything up and Satan – I mean Jane – was gathering up all the centerpieces, which where blue/yellow gift bags with a few latex balloons tied to each. So, I started gathering them up and we wee taking the weight bottles out of each and she started folding up the bags with the balloons still attached and stacking them. And the girl comes up and asks if she can have a balloon. I kind of tried to brush her off, since I know Satan, but she cut one and gave it to her and then she gave one to a little boy, too (they were the two youngest). But then another of the younger kids came and asked and she sort of muttered, “I knew this was going to happen”. She gave out a couple more, but then she gathered them up and took them into the kitchen and put them way back in the corner – out of sight. Now what in the holy blue fuck was she going to do with those balloons??? I mean – they’re latex – they’ll be on the floor tomorrow! It’s not like she paid for them – they came out of the “fund” (which we had to sell hoagies to replenish, because the money seemed to disappear into thin air), so seriously - WTF? I personally, would have been hading them out to all the kids – one – kids get a kick out of a damned balloon, and two – it would be one less thing for me to clean up/throw away, etc. Why can’t I stop saying WTF???

Jane the Stupid

While I'm on the topic of Jane, I thought I'd share with you a few examples of how clueless she is:

Since her husband is the pack leader (or something like that - he’s not the den leader, thank god or nothing would ever get done, but he runs the pack finances, quite poorly, I might add, and handles the re-charters and registrations, etc) - she has pretty much been able to take charge of whatever she wants. And for the past four years, she had made the programs for the yearly banquets. And in every single one of those programs, "wolves" has been misspelled. Wolves. Not antidisestablishmentarianism. WOLVES.


She used to run the PTA fundraiser every year and the kids can earn prizes for selling. One year, instead of the usual crap, it was nice school merchandise – hats, shirts, bags, etc that would be embroidered with the school name and mascot. Once the orders were turned in, she had to submit the school name and choose from their huge library of mascots. Our school mascot is a cougar. But when the boy’s shirt and hat arrived, they looked like this:



That, my friends, is a bobcat.


At one time, my husband coached a soccer team – not because he is remotely interested in soccer, but because there was no coach and the boy wouldn’t have gotten to play if no one had stepped up. So we did it one year and I had a little season-end party at the Dairy Queen with treat bags and trophies and ice cream, and the kids loved it. I was new to the evil sports parent phenomenon, though and didn’t’ realize that Jane was seething because she wasn’t in charge (though she had ample chance to step up and take care of the team before we did).

The next year, we had the team again, and I was pregnant. Jane and a minion decided that my pregnancy was ample reason to hijack the end of season stuff. So when I started letting folks know what I was planning, she informed me that they had already done everything – planned the party, ordered trophies, etc. I was a little pissed, but I let it go because it wasn’t worth it. And when the trophies were handed out? Two of the kids’ names were misspelled.

Those are just a few of many.