Somebody Tell Me I'm Doing The Right Thing.

I've written here before about this woman. To recap, she has:

Accused me (falsely) of standing up at a dinner party and announcing her divorce. (I know, try not to laugh after that one. Especially since everyone knows that I only stand up at dinner parties to loosen my pants.)

Fed that accusation to her daughter, who in turn relayed it to Kira, who was understandably upset at the thought that her mother was a secret-spilling liar.

Tried to get me to provide free babysitting for her while she toned her abs at her daily 3-hour workout.

Told me that I had "gained some weight!" when I ran into her one day, obviously unaware that I was wearing a fat suit for my role in an upcoming Lifetime movie.

So why am I wasting valuable blog space even talking about her? Because her daughter, M. is one of Kira's best friends. I love this girl. She's polite, smart, funny and a good friend to my daughter. And I can tell she's been scarred by her parents' divorce and now is trying not to get lost in her mom's new life with her fiancé. A fiancé who I've seen dropping M. off at school and can barely wait for her to get out of the car before he slams the door and burns rubber out of the parking lot.

So I tolerate the mom, even though I want to pummel her with my measly fists everytime I see her. (And not just because she wears stilettos and a miniskirt to pick her kid up at school.) Whenever I see her on the schoolyard we give each other a friendly nod, but M. always comes up and hugs me tightly around the waist and asks when she can come over. I say, "Anytime!" instead of "You, anytime. But tell your mom to keep her bony ass off my property." I'm nice that way.

The girls each invited a friend over for Halloween last night, and Kira invited M. because she knew that her mom wouldn't be taking her trick-or-treating. I approached M's mom on the playground and asked her to drop her daughter off at our house at 5. I would order pizza, let the kids play, and then Rigel would take all the girls trick-or-treating for a couple of hours. Seemed like a fun night, although the thought that I had just set myself up for seeing this woman at both drop-off and pick-up made me want to slap myself.

When someone knocked at the door at 4:20 I was surprised to see M. standing there. She then informed me that her mom wanted me "to come outside and talk to her, because she couldn't find a parking space." Yes, even though our 3-car driveway only had my minivan in it, and there were probably two cars parked on our entire block, I could see where in a steroid-induced haze she could mistakenly think that there was nowhere to park. Either that or her driving skills suck as bad as her social skills and there was no way she could maneuver her car into a space that was the length of half a city block. Okay, drop your kid off 40 minutes early and don't have the decency to come to the door. Lady, stop trying so hard to impress me!

I walked outside and could see her waving me over from her car, but I refused to walk even inches further than I had to. I stood in my driveway, yelled that I would see her at 8, turned and walked back inside. She waited there for a few minutes, probably thinking that I was just going to get something from the house but would surely follow her orders to come to her car. I'm hoping she saw me at the kitchen window, waving cheerfully at her with my middle finger.

I suspect that M. has food issues brought on by her body-obsessed lunatic of a mom. She's very thin, but when she's at our house she's constantly asking for snacks. Yesterday, she seemed genuinely shocked that she could actually help herself to everything I had put out on the table: bowls of pretzels, carrots and apples along with the pizza. Whenever I offered her anything she asked, "You mean I can put some on my own plate?" and when the rest of the girls were reaching for their second piece of pizza she came into the kitchen to ask me if she was allowed another slice. When I told her yes, she said, "Omigosh, thank you!" I envisioned her mom standing over her at the dinner table, waving a pair of size zero jeans and saying, "Eat that second slice of pizza, missy, and you'll never fit into these."

And when she picked her up last night? She wouldn't come in the house to help M. gather her things, and she barely muttered a 'thank you.'

I don't discourage Kira's friendship with M, and I don't let her know what I think about M's mother. I feel like I want to help this girl, to provide an environment for her where there isn't a parent figure who spends more time worrying about her makeup and carb count than her daughter's well being. But tell me this, have I been watching too much Oprah, getting all "It takes a village..." when I should be distancing myself from this woman, even if it means distancing ourselves from her daughter?

Somebody please tell me I'm doing the right thing. Cause right now? I feel like I'm being stepped on. And used. And I'm torn between trying to help this little girl and grabbing her mom by her hair extensions and tying her to the roof of her SUV. And while both of these options will make me feel good, I have the feeling that only one is the right thing.

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tags: do the right thing | evil wenches | being a doormat | too much oprah

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