More Crank! Now With Three Hours To Spare!

I AM A NICE PERSON. Okay, maybe too nice. Outta my way! Time to kick some ass! You shall all now bow down at the temple of yours truly! I mean it! No more Mr. Nice Guy! Or is it Mrs. Nice Guy? Gal? Oh hell what does it matter?

Sorry. Those were just the voices in my head.

I am currently in the slippery position of having to distance myself from an acquaintance who mistakenly thinks that she hired me to be her personal assistant. You know the saying, "Give em an inch and they'll take a mile?" How about "Give em an inch and they take infinity into deep space?" That's more like it.

This whole thing started because of my attempts to help this person who seems to be perpetually falling on hard times, but in the process I have started to get dumped on, and ME NO LIKE IT. Really, I'm not a weak person, and I've come a long way from when I was younger and a virtual doormat, but I guess you can still make out the faint letters that say 'USE ME' splayed across my forehead. At least now when I let people walk all over me I don't offer to shine their shoes, too. Or give them rides. Or provide endless childcare. Oh. God. Yes I do!

She is the mom of one of my daughters' friends, a woman who I have known for a couple of years. She was in an emotionally abusive marriage, so I tried to lend an ear when I could. Plus, her daughter is a sweetheart, and understandably seemed to be suffering some fallout from their funky home situation and I wanted to be there for her, too. We would have her over for occasional playdates, and her mom, not having a car of her own and patently forbidden to drive the family car without her husband beside her (creepy), would often ask me for rides to school events or birthday parties that both our girls were invited to.

She seemed to be going through an especially tough time recently, so I tried to offer some comfort and told her to let me know if there was anything I could do.

Did she ever.

It started with asking me to drive her daughter home from swimming lessons. She was planning on enrolling her in the same session that my girls are in. I agreed, and she then told me that she may be in a class at the time the swim session lets out, so if she gave me a key to her apartment complex, would I be willing to stay at her place and watch her daughter until she got home? For "around two hours." Twice a week. For the next four weeks.

I told her that this wasn't possible because, although barely apparent at times, I DID IN FACT HAVE A LIFE, but that I could maybe take her daughter to our house a few of those days. She grew irritated, said she wasn't sure how she could manage to DO THE SWIMMING THING BECAUSE OF MY STINGY ASS, and then said she would try and find another way. I felt a twinge of guilt, until I overheard a conversation between her and another mom a few minutes later, in which the other mom asked her how long she worked out. And she answered, "Three hours a day."

Three hours a day. THREE HOURS A DAY? THREE FRICKEN HOURS A DAY? You're asking for my help when you have THREE WHOLE HOURS A DAY TO YOURSELF in pursuit of lean thighs and a flat butt? Lady, I barely have THREE MINUTES to myself to take a crap, let alone THREE HOURS to partake in any activity that would possibly make me more attractive to the opposite sex.

People, do not tell me that you have THREE HOURS A DAY TO YOURSELF. I will become enraged with jealousy and want to kill you.

So I told her where to go! Well, actually, it came out as, "Does your daughter want to come over for a playdate on Thursday?"

That would be yesterday, and I lived to regret this offer. I received around twelve calls from this woman in the past forty-eight hours. The first few calls were to confirm, and re-confirm the playdate, because you know IT'S LIKE ORGANIZING THE GENEVA CONVENTION. In one of these first calls she told me she didn't want her daughter going outside between the hours of 3:30 and 5:30, (we were picking her up at 3 - cause I provide free shuttle service for all playdates, folks!) when the sun would be the hottest. I didn't decline this order based solely on it's absence of scientific fact, but on the idea that there was no way in hell I was going to keep three little girls locked inside my house on a perfectly beautiful day, unless she was willing to come over and keep them occupied while I worked out (Ha ha! I didn't actually say this, but I was thinkin' it! Fo reals!)

The next half a dozen were repeated calls to my cell phone asking me when I was going to arrive to take her daughter off her hands, because we were running late. I pressed the 'Ignore' button on my phone more than a few times but she just kept calling back. Then more calls while her daughter was here, informing me she was going out for a couple of hours and where she could be reached, blah blah blah, and then a final call when we hadn't delivered her daughter back on her doorstep by the 7:30 delivery time (that call came at around 7:40.) She sounded a little peeved that the Playdate Express wasn't running on schedule.

The last straw was when we were finally dropping her off, while we were waiting for her mom to come to the car. She asked me if it was true that she would be taking swimming classes with Kira and Kiyomi, and I told her I didn't know, that she should ask her mom. And she replied, "My mom wanted me to ask you to sign me up. Because she's REALLY BUSY."

I must go now. I promised I would come over tonight and scrub her toilets and then put her daughter to bed while she works on her abs.

Archive File: Cranky

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