Wednesday morning whirlwind post

Oh, HUZZAH, the day stretches ahead of me. The kids are in school and my work for the semester is done. The university servers are offline for maintenance, so I couldn't do my annual report even if I wanted to. This is the sort of day on which a person could be tempted to linger over Twitter and an extra cup of coffee, but I am going to resist that particular temptation. So. Goals for the day:

0. Write a relatively quick blog post while eating breakfast.
1. Hit a lick at some snakes: the laundry, the clutter, the dusting, and the vacuuming. (Oh, the thought of vacuuming the filthsome stairs fills me with glee at this particular moment.) (And how could I forget the bathrooms? The forces of entropy are going down with a crash in my bathrooms.)
2. Go for a gentle run in the sunshine.
3. Draft a Christmas letter.
4. Address some envelopes while listening to Sister Sinjin.
5. Yoga video!
6. Do some Christmas knitting (Epiphany knitting, really, at this point) with a podcast for company.
7. Make a batch of gingerbread cookie dough and stash it in the fridge.
8. Smack down the Gmail inbox. Or, realistically, cauterize one of its myriad heads while fleeing the remainder.
8. Meet Stella at school and walk home with her.
9. Cut out cookies and make cocoa.
10. Make something yummy for dinner.
11. Tonight after Stella is in bed: write that post about our Chicago trip.

Okay. That's a substantial list, which means I have to blog efficiently.

First: I have updated that post about the "banned words" list which turns out to be a "discouraged words" list.

Second: It occurred to me last night that self-doubt makes everything harder. EVERYTHING. I wrote >20% more letters this year than I did last year, when I thought I would be crushed under the weight of all the letters I was writing, but they caused me much less angst. I was always worried before this year about the calibre of the letters I was writing. When I served on the admissions committee last winter, I read hundreds of letters of recommendation and discovered that mine are fine. My life would be a lot easier if I could shake off the self-doubt.

Third: yesterday was kind of a hard day. I knew it would be hard, because I knew I would be spending hours and hours and hours on a difficult task (and "less angst" doesn't mean "angst-free"), but I wasn't expecting the two additional wrinkles.

Wrinkle #1: Stella told me that Stress-Inducing Neighbor Mom (the one who thinks I'm negligent rather than free-range) had said she was planning a birthday party for Stella on Saturday. We have a capital-T tradition for our late December birthdays: the actual day is for family. Birthday Kid picks all the food, picks the games, eats a beauteous homemade cake unless s/he prefers a fancy bakery option, opens family presents-- and then has a more traditional birthday event on his/her half-birthday in June. Party with friends, trip out of town, whatever s/he chooses. But apparently S-INM thought poor Stella had nothing planned for her birthday, again, and that she (S-INM) would provide a corrective. WHO DOES THAT?? WITHOUT CONSULTING THE PARENTS??? Isn't that bizarre? She thinks I am a terrible mom, prioritizing career over family and disregarding my children's most basic needs, and she is not really interested in thinking otherwise. It bums me out. And makes me mad.

Wrinkle #2: I called my 18yo from the office about some college application stuff I wanted him to take care of during the window in which he used to have calculus but now plays internet chess on the loveseat. "By the way," he said, "a guy called about that fender-bender that happened in the church parking lot on my birthday. He said there was a problem with the insurance policy number." "No problem," said I, "I'll call him back."

You guys, you would not BELIEVE the conversation that ensued. Elwood and another parishioner backed into each other at the end of October as they were leaving Mass. We didn't even consider repairing the scratches on our bumper, but the other driver wanted hers fixed up. (This is a post I will write another time: let's embrace cosmetically damaged cars as a form of embracing poverty. and bringing down insurance premiums too.) Turns out that when you back into each other, you each pay half of the damages. But there was some kind of hiccup somewhere with our policy number, and her insurer kicked the claim over to a guy whose job is to collect on bad claims -- people who deliberately give fraudulent insurance information after a crash.

This guy spent about 3 minutes being pleasant, and then he morphed abruptly into Captain Asshole. I was in courteous pleasant law-abiding mode, eager to sort out the mistake and fulfill our obligations, but you guys, he was talking to me as if he could see into my soul and RECOGNIZE that I was actually a scurrilous criminal. There was no possibility of a mistake in his world: my husband had been operating our vehicle ILLEGALLY, WITHOUT INSURANCE, and that is a CRIME. "I have the policy in front of me," I said, "and my husband and that vehicle are covered." He was so nasty to me that he triggered my arrhythmia, something that only happens when I am intensely stressed out. "I'm calling Geico now," I said with an edge in my voice, and he CACKLED at me like a Scooby-Doo villain.

Reader, I hung up on him.

Of course we were covered. Of course Geico was happy to address the issue -- there was no record of this claim in their system, and their adjuster agreed to follow up (and pay out) immediately. Of course they talked to me as if I were a courteous pleasant law-abiding bill-paying citizen, BECAUSE I AM. But whoa, I'm thinking about calling the other insurer to lodge a complaint about this guy. If "good neighbor" is supposed to be their brand, they don't want this buffoon dropping their name into his phone calls.

Oh, goodness, this post is pushing 1100 words and it is 9:26. That, my friends, is time to put on the JP2 rosary CD and Fold All The Laundry. Over and out from Gladlyville.

Comments

[Joanna]

I am UTTERLY OUTRAGED by the GALL of a neighbor throwing YOUR CHILD a birthday party without talking to you about it. Or even WITH talking to you about it. I have never heard of anything so outrageous in the whole of my life!! There are so many things wrong with that ... that ... I genuinely cannot even process it all. This is intrusive to the point that clearly even gritted-teeth outward courtesy is too much to ask. Bless your heart. I'm appalled for you.

[Karen]

S-INM is giving me palpitations. Can we dox her?

[bearing]

Wrinkle #1: Oh HELL no.

You did say no, right?

[Jamie]

She still hasn't talked to me about it. I expect to see her at school pickup, where I will tell her very pleasantly that we have plans all day Saturday.

[Alexandra]

S-INM, put into a novel, would be too bizarre for Charles Dickens. A sort of Inside-Out Mrs. Jellyby, on steroids. Mrs. Jellybusybody, perhaps?

Five minutes after reading your post, I'm sitting here, blinking.

[Tracy]

blink. re-read paragraph about S-INM. blink. Surely that isn't what it said. Re-read again. No way.

Re-re-read and now I'm angry...

who. even. does. that???? What gall.

[Colette]

Excuse my while I scrape my jaw off the floor.

I admire your determination to be pleasant with this woman, at least in public, but this crosses a line. I think I'd very firmly let her know that she has no business entertaining thoughts like this because she very clearly has no idea what your family life is like. And maybe this is a conversation you and your husband need to have with this woman and her husband, because a) then someone else is aware of the extent of her fantasies and b) it's not okay for your 8-year-old to have to deal with her delusions. Reinforcements might help with this conversation.

[Alanna Shaikh]

Count me in with everyone else about the neighbor mom. That's a special kind of boundary-crushing stupid. Please update us on your conversation.

[Jenny]

Your neighbor did what?!?!

In my fantasy life, I wouldn't say one word to that woman and when she informed me when to arrive, I'd mutely blink, as if I didn't hear, walk away, and then just not arrive.