Ok, so this is a bit of a rant. First off, today Gerry informs me that we are NOT getting the lovely house I've been salivating over for the last month. I was tasting freedom from this one horse fucking town I live in and now it seems I have to wait longer. Sucks.
Last week I put together a 9th birthday party for my oldest daughter. I rented the party room in our complex, made all the food, decorated, and all in all spent a small fortune on loot bags and prizes for about 25 kids. I sent out invitations to all the kids in Scarlett's class. Call me crazy for doing that, but when we sat around and tried to decide who to invite, we discovered that one kid would be left out if we invited another kid and so on. So anyway, I was waiting for parents to RSVP, and only about 8 did. Out of those eight, four of those calls were actually from the kids themselves, saying that they could come. The parents actually refused to come to the phone and have the fucking courtesy to speak to another parent. How fucking rude.
One of the kids invited was a neighbor whose mother refused to say whether her daughter could come or not, even when we asked again the day before the party. Sure enough, the day of the party, her kid shows up, and says, "My mother says I can come to the party if you'll let me." Of course I let the kid in, but the nerve of the mother. No class.
To make a long story short, with the exception of my kids and Gerry's kids and like, two kids from Scarlett's class, the rest of them were rude brats. Demanding, yelling, screaming, throwing things rude brats. My kids can be brats sometimes, definitely. But the difference is, when they attend a party, they know they'd better behave and display their best manners..I don't know where Scarlett's classmates learned their manners, but I have a distinct feeling that the rude parents who couldn't even be bothered to speak to me about the party are somewhat to blame. Not only did these kids trash the party room, they also completely messed up the park right outside the room, and despite the fact I told them several times not to do it, they insisted on throwing juice boxes and candy wrappers right on the ground. Little pigs. I knew the party wasn't going to go perfectly smooth, they are kids after all, but God, I've never seen such mouthy, greedy little ingrates.
I was cleaning up near the end of this debacle, praying for the parents to show up and pick up their little deviants, when the Drunken Lush of the Complex shows up. She's one of the neighbors I don't care to really talk to, the one who starts drinking at 7 in the morning, has four kids to take care of and spends most of her time wandering around the complex bothering the other neighbors. Believe it or not,she walks right into Scarlett's party and asks if her kids can come in and have cake, and a loot bag. Practically speechless, I agreed, and then this woman actually proceeds to start cleaning up and washing dishes and packing away food and tearing down the party, I shit you not.
Being a former bartender, I know that you can't always predict the actions or moods of someone who's under the influence, so I sucked it up and let her stay for a bit -- she seemed calm and I didn't want her to snap or something in the middle of a party filled with kids.
God, I hate this freaking neighborhood.
Oh, yeah. I'm at work today, and we're doing a house that's undergoing a complete reno. It's about eighty years old and totally gutted inside, save for the new framing and ductwork. I'm up on a ladder when this woman appears behind me. "Hi, do you live here?" So I told her, no, I'm working here. Then she starts asking all the other trades if they live in this house. From the bemused looks on their faces I could tell they were thinking the same thing I was. The house is completely gutted, there's no walls inside, holes in the floors everywhere. Why she would think the house was fit for habitation was beyond me. I couldn't resist. "Yes, I LIVE here." She kind of got it after that and gave me a dirty look. Turns out she was canvassing the neighborhood, campaigning for the Liberals. "I'm here on behalf of Marilyn Churley, and she'll work really hard for you, and I hope we can count on your vote."
Obviously she must really believe in Liberal propaganda, because she had to climb on up to a front porch that has no stairs to tell us that. One of the guys tells her that no, none of us live there, at all. "Well, are the homeowners here?" Um, is this thing on, did we not just tell you that nobody lives here?
Parasites.
I know it's my responsibility to vote and all, but I gotta tell you, I don't even want to. I don't like any of the candidates for Prime Minister. I've got the choice of Jack Layton, king of the NDP who doesn't have a chance in hell of winning, ever, then there's Stephen Dion, who takes every chance he can to trumpet about his bullshit policies in broken English, thankyou very much, and then there's Steven Harper, the cardigan clad asshole, and any Canadian knows how that turned out already. I'd rather stuff all my money under a mattress then put it anywhere the government can get their hands on it. Worse than cockroaches.
The stupid woman finally goes away, and later when we're sitting outside taking a break, we see her packing herself and her fellow canvassers away in a car. "Oh hi." she trilled at us, from across the street.
I still ain't voting for you.
