Not Worth It

Yesterday I decided to be proactive, that rather than just vent about people without manners, I would actually be direct and tell people when they did something that bothered me.

I decided to start with Mr. Calls-At-3:36 a.m. He's called about 5 times since the night he did that, and I haven't answered my phone. I probably should have called him to tell him what was bugging me, but I took the indirect email approach, and told him it was never okay to call me then, especially on a work night, and that he had made me uncomfortable.

Here is his response, sent 15 minutes later:

If my phone called you at that time in the morning, it must have been a mistake, since the only people I call at that time are in Europe or the East coast.


I guess his phone is a lot smarter than mine. Mine doesn't have a special feature that allows it to act independently, it requires that I make calls myself.

Even if the call was a mistake, which I don't buy for a minute, I'm assuming the person living on the East coast who he had intended to call would be pissed to get a call at 6:36 in the morning. I would be.

The next time I try to practice my boundary setting skills, I'll make sure the person who I do so with is a worthy candidate.

Multi Tasking

Sometimes I think it's taking me longer to grow up than other people. I have been running behind ever since I was in middle school and was still playing with my dollhouse.

I had a nice victorian house and took a lot of pride in aquiring really elegant furniture for it. At some point, I decided I needed some more room, took advantage of my mother's new interest in cabinet making, and asked her to enlarge my dollhouse. She made a simple wooden box the orginal house could sit on. It didn't have any windows, just a wall dividing the two rooms.

I was obsessed with Anne Frank's diary at the time, and my mind took flight. I started playing holocaust with my dollhouse. I got a new set of dolls, moved a bunch of furniture downstairs, and the new rooms became a hidden basement that housed a Jewish family in hiding. I was really focussed on this story for a month or so, but ultimatly became frusterated that I had to focuss either on the family upstairs or the downstairs family. I wanted to advance both plot lines simultaniously.

I put my dollhouse in storage, and gave all the furniture to a younger neighbor.

Mind Your Manners

Lately I feel like a lot of people need reminded that not everything is all about them. Sorry to disappoint you, folks. You may be superheroes in your own minds, but to me, you are just people who could use a trip to etiquette school.

I am especially riled up in terms of telephones. I have the usual rants about cell phones in public places and I love telling patrons in my library to get off their phones. But what I am more upset about lately is that people are calling me at really inappropriate times. I got a call on Thursday at 3:36 in the morning. Call me provencial, but I try to be in bed by then. It is hard enough for me to get a good sleep anyway. If I am awake, I am probably trying desperately to get back to sleep, or doing something way more fun than talking on the phone to a drunk person would be.

Today my phone rang at 8 a.m.. Since I only got one day off last week, I have a three-day weekend. My plan was to sleep in as late as possible. Even though I hadn’t shared my plan with anyone, I think it’s a pretty safe assumption that calling anyone at eight on a weekend is not a good idea. Better to error on the side of caution.

I answered the phone, figuring I might as well since I was now awake. It was my landlord, who I have previously referred to as my fairy godmother. Apparently she thought that because she was awake, the rest of us should be, too. She wanted to confirm that she and her husband would come over at four to fix one of my windows. Thanks, fairy godmother! You have been demoted for the time being.

Give Me A Little Credit

I hate my memory. It tortures me far better than anyone else ever could, constantly replaying situations and conversations, often word for word, that I would rather forget. I can usually remember what I was wearing and what I ate during these situations.

Many of my friends have come to rely on my memory and will call when they need me to remember something they have forgotten. Sometimes it is a shared experience, but usually it’s just something that was going on in their life that I observed or they told me about that I filed away.

When M. was visiting me the other week, we talked about her ex-boyfriend of 20 years. We said a lot of bad things, but she also told me about the time he loaned her a thousand dollars to buy a van before she even learned how to drive.

I was stunned. It was me that loaned her the money. I could have gotten proof, gone back and found it in one of the journals I wrote in 1988, but M. knew my memory well enough to believe me.

We had an interesting talk about why she thought it was her ex who loaned her the money. Did she want to believe that in the spring of their romance, he had done a cool thing? We decided it must have been because he later told her that he did it. Did he himself believe it by then? Maybe. He’s always been good at believing his own lies.