2005-01-18 - 7:35 p.m.

pay attention, there's a quiz at the end

And now, we return you to our regularly scheduled petty whining, already in progress.

I swear. For real this time. This will be the last time there will be a CWOMM (chick who owes me money). With the exception of the one chick who always, ALWAYS pays me on time, and who I often trade favors with. Well and the exception also of in case I have already bought something and then sell it. But no more floating money to anyone. For one thing I just don't have the money! But even if I do... I'm sorry... no. Especially not if it's someone who doesn't have a perfect track record with me. And as I said, that's a list of one.

No GWOMMs, either, by the way. Funny that I've never lent money to a guy. I guess some of that has to do with the fact that the lending of money and fronting ticket purchases often goes along with traveling together.

There was one remaining CWOMM - Gretchen - and the check finally arrived today. She mailed it Wednesday. Here's my last rant about her but don't bother if you don't want to - I'll recap.

I was looking through some old emails over the weekend and happened to come across some from her. The one where she asked me to buy the first ticket and asked me if I wanted to share a room for that show... that's the show she later backed out of with no apology for suddenly leaving me alone with double the planned hotel cost. At least she's still paying me for that ticket. Although... I couldn't help noticing in that original email that she said she'd pay me the first week of December. December 2004, mind you.

I didn't have to remind myself that after she agreed to buy a couple other tickets from me, she promised to pay me the entire amount on December 31. Also 2004. Without making note of the fact that this was extending the time frame for paying for the first ticket. I was hoping to have that money for my last trip. I was leaving on January 6th, so seemed fairly likely, yes? Well, no. On January 1st she informs me she'll mail it January 4th since that's the next day she'll be back at work to make it to the post office. Okay, so forget having it for my trip. Some reason you couldn't have mailed it on Friday the 31st like you, um, kinda TOLD ME you would? Whatever.

So while I'm away on my trip I figure the check has arrived and is waiting at home for me. Because she said she'd mail it, and I've been getting other emails from her since then, so all must be well, yes?

Well, no.

I get an email from her on the 12th. Saying it finally went into the mail that day (the word "finally" added by me). At least this one came with an apology that she didn't get to the post office sooner but... are you ready? There's a good reason why.

It rained all week.

This has all made me glad she kind of gave me an "out" in the super-tentative plans we had to travel together in June. It also gave me time to recall that she backed out of another trip with me last September, but luckily there were a couple other roommates on that one. And I would like to point out that since she and I had been the ones originally planning that September trip together, at no time did I ask anyone else to join us without checking with her first. She and I have actually had many conversations about how we are not "the more the merrier sharing a trip" types. Traveling companions can make a trip exponentially more fun or exponentially more frustrating, and we've discussed how we'd prefer traveling alone to traveling with the wrong people.

Now about that potential June trip. She asked if I'd like to share expenses and travel together, and I said IF I can go then sure, but I told her I have NO idea. She's not definite either, although she is much more committed than I am. If I have no money I have no money, plus my husband has now said he might like to go, in which case other roommates are out. My husband and I together equal full occupancy of a hotel room. Since she wasn't definite either, the agreement for BOTH of us, as I understood it, was - you make your plans, don't count on me, and if turns out later that I can go, we'll decide then whether I fit into whatever plans you've made for yourself. That's even what I said in that December 14th entry, so if nothing else I know I'm not changing things in my own mind.

So that all being said, I get an email from her in late December telling me that she had told a co-worker that she could come with "us" on "our" trip because "what do you say when someone asks, LOL." Um. You say, "I have tentative plans with another person, let me just check to make sure it's okay with them," OR in this case... say "yeah sure" and then tell me, "I'm making my own plans with someone else." Which I would have been FINE with. But after the conversations we've had, she assumes I'll be good with committing to at least five days and a LOT of traveling with a person I've never met? When did my agreement with her turn into, "If I can go, I'd be happy to travel with you and whomever else you invite along"? Besides - she had told me she'd been looking into booking rooms and most of the doubles had two single beds! So wtf is the plan with a third person suddenly? And if she thought it was going to be all super cool with me, why not say "I invited so and so along, it'll be great," not "I said she could come because, what do you say when someone asks?"

I mentioned in that earlier entry that a couple of friends back in November had ditched her after making plans. Well, the story turns out that they ditched her because she proposed adding a fourth person to the hotel room they were sharing. They decided to stay with other people and left Gretchen and the new person on their own. She was upset, she said, not because they didn't want to stay with someone they didn't know, but because they just ditched her without telling her it bothered them. Gretchen discussed this with me and another person, to see if we thought she was wrong to be upset. We all agreed that they shouldn't have just cancelled the plans; that they should have told her they had a problem, and discussed it.

Well... when I got the email from her saying she'd told another person whom I've never met that she can "come with us..." first of all I began to wonder exactly HOW she proposed this extra roommate back in November. Was it "she's looking to share a room, do you mind?" or "I told her she could stay with us"?

Secondly, I wondered what I should do. I'm way beyond the point where I'll just be Miss Make-No-Waves and go along and possibly ruin a road trip. Yes, the other person could be perfectly nice and we could all three have a great time. But maybe not, and I told myself (and I had also told Gretchen!) that I wasn't willing to risk doing that to myself again.

So... since we had all agreed that the proper thing for her other friends to do would have been to come to her and say they had a problem... I sat on the email for a day and then wrote her. I told her that I was glad she had someone else who wanted to go, since I was no closer to knowing my own plans. And that it if turned out that I could go and she already had plans all set with her other friend, then too bad for me. Because I wouldn't really be that cool with making it a trip for three, and traveling with someone I'd never met.

So even though she is the one who changed the arrangement on me, why do I feel like she probably thinks I did the same thing her other friends did, and ditched her after making plans? Even though that is EXACTLY what she did to me about this January trip? And if you recall, her reason for canceling the January trip was that she'd decided she'd rather save her money for the June trip. I said we'd do this, but I've decided I'd rather do something else.

Possibly I feel that way because she never answered that email in any way. We've written many times about other things since then, but have never ever mentioned the June trip at all.

Oh well. This is the point at which my dad would say, "but it doesn't bother me." Yeah Dad, I can tell by you complaining about it for the past 20 minutes just how much it doesn't bother you. Hey, what can I say, I come by it honest.

So I have a couple of multiple choice questions for you all. If anyone would like to actually hit the guestbook and give me your opinions on these, that would be cool. If not that's fine too, but I'd really like to know if I'm a lone voice against popular opinion here. It won't change my mind, because that's Just The Way I Am, but I would like to know.

Question 1: You owe money (upwards of $20) to a friend. You know it's on her credit card and the bill is coming. You tell her you'll pay her next Monday. Monday comes and for some reason you can't (your car broke down, you spent the money on Cheetos, who cares, you don't have it). You:
(A) Do nothing and say nothing. Not like you said "I Promise" or anything. She can't have thought you really meant Monday. If she was a real friend she wouldn't be keeping track of shit like money you owe her.
(B) Figure she took your word that you'd pay when you said you would, and contact her on Monday at the latest to tell her that you're sorry, but it's going to be another week.

(Notice I'm presuming the reason she didn't pay is that she didn't have the money. Rain. Fuck me. The last one who didn't pay me said it was because of snow. Can I plead weather distress with MasterCard? I don't think so. But if you believe the real reason was rain, feel free to change the text of choice (B) to "contact her and tell her there's been an act of God and you'll pay her when the frickin sun comes out.")

Question 2: You make plans with a friend. You are quite aware that your friend is a touchy, paranoid, control freak bitch. Mostly because she freely admits to these traits, in these exact words. You decide you'd like to change plans in a way that changes your friend's plans: you decide you'd rather do something else, and leave her on her own; or you want to invite a stranger to share her living space for an extended amount of time. You:
(A) Casually inform her of your new plan. You wouldn't like it if she made this same change to your plans, but surely she won't mind.
(B) Apologize for changing her plans, but tell her that this is what you're going to do, because you've decided it's better for you this way.
(C) Tell her you'd like to change plans, and discuss it with her before you make the change final, since you already said you'd do something else.
(D) Tell her you're changing plans and realize that you don't care what she thinks, because you're tired of hanging out with such a touchy, paranoid, control freak bitch, then don't make plans with her again.

If your answer is "other," please feel free to tell me that too. I'm aware that when you think you know all the possible answers, the correct one is usually the one that didn't occur to you.

By the way - I consider any of the above choices to either question, OTHER than (A) on each, to be a perfectly acceptable, respectful and honorable way to deal with me. Just FYI.

my mood -

the mood of the whole world wide bleepin' web -