Tacky?

Recently I've been getting a lot of invites to parties and events via facebook and e-mail. We're not talking an e-card or pretty e-invites either. I mean, I've been getting at the most a 3 sentence note "X's birthday is this weekend at B's place. See you at 12pm. He likes superheroes and wears 5T clothing."

I understand people don't have a lot of time/money to send out fancy invitations and the mail system is often cumbersome. However, some part of me feels this e-mail/facebook invite to an event thing is just tacky. These events aren't formal, and there aren't 100's of people coming (like i large charity event), so I personally feel a phone call would best replace the mailed invitation, if mailed invites are not possible. I also understand that some events must be last second (like the "going off to fight in the middle east" parties that I've been to).

I've also noted a trend, that these "facebook invites" (I know, they aren't all facebook, but that's what I'm calling them all b/c I can) are always for events that have been arranged well ahead of time, but the invites themselves are a last second effort (much like the phone call invites seem to be, when I get them). The sender takes the time to plan theme, music, food, decorations, the whole shebang and then 3 days before the event, "Oh, right, the guests! My bad!" I understand that many people are douche bags and don't RSVP, so it's hard to guess numbers, and when hosting a party, numbers are impt but if you WANT people to come, the invite is important, and so is giving people time to arrange attendance. If I'm getting a last seconding invite, i feel a phone call is more personal than 3 sentences and really says "I want you to come for more than your present purchasing power."

Technology can be wonderful, but I'm quickly becoming tired of the laziness and often out-right rudeness that technology seems to breed when it comes to planning social activities. I try to plan appointments, meetings, occasions, activities, and events within a reasonable time-frame, but it seems like the people around me wing everything and rely on technology to forge the gap. It quite often backfires though. Instead of making a general plan of events ahead of time ex: "Okay, I am going to my meeting at 9, I will then go to X's cafe and meet you at 1pmish for lunch and after that, I'll go to the market and meet you back at home for supper at 6pmish." People randomly expect others to be free to see them whenever & where ever and arrange it all 5mins beforehand by rude, loud, public cell phone convos ex: "I'm at the store. do we need chips....?" and then proceed to do this all over the store while running their carts into things and being walking infected hemorrhoids.

Also, people bitch about their kid's cell phone bills, but when I comment that they can easily remove said phone, they bulk "NO, what if I NEED to talk to them or they NEED to talk to me?" Well, the problem isn't you calling them or they calling you, is it? What did parents do before cell phones? THEY PARENTED. As in "after school, come home, do HW, and then you can go to Cindy's house" or "After school, you have practice? You need a ride at 4:30? Okay, I'll be there at 4:30. You gotta come home and get HW done right? Okay then we'll get your sister from Ballet before that." Same cell phone convo, but it's just done ahead of time and not in the milk aisle. PLANNING. Of the convos I'm forced to hear of this sort, 99.9% could have been done in person ahead of time. Few I've ever heard are b/c of last second emergencies. People don't plan and they don't care if their lack of simple planning F-ups the schedule for the rest of us.

I'm terribly afraid this will start to overflow into the business world (although it seems to already have somewhat). A year or so ago I went to the Dr and sat for 45mins waiting for my apt. I finally got up and asked the receptionist for my file, as I noticed the Dr next door wasn't making patients wait 45mins AND pointed out that the sign on her desk stated that "late apts will be fined or re-scheduled w/o care to patient convenience." Really? If I'm late I get a fine and then assigned a random time no matter wtf is going on in my life, but it's okay for the Dr to keep me there for 45 mins? Where's my $25 fine and my apt that's inconvenient for him?

Anyway, rant over. I just wanted to know if you'd gotten any e-invites to parties and if you thought any were tacky?

damn you "blogger"

blogger won't allow me to post comments. i don't know why and i don't have the time or energy to mess with it right now. i can post at my blog, but not at the comments section of any other blogs.

Zoo Trauma

Today we went to the Natl Zoo to see the baby lions before they aren't babies anymore. It was sunny, warm and slightly windy. Our party consisted of me, the kid, and the man's parents. We packed our lunch in coolers and parked in the lot near the biggest set of picnic tables (the last lot near the "Barn" or petting zoo, in case you need to know. The man's dad is a FONZ member, so parking is free, and as with all Smithsonian locals, entrance is free.

Ater lunch, the day was going well. Area schools have Spring break in a few weeks yet, so all the other visitors consisted of stay-at-home moms with hers of young children, college students, and tourists from all over the planet. Did i mention it was a nice day? We went to the zoo in April 2010 and it was 95 and gross out, so it was great to have an actual spring this year.

All of a sudden the kid had an accident in her pants and we had to visit the bathroom located near the "mane cafe." There was poop everywhere, it was like she'd rolled in mud. Potty training is hard stuff and as previously mentioned, my kid's got a few extra issues on top of regular potty training issues, so if we only have one pee accident a day, we count it as a success. I take what I can get,or I'd be insane. It doesn't help that all the other women with kids the age of mine or slightly younger brag that theirs are already night trained and day training "only took a day." Lying bitches.

Anyway, so there I am, wrist deep nasty runny in poopy at the zoo when a herd of VERY, VERY LARGE DOUGHY PALE people (picture small cow sized dumplings) rush in. It was a grand mom, daughter, and 4 youngins'. I had nothing against the people at first, UNTIL youngin' #2 started the laughing, pointing, staring, questioning and harassing of me and my kid. "Why doesn't your kid go in the toilet like everyone else?" and "doesn't she know you're not supposed to go in your pants?" with the ever helpful "that's just disgusting. she's disgusting. Do NOT put those pants in your bag!" On and on it wwent. MissM was in tears sobbing "I'm sorry Mommy. I tried" among other things. I'm going to point out here, I was minding my own trying to do damage control and had been awesomely putting up with the mentally ill/dementia suffering MIL with a 3yo and agoraphobic FIL all over the zoo. I am a trooper but I was about to snap here. I looked up at the kid, noticed her twin sibling, other siblings, mother and g-mom just standing there egging the kid on into new heights of rudeness. These people were from Germany or somewhere where German is the native tongue BTW. People say we Americans are rude assholes, but we've got nothing on these jackoffs.

I'm going to note something else here. I support a charity for families of people with Autism and I was wearing my Autism hat at the zoo. It's my fav hat b/c it's comfy but not heavy or hot, and it's cute. I often forget I'm wearing it when I have it on or what it says until someone does something to remind me. When I wear this hat, people assume my kid has Autism and often follow me around trying to figure out if my kid's defective. When my kid has a temper tantrum, people point at my hat, then the kid and shrug to say "Oh, that explains it!" People even strike up convos with me to share battle stories about our Autistic kids etc.

Generally, I don't care if people assume my kid has Autism or not, nor do I care if they play the "let's see if she behaves funny" game with my kid either, b/c it makes me laugh. People are that messed up. It is ironic to note that my kid does have a disability, not Autism though, that few people would know about unless they've taken classes in developmental issues and then spent time watching my kid with her peers. My kid can "pass," well, until you ask her to do things she should be doing specific to her age, like pooping on a toilet more often than not or self feeding. So, in a small way, people who do look at my hat and then watch my kid to play the "wtf is wrong with her?" game, are actually right, my kid isn't exactly like most of the kids her age and if there were a hat in support of kids with her issue, I'd probably wear it proudly.

So back to the bathroom. After a few previous offers of assistance/nosy questions had been fronted, everyone in that bathroom was operating under the assumption that my kid had Autism and several people looked sick that these fat German bastards were picking on my developmentally disabled kid for being developmentally disabled. Since my kid is developmentally disabled (again not Autism, but still DD), I was horrified that these assholes thought it was appropriate to attack my 3yo.

I didn't result to violence, and I sort-of blacked out about that time, but it wasn't pretty.

After I got the kid cleaned and out of the bathrrom and calmed down, we found the in-laws, explained the situation and the MIL was lucid enough to calm ME down while the FIL took MissM to look at panda bears. It's been at least 9 hours and I am SILL PISSED. Every time we saw those mofos around the zoo, I wanted to make a scene, but I didn't, b/c MissM had been traumatized enough.

this was he first time someone has picked on her b/c she's different and I'm not sure who it hurt the most, me or her.

Dear Cheese Heads:

Please hang in there. The rest of us in the nation are counting on you to fight this fight for us. If you cave, we have NO CHANCE.

I grow tired of all these "greedy" teacher protests. Every 2 weeks $250 is taken out of my guy's paycheck, as it was when I used to work. My pension was paid for by ME, not the gov't. Before I left, things were starting to get bad. We were taking pension cuts, pay cuts, talks of furloughs, benefits cuts, paying more for medical benefits all VOLUNTARY. This happened about 20 years ago, and they promised that when the economy recovered, the state employees would be comped for the pension cuts/steps that has been lost. They lied.

This is one of the reasons I was happy to leave when I did. We weren't asking for a lot, and we were giving up many things without complaint. But right now, anyone with enough time is retiring and they're not replacing them. Teachers are teaching out-of-subject, and more than 3 preps, which is against contract. They aren't hiring people to replace the retirees, so class sizes are swelling. Obama is ending the terrible NCLBA from Bush, but he's got his own plan and it's just as convoluted and UNFUNDED as NCLB was, except it's almost worst b/c states are worse than broke and really can't afford to change the system again so soon. On Fox etc. they bitch that teachers only work 9 months. I'm here to say BULLSHIT to that. I don't know one educator that does not have at least 2 jobs. Here's another truth, a lot of the people complaining about "lazy teachers" wouldn't last a day with 180 kids, Hell, they can't stand to last 3 with their own.

When did common people working hard become the enemy? It's sad when pundits/people tout that some person on wall street deserves $300,000 a year but someone making $50,000 is greedy so they don't. WTF? I don't care who you are, if you make more than $100,000 in the US right now, YOU ARE RICH. You're not bad, but you're rich compared to 85% of the nation. That's reality.

You know, I LIKE services like trash pick up and snow plowing. I like it when all 300 desks at the motor vehicles are manned with people who have more than 3 functioning brain cells. Usually there are 300 desks, 2 workers, and 1 brain cell shared when I go into the MVA. I have no problems paying taxes to man the desk at the MVA, for snow plowers, for trash pick up, and yes FOR TEACHERS too.

These people work hard, are decent human beings, and they PAY for their retirements. Let the people retire before they die at their jobs and give them a bit of respect. Even if you don't respect someone who doesn't make $300,000 a year on Wall Street, you need to realize that you can only beat a dog so much before it lashes out at you and bites back. It's dangerous to consistently attack that many people, it leads to BAD, BAD things socially. Seriously, pick up a few history books. Then again, if you could read a history book, you'd be thanking a teacher instead of attacking them.