(Later edit: I put something in here that was told to me in confidence, and no matter how annoyed I am, if I keep doing that, no body will ever tell me anything. So I've deleted those bits. You'll notice where.)
Well, I'm back from New Orleans. I have all kinds of mixed feelings about the trip, so I'll have to wait a while to write about that. But there's one thing that I am so very steamed about, and I'm not likely to get past it until I express it, so here goes. Daughter, this concerns a mutual friend, and it's likely to tick you off, so stop here. For anyone else reading, it will be boring. This is for me only. Once I write it, I can release it.
I'm really tired of BB.
She organizes the gift-wrapping at the Barnes & Nobel every Christmas, donations to go to the Mensa scholarship fund. That's good of her. It's an hour and fifteen minute drive for me, so to avoid the rush hour traffic, every year for the past four years I have volunteered to arrive at 11 am, and stay until closing at 10 pm. Note that it has also snowed every one of those days! Last year was literally a blizzard. Everyone else volunteers for a two to four hour slot. There are supposed to be a minimum of two people at the wrapping table at all times. BB has difficulty getting people for the 9 am to 11 am slot, so she has the nerve to be pissed at me because I won't commit to earlier than 11 am! Note that she never gets up before noon
She always shows up late for her own slot, late in the afternoon, forcing someone else to stay an hour or more later than their commitment. Then, she wraps the packages so sloppily that the rest of us are embarrassed to accept a donation. I'm sure most of the packages she wraps get rewrapped by the customer later. Several of us have tried over and over to show her how to make creased corners, but she refuses to pay attention, and she continues to scrunch the paper and bunch it at the ends, and then uses yards of tape to hold the mess together. Books end up wrinkled loose trapezoids. That isn't easy. She also will wrap a book using three or more taped-together scraps of paper (patterns NOT matched). We'll tell her to use a new piece cut to size. She'll say she's trying to conserve. We'll say "We can use the small scraps on small packages", but she won't listen. My God, Woman! These are customers! Not relatives!
There's one other woman who has persevered through the years, who also stays for most of the day, and she just moved out of the area. We two were the backbone of the wrapping operation. I think I shall not volunteer this year. As much as I enjoy the wrapping, I simply cannot watch BB wrap one more package. She's going to be very angry with me, but too bad. She's a slob.
As I mentioned, she never gets up before noon. She can't get to sleep before dawn. She's been whining about this "sleep problem" for all of the two decades I've known her. I have now, finally, concluded that she won't do anything to correct it because it's convenient for her - this way, since her husband goes to bed at a reasonable hour and gets up early to go to work, she can easily (...deleted...). And her husband is not the type to insist. She's gonna be in big trouble if he ever goes on shifts, or retires!
She and her husband (one of the nicest sweetest nerds you'll ever meet) were in New Orleans. He did the morning tours alone.
I talked with her on Wednesday, while I was doing my volunteer stint at the registration desk. I talked again with her Thursday outside the hospitality room. And again on Saturday, after the banquet. I was wearing my green sari, and she commented on it. She was telling some woman about how she teaches bellydance in the county adult education program (which ticked me off! She is extremely poor technically - jerky hip thrusts, no grace, she's a COW! - one of those people who took a few classes twenty years ago and thinks she knows enough, and is now ruining some potentially good beginners. I'd dearly love to sign up for one of her classes and find out for sure exactly how bad it is. (Hmmm. I just realized I KNOW the women who have been teaching the Ulster county classes, and none of them are her!)) Anyhow, I spent most of my time in the company of NJ, and NJ and BB absolutely hate each other. So it wasn't until Sunday that I spent any amount of real time with BB.
NJ was tired Sunday and went to bed early. I went down to the lobby to see if there were any dinner groups forming, and found BB's husband sitting with two other guys. They were planning to go somewhere for dinner, so I asked if I could go along. Pretty soon BB and another woman arrived with some restaurant flyers. BB was surprised to see me - having not seen me since my stint at the registration desk! Huh? Did I make that fleeting an impression Thursday and Saturday?
For the next 90 minutes, she and the other woman read brochures at us. They couldn't decide where to go for dinner. I couldn't believe it. As 9 pm approached, I finally said hey, let's just cross the street into the French Quarter and follow our noses. Almost any place is bound to be good.
We ended up going to a place on the English side. It was listed in their brochure as a tourist trap. Therefore it must be good? I didn't get the logic, but it was too late for me to be on the street alone, so I had no choice. We met a waitress coming out for a cigarette as we were going in, and one of the guys asked her what was good, and she wrinkled her nose and said "You don't want to eat here." The others panicked. I just figured she wanted to go home soon, it was less than an hour to closing and she didn't want to start over with us. Anyway, we ended up at the buffet at Harrah's Casino. Disgusting. After all that discussion, and wonderful food in the Quarter, we end up at a place that looks exactly like the Chinese buffets in every strip mall on the east coast.
When we were in the hotel lobby, BB had been saying that she was extremely sensitive to cigarette smoke (so why did she choose to sit in the smoking section?) and said that some of her coworkers at the library go outside to smoke, and the smoke on their clothes when they come back in has actually caused her to faint three times in the past week. Oooo, such sympathy that got. Her husband was very concerned. So we got to the casino, and the tobacco smoke was so dense you couldn't see the length of the room. BB announced to the buffet cashier that she must be allowed into the "Private Dining Room", because she is so very sensitive to the smoke drifting into the main dining area. So that's where we ate. She's got to be at least 250 pounds now, likely a lot more, and I was disgusted that when desert time came, she went off to the buffet and returned with like seven desserts!
During dinner, the other couple was talking about the finer points of gambling, and BB got interested. After dinner, they all, including BB, headed off into the interior of the huge room with all the slot machines. Now, I am a 40-year smoker. But the smoke was so dense in the casino that my eyes started to burn and water, and I started sneezing. BB was oblivious to the smoke, and was excitedly hopping from machine to machine. She didn't look anywhere near fainting.
There had to be a thousand machines, all of which made noise, and all the noise blended together into one loud fractured constant chord that hurt my ears. I stood the noise and the smoke as long as I could, then I told BB's husband that I was going to have to leave because "the smoke is really burning my eyes, I can't take it any longer." I hope he understood what else I was saying. As I walked away, I heard him say to the other couple that I was leaving because of the smoke, and they all turned to look speculatively at BB, who was happily burbling away. I hope they didn't say anything to her. Then she'd have had to fake a faint and it might have ruined her evening. Tsk.
I think BB feeds him, and all the rest of us, a constant load of BS, anything that makes life easy or exciting for her, whatever will get her what she wants. She doesn't have problems when it's not convenient. (I noticed that she was able to get up in time for the Friday Awards Luncheon, where she collected an award for the newsletter editor, who was unable to attend, even though there were four other people present from our local group who normally get up before noon who could have gone up to receive the award.) Woe to anyone who corrects or exposes her. I'm sure, having pointed out that the casino smoke was too much for even me, I am now on her sh*t list. And it's time someone clued her husband in. He's too nice and too naive to have to put up with her crap.
(He'd never leave her. Besides his niceness, she has him convinced that she is emotionally fragile - which she also had made no effort to do anything about. I just wish he'd look her in the eye and demand an end to the crap.)
At one time we were friends. I helped them move into their new house about 8 years ago, and stripped the built-in cabinets for them. She confided in me that (...deleted...), and that when she and husband first got together, they agreed that she would do NO housework. Of course, that was when she also worked full time. Now her "sleep problems" preclude a real job (and ...deleted...), but she still does no housework. Their house is unbelievable. I was shocked to find that she opens the little pull-tab cans of cat food, and then puts the can down for the cats to eat out of as best they can. They must have leather tongues. But she's not about to wash cat dishes. And I'm really tired of hearing about her menopausal symptoms. They started about 12 years ago when I first mentioned mine, and they are still going on for her. Somebody should tell her that eventually it stops, dang it!
I had always thought NJ was too hard on her - they have bumped heads over Mensa issues in the past - but now I think NJ is right. BB is a manipulator, an attention-grabber, a credit-hound, and a drama queen. I've really had it with her. Finally.
The reason I'm having so much trouble is that I once liked her, and it's hard to give that up. Also, this much personally-aimed nasty feeling doesn't fit my self-image.
~~ Silk
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