Bitchy McBitcherson's Blog

Tag: manners

  • Weekend Update

    There is a girl who lives nearby. We met her and her family almost immediately upon moving into this house and her and my daughter began hanging out. There have been times when they have spent more time together and times when they’ve spent less time together. I’ve never actively encouraged the friendship because I do not care for the parenting style of her parents. At the same time I have not discouraged the relationship either. There are certain things I will not allow when I feel their parenting would possibly impact my daughter’s safety, but as far as whether or not the girl makes a good friend, I’ve tried to leave that up to my daughter to sort out on her own.

    I had several reasons behind this. For one, I did not want to hold the girl responsible for what her parents have done, as long as she could more or less manage to behave herself in a way that didn’t irritate the crap out of me, I didn’t mind her being around. Also, I will not be standing beside my daughter throughout her life. She needs to determine for herself how to make judgments about people and exactly how much she is willing to put up with. She needs to learn how to sort out relationship problems on her own. I am more than happy to give her my opinion, even when she doesn’t want it, but I also try to acknowledge all the other points of view and leave the important parts, like whether or not to consider the girl a friend up to her. I will restrict her from taking part in certain activities with a person, but I will not make some ill-conceived attempt to control her feelings for another person. That would just lead to her stubbornly hanging onto horrible relationships just to prove me wrong. Besides, I have disliked more of her playmates than I’ve liked, so if I asserted my influence too strongly she’d just grow up to be a hermit on a hill with a rifle, and dammit I already called dibs.

    Anyhow, last year this girl started middle school (and her period) and she has been a-changin’. She has new friends who have labeled my daughter as “syoopid” because she doesn’t like The Pussy Cat Dolls, doesn’t watch the new whorrific Puddy Cat Dolls reality show, and she freakishly likes showtunes “what r thos?” Recently it has degenerated further. The girl began to make prank phone calls. When my daughter called her on it (between recognizing her voice, and umm… you know, caller ID) she got pissed off. Little neighborhood miss then decided to pass around our daughter’s cell phone number to a few friends. “I didn’t call you. That was my cousin. If you don’t believe me you are a bad friend and I don’t like you anymore.”

    Ah, the joys of being an adolescent.

    Now I am truthfully beyond fucking irritated because A) cell phone minutes cost money, and she is on a very restrictive plan because we mainly got it so we could be in touch with each other, I have no interest in her wandering about with a phone attached to her head all the time and B) I HATE NOISE so the damn thing ringing over and over is pissing me the fuck off.

    My first instinct is to walk over to the girl’s house and just give her a good spanking, followed perhaps by doing something violent with her phone. I really need my daughter to decide for herself how to handle it, and hopefully to put some actual thought into it first and not just jump into something. We’ve discussed various options and possible and likely results. Now I am waiting. Of course to top it all off my daughter is feeling hurt and pissed off. This means I am stuck in the house with a moody creature.

    So, how is your weekend?

  • One More Thing I Don’t Understand

    We went out for lunch today at a quick casual restaurant. There were five of us. When we were finished ordering and wanted to pick a table, we had a difficult time. There were a lot of tables and booths available. They were all for three or four people. Every single five or six person table or booth was taken. All but one of those was taken by only one or two people. One was being used by a party of four. What makes a single person think that they should take up a six person table? It just would not occur to me.

  • I Do Not “Love You Man”

    Tonight I took the dogs out to the backyard to go to the bathroom and have dinner, and discovered a can of Bud Light tossed into our yard. Because of the nature of access to our yard, the only two likely suspects are the landscaping crew that takes care of the neighborhood, and I have never seen them do anything like that, or friends of the teen aged girl next door. In the past when she has had parties people have thrown chewed gum into our yard. One actually has to make quite an effort to do that, because our yard is significantly above theirs. It cannot happen accidentally as they try to throw it to some spot in her yard.

    Now the woman who lives next door is, most days of the year, a very decent neighbor. She is friendly when appropriate. She leaves us alone most of the time. She never trims a tree that is on our property, but hanging over hers, without checking in with us first. She’s provided alcohol for our drinking pleasure on more than one occasion.

    She has two daughters, only one of whom still lives at home. The daughters do like to throw parties when Mom is away. I doubt that either of the people living next door is throwing shit into my backyard, but like it or not, people will judge you by the company you keep.

    Tonight, I am not thinking warm and happy thoughts about the neighbors.

    I do not fucking like shit to be thrown into my backyard. Not one little fucking bit.

    The fact you only run with people who drive disgustingly expensive fucking cars does not mean you have found people with class.

    Go out and find yourselves some friends with better manners and better taste. Bud Light is disgusting.