I have this friend. Some of you that live in Houston have met said friend and know exactly who I am talking about. So, said friend likes to try to run my life. No, wait, she wants to run everyone’s life. If we, all the earthly subjects of her reign, don’t want to do her bidding, she gets VERY upset. You are warned.

She asked me to come down to her house this weekend to make various stamped projects. It was a nice offer, she wanted to help me out. However, she lives over an hour away. It is a shorter drive if I take the toll road, but it costs something crazy like $8 round trip. Also, it would mean packing up all of my stuff to take it down there, which is just crazy. Plus I have spent the past three Saturdays doing stamping stuff – two of those Saturdays at her house. I will be spending next Sunday doing another stamping party.

I am not complaining about any of that at all – I just need some time off.

Even then, it’s not really time off. I want to have a garage sale within the next week or so – which means I need to go through the house and hunt for those special treasures to sell. On top of that, I need to encourage Mike to find special treasures to sell. (That’s a nice way of saying I am going to make him go through the closet and get rid of all the things he doesn’t wear.) On top of that, we have a lot of yard work to do. Not the usual mowing and edging – we need to go through flowerbeds, clean them out, trim trees, fun things like that. A lot to do, and this is the weekend to do it.

Finally, I just need time with my family. Down time, time for US.

But does she GET that? No. I told her that I couldn’t come down this weekend due to the yardwork and getting ready for the garage sale. She actually wrote me back and said she didn’t get why I needed to be home on Sunday to do work, when I said before that it was a good day to do a stamp party. (Yeah, the one we are having on the 21st.) She then went on to say “the different stories are confusing me.”

Different stories? WTF???

Then she points out that I was doing yard work on Monday, so why should I need to do it again. Uh, hello? I was weeding on Monday. No, we don’t have a huge yard – but there is a lot that needs to get done.

Finally, she says, “I’ll tell you like I told my stupid sister-in-law earlier…’If you don’t want to see me or spend time with me, please just have the common courtesy to say so…don’t give me long bs stories.”

Uh, yeah. Right. First and foremost, without an explanation, just saying “No” would not have worked. I know better. Secondly, if we’re all giving her long explanations as to why we can’t do something, did it ever occur to her that maybe it’s because she puts us all on the defensive? (That is a rhetorical question. I know that thought has never crossed her mind.)

I’m just annoyed. I’m annoyed at her for basically accusing me of lieing to her by saying that she doesn’t get my “different stories”. Grumble, grumble. I think I’m even more annoyed at myself for feeling the need to justify myself to her in the first place. Maybe I should have just said “no.” I thought it was a lot more courteous to explain to her why I was saying no – especially since she has a vested interest in me having the garage sale because I have items of hers to sell too. Then I’m annoyed that I let it get to me. It is really getting to me.

We’ve been friends for many years, and now that things have settled down in both of our lives it is normally better than this. I’m not the type that can just cut someone off. (Heck, I was in a bad relationship for 8 years because I just couldn’t give up.) It’s just not … me. I’m desperate to find a solution, and I’m so frustrated because I know there isn’t one. She has been the same way for the most part for many years. I used to be bad about not communicating my feelings, and I have been working on that – successfully. I thought communicating how I felt about this was a wise thing. (She did get an e-mail about this from me, I’m not completely avoiding it with her.) On top of everything, she has found a LOT of stamping customers for me, and I appreciate all of her help. She has given me a ton of feedback and some great ideas on getting more business. All of these are good things. But badgering me to do something that I just can’t do? That is just … wrong.

Dear Abby, I need your advice…

I don’t normally have much if anything to complain about when it comes to work. I love my job, most clients are wonderful. But there is nothing that annoys me more then when people use me and waste my time. I have spent countless hours working on a huge elaborate proposal this past week. It has not been easy, especially considering they changed the entire scope of their RFP last Monday, wouldn’t give us anything other then an e-mail address until Wednesday when they finally sent a phone number. A conference call where I practically had to drag details out of the client didn’t leave me with a good feeling. I tried to tell the boss that I didn’t see them paying our rates, that the RFP was too loose and he wasn’t willing to give too many more details. I didn’t have a good vibe, and if there is one thing I have learned … trust the vibe. But the boss said to work away on it. So I have. About 3 hours late tonight alone, churning away. And guess what? Just over a week since they sent out their detailed RFP … and the “thanks for participating but we found a company that we feel is a better fit” e-mail came in. A form letter version, because the engineering team hasn’t had a chance to review our proposal, so they haven’t even received it. Yet their letter stated that they were “very impressed” by it. Amazing. Simply amazing.

Next time, I’m going with the vibe. For now I am going to go watch Chris on Call for Help and learn how to set up my computer as a jukebox so no one can mess with anything else while it is in that mode. The “kiosk mode” that he is talking about would be perfect for the computer in Jason’s room to keep him using it without my permission. I could even restrict what websites he can access through it. Perfect! Nothing like some techno info to help me unwind. Not a problem!