Is anyone reading this?

I don't really care if anyone is, because I just use this as my venting/ranting place. I was just thinking, though, that anyone who reads this must think I'm a total bitch, which couldn't be further from the truth. Well, maybe I'm a bit of a bitch. I'm definitely not the horrible negative person this blog portrays me as, though.

But, true to form, I have some things to complain about today, again. So what else is new?

I have this friend. We've been friends since 9th grade. Her parents were well-to-do, and she had that kind of attitude. I am not saying that all people who have been brought up privileged are this way, because I do know several people who grew up in affluent households whose parents raised them to be responsible, hardworking people who gave back to their communities. Not this girl. Her parents basically gave her anything she wanted. When she went to college, her parents paid for her tuition, her rent, her groceries, her clothes, everything. Thus she never had to work, her entire life.

She also didn't take university all that seriously. She first started out majoring in German, because she said she was fluent in German (she has a very inflated sense of her abilities - her fluency stemmed from her grandmother being from Germany, and her knowing a few phrases that her granny taught her). When she failed and was kicked out of that program, she moved to being fluent in French (she went to French Camp once in junior high). Failed and kicked out of that one, too. Of course none of this was ever her fault - she always had an excuse such as the professor didn't like her, the professor didn't really know anything and when she did things correctly he mistakenly thought she was doing it wrong, another professor didn't like her because she's so beautiful and the female prof felt threatened by her.

She finally decided (in her third year of college, with only about two credits to her name) to go into computer science. Fantastic. Very soon after starting the CS program, she started dating a CS genius who had graduated the year previous, and was now working for a new company and making very good money.

During her computer sci degree, she would ask her boyfriend to "help" her with her assignments and he would basically end up doing them. I know this because I am close friends with the boyfriend's best friend (3 'friend's in one sentence! fantastic!). Boyfriend was a bit frustrated at all this but this girl, she would walk all over him. Yes his fault for letting the relationship be this way but she was his first relationship. He didn't know how to assert himself, and she... did.

Anyway. Another friend of mine was working in CS at an actual IT/ software development company when this girl needed a work-study for her co op program. She knew him through me, and so he recommended her for a position there. After all, she was getting all A's in her program, so what harm? Apparently she treated everyone there as if they knew nothing and she was wonderful, but she messed up every program they had her work on. She also totally went against the non-disclosure contract she signed (they were developing software that is now really popular and vital to most peoples' computer usage- this was in the late 90s) by telling anyone and everyone about every project they were working on. AND, she continually hinted to her boyfriend that the boss of the company was hitting on her all the time.

So she finally graduated. She applied for a job at the place where she'd done her work-study but didn't get one. She said it was because she had spurned the boss' advances (she doesn't, of course, realize that the boss is gay). She did manage to get a job. She quit the job after three weeks, because she was being sexually harassed by the boss. Her parents were still paying her rent and everything, so it was alright. She eventually got another job, but again, interestingly enough, the boss there was sexually harassing her. She quit again. This happened two or three more times. Get a job, start working, boss sexually harasses you, quit. Funnily enough she never raised a complaint about any of these companies.

Then she married her boyfriend, who at this point was quite rich (she didn't hesitate to point this out - "I'm going to marry a millionaire!" "Oh, can you believe he's a millionaire?" - seriously the word "millionaire" was her favorite for a while). She decided to go back to school to become a marine biologist. She went for a year, thus not having to find a job, but also only passing two of the six classes she took. Unfortunately it turns out that these professors were just as stupid as her previous ones, and couldn't see that she's a genius and should have A's in every class.

Now, I'm not saying that my friend is stupid. She's not. She is quite intelligent. She did very well in high school. However she is not one who accepts that she gets things wrong, so if someone tries to correct her errors, she insists that she's right and they're wrong, and does nothing to modify what she's doing. It's very difficult to learn, if you think that you already know everything.

Anyway. When the school scheme didn't work out, she decided to have a child. All through her pregnancy she would call me and complain that she didn't want kids, it was her husband's idea, but that she sure as hell wasn't going back to work once this kid was born. She also had a ton of attention-seeking behavior going on. Five times in the first and second trimesters she was positive she was having a miscarriage and was in the ER. Not one of these times did she even have any bleeding. The child was moving. Twice she was rushed in via ambulance (which she called for herself). At my birthday party, two months before her due date, she "went into labor". Her water broke, she says. Seeing as she didn't give birth for another two months and wasn't on bed rest or anything in the interim, I'm going to say that she peed her pants. On my sofa. Fantastic.

I know that people go into early labor all the time. Maybe it was real. Having known her for nearly 20 years now, I'm thinking it was not.

Of course her child was born five days after the due date, two months later (the super-secret due date that she never told anyone, but the husband told me because he didn't realize that he wasn't supposed to tell anyone). And my friend STILL told everyone that the baby was premature. That the baby was so underweight (six pounds. Not huge, but not frail). So premature that the baby was unable to latch on to the breast and eat, so she fed him with an eyedropper. Meanwhile when the father gave him a bottle the first night (my friend was breastfeeding but was too "ill" to do so for the first two days after giving birth) he latched on and ate like a champ... but after that oh no, the child wasn't eating, this was terrible, eyedropper time. She got plenty of sympathy through this. The baby also lost quite a bit of weight but that helped to make her story look good.

My friend now has two children, a boy and a girl (yes, there was as much drama with the second child as with the first - and how many times did she tell me that she didn't want a second child, that her husband "had to have a girl"... if you don't want a second child, you don't have a second child; it's your body and if your husband is "forcing" you to have children then maybe you shouldn't be with him. I don't think this was the case though). She's officially a Stay At Home Mom. Which is great, if you can afford it, which they mostly can (they had to sell the $750 000 house she insisted on buying when they were first married, because the IT field isn't as lucrative as it once was, but her husband owned another, smaller house in a less-desirable neighborhood so they moved there but she was not happy about it) and if you are actually taking care of your children.

My friend spends her time reading, knitting, and watching TV, and the kids are ignored all day. Their house is a mess. They had a cleaning lady at one point, but had to give her up when they moved to the new house. Now it's a biohazard to walk into the kitchen. They have both had accidents - falling down stairs, swallowing things they shouldn't, drinking paint, the little boy sewed his finger with the sewing machine once - that could have been avoided had she been watching them. None of these accidents were my friend's fault though - why did her husband leave paint out (it was in the garage, on a shelf, but in a pop bottle because apparently that keeps paint fresher. How a three year old leaves the house and gets into the detached garage without someone noticing her leaving the house, I don't know)? Why didn't he unplug the sewing machine (it's her sewing machine, not his)? So on, so forth.

The husband is working from 7 am to 7 or 8 pm. He should be home more but needs to work these long hours in order to make the money to buy all the things she wants (the latest? a loom. A LOOM. Which she used twice, and hasn't been touched since, four months later).

On the knitting thing - I taught her to knit. It's now five years later and she is telling everyone she's been knitting since she was six. She lies about so many things. Once when I and a bunch of people were at her house she was telling us how she was a fantastic violinist - so fantastic that her grandfather left her his violin in his will, and she plays it every day. Someone asked her to play us something. She demurred at first, saying she didn't want to "bore" us. People insisted. She said she wasn't sure if the violin was in tune. More insisting, so she went upstairs to get it. She came back down 20 seconds later saying that she couldn't find the violin. You play something every day but you don't know where it is?

Her oldest child is now school age. Started kindergarten last year. Of course she chose a private school that would cater to her child's special needs. I've been around this kid alot. He's normal. He's not gifted. He's charming and cute, of average intelligence. He's a bit introverted, because his mother never had him socialize with other children. Off he went to school for a year. According to the husband's best friend, he enjoyed school, did well enough, had a bit of trouble at first mixing in because he'd never been around children other than his sister before, but eventually adapted and was happy.

The youngest child is close to school age (should start kindergarten next year). She had promised that once both kids were in school, she would go back to work. Over the summer, she decided that school wasn't the right place for her child - that he was too smart to be in a classroom with 20 other kids, that he needed a more specialized curriculum. So now she's homeschooling.

According to the husband's best friend, the husband told him that the tests that the little boy took last year with psychiatrists showed that he is of average intelligence. He's not gifted. He does a bit better with math than he does with verbal stuff. According to the husband's sister, the story that was told to *her* by my friend, the mom, is that the little boy is at a seventh-grade level in math (he's six), and that homeschooling is the best thing for him, especially since she (the mom) had been a gifted child in school and knew how he was feeling. (now to be honest I wouldn't be surprised if the kids are more able in some areas than others. Their mother is very intelligent, and their father actually *is* gifted, was skipped from third grade to sixth, because he's a frickin' genius).

She started the homeschooling a few weeks ago. It is not going well. Her kid doesn't want to listen to her. He's bored. She has him doing workbooks that she bought at costco. Nothing wrong with those as a supplement but seriously, sitting your kid down with a workbook, saying "do this" and walking away for an hour does not a homeschooler make. She says she's halfway through the year's math curriculum already, after three weeks. Meanwhile the other kid, the little girl, is also being ignored while Mom "teaches" the other one.

Homeschooling is hard work. It takes hours of planning. It takes so much discipline and imagination. It's not just workbooks and trips to the science center once a year.

I know, for someone without children of my own, that I'm being awfully judgmental. I just think that if you are having children, you should commit fully to them. If you're not able to homeschool because you're busy watching Buffy reruns, or because you're impatient, then don't homeschool. If you don't want to work, don't keep making up excuses or using your kids as a reason to stay home. Just say that you don't want to work. Sure, maybe your husband won't be happy with you, but hey, you could always go back to living off your parents.