Who DOES this??

[colliemommie]

Doorbell rings at 5:15 this evening, while I'm finishing supper, getting Kat up from her nap, and getting Bruce ready for work. At the door is a girl I used to be friendly with (before I couldn't put up with her bizairre family dramas and really overbearing husband anymore), and her two toddlers. She starts saying how they were at the Botanical Gardens and figured they would stop by on the way home to see how I was.

Who the hell does this?!? I would never stop by anyone's house without calling ahead, much less someone I haven't seen in over a year. The only person who comes by without calling is my next door neighbor, and we're super close.

And isn't that 5pm hour generally crazy for everyone? I know it's a bit more hectic in my house than others, since Bruce works nights, but aren't most people getting home from work and having supper around then anyway?

It took me ten minutes to get them out the door, while her boys are investigating the piles of tiles and supplies from the contractor and she keeps trying to make small talk. I feel bad for her; she has a pretty rotten life. But she did choose to marry her jackass husband and, anyway, if you need some companionship, fucking call me up first and we'll set a time to get together. Don't just "stop by".

Comments

[jadesymb.livejournal.com]

I did that to Laura once. I didn't have her phone number and her email bounced. We'd just moved back to AZ, and I wanted to contact her. I knew where she lived, so I just showed up. But it was just me, as it was before I had kids, and I only stayed a few minutes.

So if she had no other way to contact you, I can see that. But if she has your email or phone number, than this is nuts.

[colliemommie.livejournal.com]

She has both, which is why I can't understand what she was thinking. I'm starting to get concerned that her husband may have crossed the line from controlling to scary, and maybe this was her chance to get some support or tell someone without departing from his timetable.

If that was the case, though, just having Bruce here probably would have stopped her from saying anything. I'll give her a call in a day or two and see how she sounds.

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

I don't know, it seems a bit hungering-for-the-simpler-old-time-way-of-life instead. People used to do things like that all the time. I'm kind of sad people DON'T spontaneously drop in on each other more often-- now it's like, if your doorbell rings, it must be somebody trying to sell something, when back in the day it used to be a pleasant excitement-- OH, A FRIEND! -- or some junk. Like neighbors in sitcoms. Granted, probably not the best example of "pleasant."

[colliemommie.livejournal.com]

That's a completely different thing, though. Like I said, my neighbor pops over all the time, and that's fine by me. But she's someone I'm close to and see regularly, not someone I haven't seen at all in over a year. And Lisa doesn't come over at dinner time unless it's to drop something off and then run.

I might be being a little pregnant crazy, or it might be the fact that she let her kids invade my house without even being asked in, but it just seemed strange to me.

[colliemommie.livejournal.com]

If she was someone I saw regularly, or if had been the middle of the afternoon instead of 515 in the evening, I would just have been a nice surprise. But it's been over a year since we even talked, so it seemed strange to me.

[filkferengi]

That's even more egregious than the clients who invade my lawyerspouse's office with multiple wired progeny & bring nothing for them to do.