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So a few months back my wife hosted a Daisy Scouts gardening workshop and got along famously with one of the other moms, who struck me as a little bit weird. But my wife can use more friends, so we went over there for dinner a few weeks later.
They served gluten free pasta, no sauce and chicken sausages. That's it. The parmesan cheese only came out when my kids asked for it. I thought it was weird. The conversation was funny too. The mother was confident that aromatherapy provided by a chiropractor had cured one of her daughter's allergies. The husband likes Jackson Browne, which I won't complain about because I do too, but he refers to him as 'Jackson.' He also was on his way out to a men's meeting, 'powerful stuff' where they get together and, like, they're into native American culture and stuff. I asked him if he was interested in any particular group or region, but apparently an anthropological approach to the issue wasn't something he'd considered before. He pointed out that he'd made a drum, but all it was was a giant frame drum made by Remo where he'd painted a buffalo on the head.
Still, no big deal, pleasant enough evening.
Then a few weeks later my wife gets an invite to a seminar of some sort they're hosting, pitched a sort of a relationship workshop. I said no fucking way, I got a lawn to mow. But my wife still likes them so she signs up and takes the kids since there's a separate workshop for them.
Turns out it's for the Landmark Foundation, some bullshit for-profit self-help corporation with the catchphrase of learning 'what you don't know you don't know' among others; this was a recruiting workshop, since Landmark by all accounts is extremely driven by high pressure from the organization for participants to get others to attend. Fortunately it didn't work on my wife OR kids. We got a good laugh later out of reading some of the articles from skeptics. But yeah, yueeeeesh.
Still a few weeks later, my wife's set up a playdate with a new Japanese family to the area and somehow these crazy guys invite themselves. Again, not a huge deal, but a bit weird, especially when they show up with an origami book written in Japanese and expect the Japanese kids to be able to read it to their kids and do origami together. The mom leaves to go to the store, then shows up at like an hour later absolutely furious at her husband for not answering the phone because they're having people over shortly. She actually says 'I cann't come say gooodbye because WE DON'T HAVE TIME!' She'd also left 4 voicemails on my wife's phone because her husband wasn't answering.
At this point I start to think that she is just fucking nuts.
Now, during the playdate the father of the crazy family had asked me about paddle, said he wanted to try sometime, so I said I'll mention it to my wife and she can set up a day at the pool for the families and I can give you a paddle intro while they're swimming.
A week later the crazy mom emailed my wife to say 'when can we set that up?' in other words 'we can't wait to be invited so invite us now.' My wife was in good spirits so just got a laugh about it and invited them for Sunday. Nuh-uh, they said, we can't, let's go Saturday. Alright, whatever, let's aim for 4-8.
In the meantime the crazy woman, who now has a broken foot, somehow browbeats my wife into agreeing to take her to a 'pre-demo sale' (my wife goes somewhat frequently to look for cool shit). While on the road, crazy lady starts in with armchair psychologist diagnoses of my daughter (who's never had any issues, unlike my son) and tells us her own daughter had the same issues my daughter has (even though we're very confident our daughter has no issues) regarding perceptions of safe zones, strangers, etc., and they were able to cure her with, you got it, aromatherapy. Apparently they were exposing her to foul smells three times a day. Yep.
The afternoon of the pool date, though, was supposed to run 4-8. They put it back to 5, then got to our place at 5:25. Then on arriving at the pool we said 'alright let's get a swim and then we can come up for dinner (at the picnic area; we'd brought picnic dinners) in an hour or so.' They said 'NO - our kids are starving, we're eating NOW!'
Meeting just got here, more this afternoon.
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so I'm in a band now:
album ---> http://greenwoodburns.bandcamp.com/releases
Soundcloud ---> http://soundcloud.com/greenwood-burns
my own stuff -->http://soundcloud.com/lonesomedstringband
avy by buckshot_defunct
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