Well, I Feel Sheepish

Classic Genie line from the Disney movie Aladdin. And don't I just feel sooooo sheepish. Hang on to your hats, this is long.

So, let's preface this by saying that I have been (and still am) completely delusional and certifiably crazy for the last year. I'm not kidding. Commit me. If you are here reading this then you got an email notifying you that I had to "move", so to speak. And now that unwanted traffic has cleared, we can give you the scoop.

Once upon a time there was a Wave. (It's turned into a fuckin' Tsunami recently, but, we'll get there). Daisy did her best to make it run smooth as butter. She was good at her job. Daisy is quiet and shy and she keeps to herself. We love Daisy.

One day Edith moved into the neighborhood. Edith is very enthusiastic. Edith is friendly and outgoing. (Her kids are a little on the, strange side, but hey, we need those in life.) Edith liked our little Wave so much that she decided to be "the president" of the Wave one year and Edith mistakenly thought that Daisy was unfriendly and grouchy during her reign and with a little to much bitching over a few years Daisy said, see ya' later.

This leaves our cute Lover Boy to winterized our little Wave. So me, Dolly and Lover Boy did our best to shut her down without doing too much damage.

After we shut her down it was MisAdventure's turn to be "the president" of the little Wave. First thing on our agenda? Find someone to captain this little Wave. MisAdventure called a neighbor. Nice lady, needs a job. She's outgoing, chatty and appears relatively competent. (APPEARS, is the operative word here.)

With a few hiccups along the way we got our little Wave up and running with Chatty Cathy. In working together so much Chatty Cathy became a "friend". Friends are people you talk to, confide in and sometimes solicit advice from. MisAdventure has a few friends, (Shocking isn't it) she has five that she regularly shares her life with and they have, what we call in the adult world, disgression. (There's two Mr. Roger's words for the day, folks.) We generally think of disgression as something akin to keeping one's trap clapped. You know, refraining from local broadcasting.

So, MisAdventure had a little mis-adventure along the way, during Chatty Cathy's first year in command. It was stressful boys and girls, to say the least. And we confided in Chatty Cathy about the going's on. Doh! Bad idea.

Fast forward to this year. MisAdventure is standing the restroom of the little Wave and she can hear Chatty Cathy doing what she does best, chatting. She is chatting about the current "president" of our little Wave, the Lovely Lady. MisAdventure doesn't like what is being said, 1) because it's gossip and 2) because it's false, untrue, BULLSHIT. The conversation continues and includes MisAdventure. Conveniently the information is 1) confidential, 2) twisted to be untrue 3) gossip.

In comes my three favorite "horsemen", if you will. Shock, embarrassment and nausea. You know, that horrid sinking feeling when something just isn't right. I decided that I should just ignore it and avoid Chatty Cathy from that point forward. I don't like gossip (unless it seems harmless) and Chatty Cathy EXCELS in gossip. My thought was that I would let her talk to me, correct what she was getting wrong and not offer anything. Then, she started talking about this silly little website. And coming to visit. And sharing with the neighbors. (I think she wants a career in broadcasting.) When the game of telephone began to degrade and shockingly, make me look like a complete ASS, we shut this silly site down and waited.

I thought that would be the end of it. Cathy's problem is that she can't keep her mouth shut and she can't deliver the correct information. She delivers what she thinks you want to hear, what's salacious and what makes her look good. Then I got "the call". The Lovely Lady interrupted the family 4th get away. The gossip about her, the Lovely Lady, had gotten back to her, pissed her off, and was supposedly started by, MisAdventure. Then, she ask me if I knew what was going on at the little Wave. The safety violations, common sense violations, a laundry list WAY TO LONG to list here...broken boilers starting on fire, chlorine dispensers exploding, chlorine chemicals being mixed and giving off gas, lifeguards being asked to go into said gassy room and get tools!!!! When she got to "And she is upset with Lover Boy because she says he doesn't do his job and he has a bad attitude", I stopped her. I was having deja-vu. (I seem to recall a similar incident last year, eh,Sparky?)Someone Cathy didn't like lost their job, conveniently.

The Lovely Lady felt that the safety and money issues were serious enough that we should sit down with Cathy. I got back Sunday night and Monday morning we sat down to talk. Woops.

I don't remember saying very much. Cathy is good at the "four horsemen" of fighting and I did what any individual does, I shut down. The Lovely Lady did her best to hold her own, but, alas, she too, in the end, could only look at me in bewilderment. I left feeling more confused than before we started.

Wednesday morning I took the Offspring up to do "swim lessons". (I'm just having them do laps and work on strokes) Cathy decided that before I left, she wanted to "talk" to me. (Yell, is more like it.) And she felt that this was appropriate to do with patrons, swim teachers and the Offspring standing, watching and listening...on the fricken stairs leading down to the pool deck!!! The Lovely Lady just happen to be there, standing behind me, listening like everyone else. When I got frustrated and chose to leave, Cathy started in on the Lovely Lady and tried to tell her things that I had said, not five minutes previous. I know you'll be shocked to know, she got it wrong and the she was bent when the Lovely Lady pointed it out.

In the car ride home all I could do was fume. Should I call Nellie and tell her to sell my membership, should I resign, should I ever go back? I was flooded with horror when I realized that she had been broadcasting very private converstation we had and the personal information all over the world. Worse, I let her influence my opinion about some very important people, one whom I totally misjudged! (The Lovely Lady tells me I have no choice but to come back. She wants to help the "drama queen", uh, into a new career?)I just want to go back to the days when Edith was upset that we shut down, or Nellie got her jumpers in a twist because so and so came to the pool to much....

And so we come to the fact that I am...INSANE. Crazy, delusional, stupid, pick a word, but I certainly didn't behave like a grown-up, and I feel sheepish. I let this Chatty Cathy sway my opinion. I'm such a dupe. A small consolation is that there are stories coming to the surface about this woman from outside sources. I wish I had listen the first time...eh, Sparky?