Sleeping Well Tonight

WARNING: This is a good old fashioned rant with TMI galore. Sorry in advance.

I hate confrontation. Hate. Hate. Hate.

I do whatever it takes to make it go away as painlessly as possible even if it means more work and inconvenience for me. I'd rather get a root canal than call someone out on the carpet.

Then today happened.

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I had three things going for me today to help me overcome my dread:

1. A bad case of PMS

2. An early morning phone call from one of Cami's friends informing her that she could no longer walk with Cami the half mile to the bus stop, leaving her to either walk by herself or have me accompany her. No advance warning. No explanation.

3. An inept football coach who has been calling me twice a week to scold me for spending too much money on the spaghetti dinner and insisting, despite my repeated heated protests, that he would find a way to get me the rest of the money at great inconvenience to himself. No gratitude has even once been expressed and no matter that I'd told him no less than 8-10 times to consider it our gift to the football team and that I had no desire to be further reimbursed, he just couldn't seem to let it go. (NOTE: It was not with selfless magnanimity that I refused the money, but with an ever increasing desperation to make him stop rubbing my face in it.) Finally, yesterday Spencer informed me that the coach was selling drinks to the boys after practice telling them that it was so they could pay me back. OUCH! The guilt he kept heaping on me was bad enough, but embarrassing me in front of all the boys ?! Double OUCH!

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I'm not sure that any one of these cases by themselves would have driven me to confront my fear of confrontation head-on, but today I couldn't seem to stop myself. I sent two long and somewhat bold emails outlining exactly how inconsiderate/stupid they were being (in a mostly nice way of course) and exactly what they needed to do to make things right again.

Thankfully the whole thing with Cami's friend turned out to be a big misunderstanding and was easily remedied with a quick chat on the phone. Cami still has a bus stop partner and it's all good.

Football coach ineptitude though is another story. So I went to pick up Spencer from football tonight and was immediately handed the proceeds of the coach's drink fundraiser (about $70). Livid that once again he had completely disregarded my own wishes and continued to make me feel like I'd inconvenienced him more than I'd helped, I went and found the coach still on the field. After handing the money back to him I told him that if he ever mentioned the money issue ever again that I would quit my job as meal coordinator on the spot and that he could start cooking all the pre-game meals himself. I then went on to tell him although I understood his desire to make sure that parents were being fairly compensated for the meals they provided, that it was a complete insult to my intelligence to repeatedly bring it up (without ever once expressing gratitude) despite our clear wishes to let it go.

Guess what? It's all good now too (and I didn't even cry). It's resolved. He's happy. I'm happy, even though I still think he's an insensitive, over-bearing, ungrateful jerk, but at least now he has an inkling of the fact too.