Dirty Little Secret

Dear charity-seeking neighbor,

We have never met. In fact, I don’t even have a nodding acquaintance with anyone in your section of the cul-de-sac. And yet you sent me this request for a donation to your favorite cause. I am not sure why this bothers me more than if your group had sent me a direct donation request, but it does. Am I suppose to think, “Gee, I’ll give my charity dollars to THIS charity because the lady down the street supports it,”? Here’s the thing; I don’t know you. You could be a Tea Party member. Or a Klan member (same difference?). Living on my street doesn’t tell me anything about your personality. As for your charity, I have only vaguely heard of it and your donation request offered no information. So, no, I won’t be sending them any money. Ever.

Sincerely,

The loud woman from down the street

Dear leaf-blower addicts,

You are not making the world a better place. You are a leading contributor of noise and air pollution. You are wasting precious gas. And by tonight, all that crap you blew off the sidewalk will be right back where it started. Special note to the landscapers of my neighborhood: STOP using the LEAF-BLOWER around my patio, you are actually blowing dirt onto it. Also, stop moving my chairs.

Seriously,

The messy lady on the end

Dear old people who coo at my son

Thank you for smiling instead of wincing when he starts screaming. Thank you for engaging him when I run out of energy. I bet none of you own leaf-blowers. In short, I love you.

Thanks,

The tired lady with the screaming toddler

Dear Ben & Jerry’s,

Stop putting crack in your ice cream. I know it’s in there, because ever since I had “Chocolate Therapy” the other night, I can’t stop craving it. Just once and I am totally hooked. . .just like all those people on Intervention and Addiction. My husband swears that you are good guys and would never do something so dangerous. He says it’s MY problem. So could you please announce that you’re taking the crack out? Then I can prove that I’m right and stop the cravings.

Thanks,

The lady who is running out of elastic-waist pants

Dear NBC,

First you wouldn’t spend the money to advertise how awesome Friday Night Lights is. Then you put Jay Leno on all the time, when Jay is just not that funny to people under 70. Then you screw Conan O’Brien, who is not only funny but classier than you’ll ever be. If you fuck with Mercy, 30 Rock or Community, you’re dead to me.

Sincerely,

The lady who watches way too much TV

As I believe I have mentioned before, we are pretty much the poorest people living in Stuck-Up. We have to do things like decide which bill to pay and drive around in a car with a busted mirror because we just don’t make very much money. That’s not the norm here in Stuck-Up, where every family seems to have at least one pristine Lexus and dropping a couple of thousand dollars on a toddler birthday party is no big deal. But hey, that’s great for them. Maybe if you all start buying things through my Amazon stores and clicking the ads on my on other blog we’ll be able to buy a new car too.

Er, anyway. This is actually not a plea for for you to check out my other sites. It’s a bitch session about Stuck-Up.

Does your grocery store have those little paper tags by the cash register that you can rip off to show that you want to donate $1, $3 or $5 to your local food bank? You can just rip them off and add them to your pile of groceries right then, no having to mail envelopes or write checks. Easy, right?

Apparently, I am the only person at the Stuck-Up grocery store who pulls off the tags, EVER. Every time I rip one off (and it’s only the $1 one because, er, we’re generally teetering on the edge of broke-ness) the cashier looks at me like I’m a weirdo. And I’ll tell you something else – the thickness of the stack of tags doesn’t ever change. I am slowly peeling them off one at a time. The $5 and $3 stacks are STILL full.

Now, I know that a lot of my townsfolk go to fundraising dinner-dances and write checks to whatever charity is in this year. Some of them do a lot more than that, too. But how come no one can donate a dollar to the food bank while shopping at the grocery store? These same people brought in boxes of food to my daughter’s preschool. . .where they wound up at the same food bank.

Can someone please explain this to me?