When good friends go bad

I try  to be a patient person.  I know it's not one of my strengths, but I work at it.  However, twhen people try to take advantage of that patience, I kinda go a little Hulk-like. Let me share why I am starting to get a little green...

It's Tuesday night.  I had late meetings at work.  I'm exhausted.  I made plans to relax at the house while drinking a few beers and doing nothing.  It's one of my favorite ways to spend an evening.  I was really looking forward to it.  5:00- my friend Katie texts me asking if I want to go out with her that night.  I tried to pull the whole I'm too tired, but she was not thwarted. Finally she pulls the trump card: "you're going out of town and by the time you get back I'll have moved.  This is our last time to hang out." Guilt much? So I agree to meet her for an hour or so at 6:30.  6:40 I'm sitting at the bar.  Alone.  I get a text.  "Haven't left yet, waiting on Rebecca to get ready." Ummm, so I guess Rebecca is coming too? So much for our last chance to hang out together.  6:45 text from Katie "just left. Andrea should be there at 7:30." Ok, I guess this is turning into a party.  Good thing I rearranged MY plans for YOU. Grr. 7:00 "Just got to JoAnn's. This is taking forever!" Why are you going to the fabric store when you were supposed to meet me half an hour ago?! 7:37 she and Rebecca (who despises me, by the way and did not say one word to me while there) finally arrive.  They also let me know that they stopped at OfficeMax and Target along the way.  Seriously? What kind of friend is this that leaves me sitting alone at a bar for over an hour? The good thing is that her delay allowed me to catch up with other friends via text message and make new friends while chatting with my waitress.

This brings us to today's story. I run a mommy group.  I love my mommy group.  I also have a lot of rules so that I don't get pissed off by the mommy group. For example: we have to have more than four members attending an event or the event gets canceled.  Also, you cannot change your RSVP for an event within twelve hours of the event.  These rules seem common sense to me.  I put a lot of time and effort into this group.  It's not worth my time if no one is going to show up.  It's also quite rude if you cancel to anything last minute.  I mean, would you expect a guy to call you back if you canceled a date thirty minutes before he was supposed to pick you up? If so, you must be really hot or delusional.  Anyway, as of last night, we had ten people coming to the craft event today (we were having the kids make Thanksgiving cards). I really dislike craft events.  They are stressful. I would have loved to cancel this event, but looking at last night's RSVPs I had no justification to do so.  By the time I got up this morning,  the list was down to seven.  Ok, still not low enough to cancel.  And I really wanted to cancel.  Thomas was being a lunatic this morning.  He had a tantrum at EVERYTHING.  The last thing I wanted to do was get him in the car, shop for the craft supplies, get to our event, set up the craft, and deal with mommy group people. But I did.  Our event was set to start at 10:30.  At 10:00 (as I'm in the checkout line to buy the craft supplies) three more people canceled.  Are you keeping track? Yeah, that puts us down to four members. I could have canceled the event! I couldn't now because it's 10:00! Most of the remaining people would have left their houses already. Arrrrgggghhhh! Oh, and meanwhile, Thomas is SCREAMING. The whole time.  Ok, not the whole time.  Every few minutes he would stop to slap his sister so that I could get them both screaming at once. I was in just a bit of a bad mood to say the least. So this is the email I sent to the group: