I Hate Frosted Flakes

You know, when I make plans I do them in either pencil or ink. If it's in pencil, I can erase it. If it's in ink I don't want to make my calendar look messy by scribbling it out. By now, I know who to pencil in and who to ink in.

So, my slightly gray-haired friends, I will refer to our hair as frosted. The flake part is next. I'm talking about flaky people who cancel plans on you with poor excuses. I have made plans as couples and they usually don't cancel. Very rarely. But I have made plans for lunch or something and I have actually gone to the meeting place only to receive a phone call while waiting saying they're not coming. Is that so rude?

And usually it is not an emergency situation. "Oh, I forgot my nephew had a soccer game" or "my child has homework and I need to help them." Pu-leez! I know it's important to be "Aunt of the Year", but you have just ruined my plans for the day. And come on - your seventh grader's life will not be doomed (and shouldn't they be doing their homework and not you?) if you go to lunch with your friend!

Do people not respect your time enough to not cancel at the last minute? Really, my thoughts are "they're probably just not in the mood to go out", "they spent their lunch money" or "what a flake". It's hurtful when so called friends do that.

I made plans with two friends for lunch one day. One I thought I could "ink" in and the other was definitely graphite. Sure enough, as I'm getting ready to go to lunch with high school girlfriends, Ms. Inky calls and said Ms. Pencil couldn't make it, so let's plan it for another day when Ms. Pencil could come. I wanted to say, "Ms. Pencil will never come, so let's just go out without her," but I wasn't sure that Ms. Ink knew that about Ms. Pencil, or even if Ms. Pencil was only "Ms. Pencil" with me. When I caught up with Ms. Pencil her lame-o excuse was, "I'm sorry. I forgot that I had plans with my husband to clean out the garage." ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME? Don't you have to eat lunch anyway? PU-LEEZ! I have not attempted to go to lunch with Ms. Pencil since (though she suggests it "Let's go to lunch sometime), and you know, I don't think she misses me. Ms. Ink of course, has been a lot more reliable.

I had a visitor coming up to stay the weekend with her daughters and I knew she was definitely a pencil. Sure enough, she called that Friday, "I'm so sorry. I can't come, I have so much to do." If I make plans with someone, it's not because I don't have anything to do. There will always be toilets to clean, floors to vacuum, dishes to do but if I've made plans - they are in stone unless an emergency comes up. I respect that the other person has also made plans and they were with me. I'm not going to look for excuses to get out of it or I wouldn't have made the plans in the first place.

So, I'm looking for more people to make plans with because I want to get out of cleaning my house on the weekend. A girl's gotta have fun.