Friends can be such a pain, sometimes...Long, possibly ranting story inside →[More:]I've had a friend, "Vicky" for over 22 years. Vicky's always been a meme-whatever she wants, she has to get her way. We started off as the girlfriends of two best friends, so the four of us always hung around together. We've all gone on to marry other people, but we all still remain friends through the years. Vicky used to swear she'd be married by 25, but didn't meet the right guy until she was in her 30's. They had a daughter, then a son (which took negotiations as her husband "Pete" would have been happy with one child). Then she called last fall to tell me she was pregnant with #3. That she had threatened, literally threatened, her husband to give her one more baby. She told him that "he owed her" because he had been unemployed for the previous year and a half. I went with her to an early ultrasound because he didn't want to take too much time off from his new job, and they'd seen something strange on the first ultrasound and so sent her to a specialist. She lives an hour from me.

Life has been a bit rough lately for us. My father-in-law's illness has been taking a toll. Still, when Vicky called and asked us to help her move her childrens' playroom from one area to another, so they could bring down the office upstairs and make that room their son's room, we went. Well, not only did she expect us to move a ridiculous amount of toys (which she complained all the time that the parts weren't kept together - her nanny's idea of picking up toys is to sweep them in a pile and toss them in bins or wherever), she expected us to help rip down the walls in the former playroom because she wanted her husband to put doors in so they could lock the family office. Then she gestured to the eight bags - bags! of baby clothes on the floor of the dining room and said maybe I could come back on one of my days off and help her go through them and sort them by size and gender. While my husband and I are moving toys, and then ripping out sheetrock, she and her husband are "planning" in another room! I felt like a hired hand. It's not the first time. We left after 1 because we had to pick up our daughter from work.

She called me about three weeks ago, on a Sunday. Crying. Hysterical. Pete was not finished with the room, she was supposed to be handling the kids but they were acting up (they are 2 and 4) and he simply HAD to work on the house stuff. She'd called family members and other friends and everyone had things to do. Well, so did I. We were in the middle of our spring cleanup, mulching, planting, edging, and constructing a new shed. We were dirty, and we still had things to do. So while I gave her as much emotional support as I could, I did not drop everything to rush to her side.

Well, I called her yesterday, to see how she was doing. I got a chilly reception. She told me that I haven't been there enough for her. That apparantly when she was having a break down, my flower beds were more important than she was. So I came back with the thought that she didn't want emotional support - what she wanted from that phone call was someone to come take over watching her kids. She tried to blame my husband for wanting to leave early the day we had gone to their house. My retort was that no one told us we'd be needed for demolition (we would have dressed differently if we'd known) and we did have an obligation to pick up our daughter from work. WE have kids, too, you know. Basically, she tossed at me the fact that I've spent time with my dying father-in-law, my recently widowed friend, and my MOM - but OMG, I apparantly don't have time for her. She said she thought it would be so nice if she and I could have gone through the baby clothes together, la la la. No, I said. Because she'd have expected me to wash, sort, fold, and organize all while she tells me how tired she is, how she can't bend over. I never realized that she only seems to count friendship by how much people do for her.

What gets me is that I've been there for: The end of her first engagement two months before that wedding; back spasms; sick cats; moving from her overfilled townhouse to a four bedroom Colonial which is now even more overfilled; man-troubles; buying a $300.00 bridesmaid dress that I couldn't afford for her wedding; listening to her make comments about the $35.00 skirt I chose for her to wear at my wedding; her mom's unexpected death; putting up a border in her nursery and painting a mural for her; her miscarriage; birthdays; holidays; everything. I say no, once, and now I'm forever damned. It's almost aggravating enough to not bother with her again. But what will I do with this baby blanket I've been knitting as a surprise for her?