sightings

Over the last ~8 years, I have noticed that people are more and more afraid to say “no” in any form.

“No” can be anything from a simple “No, thank you,” to “it wasn’t really rape because I was too tired to insist ‘no’.”

Yes, the spectrum is broad.

My/Our Backstory

Disclosure: In all fairness, this is the most transparent example we have. It’s not the “worst” or the most poignant.

I had a co-worker/friend who we regularly invited to our Halloween parties. She was a friend from work that I’d love to hang out with in a more casual setting

For Halloween, people get lots of invitations for the big party nights leading up that holiday. We always held our party on “the Saturday before or on Halloween”, like everyone else did. Turns out, that’s her kid’s birthday weekend ~every year. And, since he’s a nearly-Halloween baby, they threw a big party with amazing decorations and a haunted house in their garage and invited every friend he’d ever met. I totally understood that she could “never” come to our party. Yet, every year, she’d neglect to RSVP (on eVite, no less! It’s just one click.) because she was afraid of disappointing me. I’d even get emails from her explaining why she couldn’t RSVP. Huh?

Um, no.

RSVP is an acronym for the French expression répondez s’il vous plaît, which translates to “please respond”. It is the guest’s responsibility to respond whether or not s/he will attend the event. This is because the host/ess need a head count for food and drinks and party favors and costume contest prizes.

By not responding, these potential guests cause a hardship on the host/ess and other guests. After all, who wants to host a party without enough beverages? Who wants to attend a party without enough food? Who wants to buy enough food/drinks for all the potential guests who might show up but didn’t let you know if they really will or not? Especially in this “double dip” recession, be polite. RSVP “Yes” OR “No”!

It’s okay to say, “no”.

Really, it is! It’s far preferable to ignoring the invitation. It’s even preferable to a separate email explaining why you can’t RSVP instead of just clicking the “no” button on the eVite. Not everyone can attend every event. It’s okay to politely decline.

Correlating Examples

One of Emil’s friends also held a Halloween party on the same weekend every year. He invited us, and we said “sorry, no, we have a party, too”. We invited them with the same response. We had the courtesy to RSVP to each others’ parties. If the calendars had ever fallen out of–or is it into?–sync, we’d have attended their party in a heart beat. And, vice versa.

In addition, we routinely went to other parties on subsequent or same weekends. We’ve partied on both Friday and Saturday, crawled next door to the other party on the same night, had guests from that party show up at our house, done full-on party swap with our guests and their’s (neighbors can do these things), and attended parties on the “other” weekend celebrating the holiday.

And, we still ended up in the bar district on Halloween night most years. With Halloween, it’s totally doable.

Recently

Especially since we are in a new market, I’ve said yes to a lot of volunteer opportunities. I’ve donated gift certificates, photographed events for free, and given a lot of my time and/or talents to a wide variety of events. All for the sake of getting As You Wish and Lori Luza in front of people who might offer or refer business to me.

One example: After running an online promotion, I was asked to donate to a school. While I was happy to do it, it was a lot more work than I anticipated with regard to the setup and pickup. I have no idea who bought my gift certificate. I still–more than a year later–don’t know what they made. I can’t blog their event and help showcase them because I don’t have even the most basic of details. And without a claim on the gift certificate, I didn’t make any money on print sales to make up for the donation hassle I experienced with this “charity”.

There have been other examples, too (including one where I hauled trash) where I was “invisible”.

To Be Fair

There are also shining examples of great donor/volunteer experiences. I’ve been over-the-top recognized, gloriously thanked, and truly brought to tears with adoration and appreciation. This is not about those! This is about the opposite experiences.

For two years, now, I’ve offered to shoot the Austin Alumnae Zeta Tau Alpha event and put a gift certificate in their auction. Every single part of it was smooth, all recognition was given, and I landed wonderful new clients, too! My sisters came through for me.

Why: facebook.

I believe that facebook is a large–and the most recent–part of the reason for this dodgy behavior. No longer do people have to say “no” to things. They can just ignore them indefinitely. In fact, facebook changed “Become a Fan” to “Like” because the language implies less commitment. Really? It’s a commitment to be a fan, now? And, facebook changed the verbiage for declining a friend from “no” to “ignore (for now)”. No wonder no one can RSVP “yes” or “no” to an event. <sarcasm>Thank you</sarcasm>, facebook, you’ve just dumbed-down basic commitment to the level we all feared. So, when did facebook get to dictate the standard for other etiquette? How it happens on facebook is not a fair comparison to how it will/might happen in real life, especially if postage and catering are involved!

Resolution

My Resolution–consider this a Spring Cleaning–is that I will say: “no, thank you”, “no”, “nope”, “nuh uh”, and (again) “no” more often. I will politely decline any opportunity that I feel won’t give me (or my business) proper billing. I give a polite “No, thank you,” to any group that doesn’t have good web/blog and social media presences. I need to get fair marketing mileage out of any donation.

Curious?

If you care how I plan to meter this out for As You Wish, you can read my donations expectations. I plan to be a lot more strict than that with my personal obligations. After all, time I spend with Emil, family, and friends is priceless.

The Future

Are we so afraid to politely say “yes” or “no” that we’ll stop having any kind of commitment? Will weddings and other major events become a free-for-all of an unknown number of guests that affects a great deal of expensive logistics? Will casual get-togethers become logistical nightmares?

The Telling Past

Dare I recall the story of the “usual” crowd being invited to our regular Tuesday Ninfa’s gathering. (We averaged 8-10 people, but that week, we changed the count with the hostess far too many times, until it was over 20. After that night, they made a rule: 8 maximum on Tuesdays. We were that much of a burden on their operations and processes. How embarrassing! If we’d know we’d be a group of 20+, I’d have called them that afternoon to ask for the side room.)

Finally

If we can’t say “yes” and mean it, how will we ever accomplish anything? If we can’t say “no” and mean it, how will each of us ever craft out time for ourselves or our other obligations?

I have several friends with whom I could talk for hours upon hours. Usually, it’s because we haven’t seen each other in days/weeks/months and there is much to share. Sometimes, it’s just the drama that has unfolded in the last ~24 hours since we talked before.

These talks always meander and wander from one topic to the next and sometimes come back to the original story with an, “Oh! so I didn’t finish the story about…” It’s always been a natural flow of conversation.

Sometimes, the topic change is random. Sometimes, it’s an Ack!-I-have-to-interrupt-to-tell-you-this-before-I-forget moment.

Years ago, Jessica and I nick named these sudden topic changes ping-pong… or pong for short.

Recently, facebook “ponged” at me!

With all that is going on and with Emil’s break between jobs, we decided to take a mini vacation. I suggested a lake and to camp for one night, but Emil went one better. He found a cute cabin with our own deck/yard for a very reasonable price.

The view from the back of our cabin. (from my phone; more to come when I can download them from the camera)

So, we set an alarm for 9am and ventured out into the world to run a couple of errands on our way out of town. We stopped for lunch at Veggie Heaven (thank you, again, Emil for going there with me!) where I had vegan “shrimp” that both looked and tasted like the real thing. Emil had faux-chicken quesadillas and said they were good. yay! I hope that means he’ll go back.

Because we follow TxDOTAustin on Twitter, we knew that I-35 was down to one lane in south Austin for a bridge repair. So, we pulled out our Texas atlas and VZ Navigator and headed there via the back roads. We took a quick break at Bubba’s general store, stopped for a close view of Austin’s Hindu temple (& made a note of when they allow full tours), drove through cute town of Wimberly, and meandered our way to the south side of Canyon Lake. We settled in and headed back out for some adventuring!

We went to the dam and the gorge overlook. In 2002 when 34″ of rain hit the area in a day (their normal amount for a whole year; also: 1.5x the volume in the whole lake is what overflowed). The overflow had to let so much water through that it created/revealed a gorge. We are taking a tour of it on Thursday morning before we head back to Austin, so we’ll have more pictures to share and more information about it.

A view of the lake from atop the dam.

The hills on the other side of the dam. The little white building near the center of the image is a tiny Catholic church.

Next, we drove around the lake to see what there is. It’s a hodgepodge of cool homes/neighborhoods, fun bars/restaurants, seedy looking joints, and former business where the signs were never removed. The Canyon Lake area could use some decent zoning. Still, we found the only bar/restaurant on the water–at one of the marinas. While they don’t have a vegan option on their menu, I was able to create a mostly-vegan meal of a huge salad, garlic rosemary potatoes, and grilled asparagus. Emil had a burger and fries (surprise). We walked waddled down to the marina and found a place to rent boats. If we can rent a sailboat tomorrow, that is our plan for fun!

On the way home from dinner, we did a bit more exploring before heading back to our “private” deck at the cabin. It’s a beautiful night for sitting outside. The half-moon is bright and has a purple hue to it. The park’s resident cats are curious about us. Emil’s eating a Hershey bar and I have a Shiner Blonde beside me.

mmmmm….from a heavenly lunch to a heavenly trip to a heavenly evening with the love of my life.

bliss. zen. nom. namaste. just what we needed.

I remember seeing Ferris Bueller’s Day Off for the first time and thinking, “Daddy would hate

Now, many years later, it’s a board game.

I can’t wait to find this to take to one of our Board Game gatherings!

Thanks be to our friends Lani & Benn for this glorious image they found.

No, we’ve never really done this, exactly, to any of our cats, but rest assured that, during play time, they got some version of this game (under close supervision, of course!).

Ladies, how many of you can identify with this–ahem–experience. ew and yuk!

This past weekend, I went to a movie theatre in Santa Monica to take in a viewing of True Grit with my friend Tim. Upon arrival, I had to hit the ladies’ room. I walked in and began the

(1) push door open

(2) glance

(3) WTF – next stall

routine until I found one fit to use.

Ladies – you’re getting bitch slapped.

…

Read the rest of her rant at: Redhead Writing where she even references WebMD’s article, “What Can You Catch in Restrooms?”

It was over a decade ago when Emil put a ring on my finger and we Promised To Be Together Forever™…and I still read The Knot.com (of course, it wasn’t around much when we were wedding planning and now I read it for different reasons…)

…but this one made me smile!

Unless you’ve ignored our blog for several years, you know that we are big fans of Improv Everywhere. Just a few days ago, they held their 7th .mp3 experiment. Basically, everyone who follows them knows to plan to meet at the same day/time, downloads the same .mp3 file to their iPod, and presses play at the same designated time. Then, they just do what the .mp3 tells ‘em and hilarity ensues! Click the image to see the video and the whole story of this year’s experiment!

Over 3000 people showed up for this year’s experiment. Wow! Talk about a flash mob!