Get a job, honey.

We have a neighbor in our complex who is very sweet and nice to us, but she never stops bitching about money. I've gotten to the point where if I see her coming, I wave and pretend to be incredibly busy, because if I engage at all, I'll be stuck in a half hour conversation (or rather, listening to a half hour rant) about her travails with the leasing office because they're trying to raise her rent, or the fact that she had to spend $50 on this or $40 on that and how her husband didn't get any overtime work last week so they're behind on their bills. Her husband, meanwhile, works for a company that is redoing Honolulu's sewer systems. He often has to work the night shift, has skin the color of a fish's underbelly because he never sees the light of day, and is constantly exhausted. The wife, on the other hand, doesn't work and doesn't want to work and seems to think that the solution to her problems is for her husband to work overtime or figure out a way to get more hours in or something.

I don't understand this attitude at all. I thinks she is being a selfish, lazy asshole. She wouldn't need to work full time. Even part-time would be enough to give them the cash to ease the burden, and it would mean that her husband wouldn't be completely fried and stressed out about working and supporting his family. He could spend some time with his kids and she could get off her ass and make herself useful and their lives would be better as a result. But I guess then she wouldn't have as much to complain about, and it seems like she really enjoys the complaining. So maybe she's doing just fine, and I should butt out. But it's much more fun to be nosy and tell people how they should live their lives.

I'm not sure why I'm so irritated about this. Maybe it's that I come from a long line of working women -- my mother had an awesome career in the foreign service, my grandmother owned her own business at a time when most women didn't work -- so the notion that I should get to sit on my ass like a schnorrer (Yiddish for a parasite or a moocher) while someone else works for my benefit is totally foreign to me. But anyway, it bugs me. As you can see.