Brick Wall

There's a woman at church with whom I work on doing stuff with the children quite often. I have no idea why, but she clearly can't stand me. She doesn't understand my humor, she ignores me as much as possible, and that line has gotten closer and closer to "all the time" as time has passed in the past 12 months.

For the life of me, I can't figure out what it was/is that I did/do that gets her hackles up. I have nothing against her at all although her oldest child annoys the Cuh-RAP out of me and I don't understand why she doesn't try to correct him. I've tried to joke with her, I've tried to show her that I understand how hard it is to stay home with kids all day and carry on with a career, she clearly knows I like kids in general (her other two are fine, and in fact her oldest is whip-smart and I do like him too in spite of his behavior).

Yet, this morning she totally took a comment I made completely wrong (when she cam in after activities had started, I jokingly said she was "late" to which she replied frostily that no she wasn't, in fact she'd been there since 8:30 and was only out of the room for a really good reason...which was true, and I was smiling when I said that to her. Even the kids in the room understood I was kidding!). This afternoon her Facebook was updated to say, "After seeing that I was upset about something not nice someone said to me today, my wonderful six-year-old made me this card. Tear." [and a picture of cute little card]

Now, granted, I'm not the only person she interacted with today, and I left church over two hours before that was posted, so it is eminently likely that someone else was "not nice" to her. But I am at my wit's end trying to figure out what to do. I guess I'm just going to have to write her a note (email or Facebook PM) or corner her at church somehow and ask her why she's upset with me. Part of the frustration I have is that she hasn't addressed it with me already, or dealt with whatever it is on her own, but she's fairly young and I probably wouldn't have been able to do that at her age. So....blergh.

Regardless, I have to figure this out soon, because the atmosphere just keeps getting more and more toxic when we're together. The kids have got to be picking it up at some level. I don't really enjoy working with the kids when I'm trying like mad not to say or do anything hurtful to her (which also annoys me because, really, we are there to work with the kids, so drop your attitude at the door, yo!). All of which makes me wonder if I come across somehow as being a right bitch, or just "old" and not worth her time, or what.

The more I'm around people, the more I like dogs. Really. So much less complicated.