Another month already?! This year appears to be flying by. Did everyone survive the school break last month? Dontcha just love it that the school board now publishes on their calendar that only one week is Spring Break and the second week is simply – school not in session. Put that on the list of ‘Things that Drive me Crazy’ also known as ‘Things I Have No Control over but Affect my Life and Not in a Good Way.’
I suspect everyone has a version of this list. We probably have over-lapping entries. The criteria to make my list is any ridiculous, annoying, nonsensical ‘thing’ that once experienced, makes you feel your head will explode.
Please, allow me to expand…
1. Drivers who wait until they are well into the intersection and have come to a halt before turning on their left-hand turn indicator.
2. People who just stop at the top of escalators or at the entrance to stores and use that desirable location to look for their shopping list or take a call or scratch their arm or stare vapidly into space…
3. Ditto to the people who won’t let you get off public transit or an elevator due to their clearly more critical need to get onto said vehicle before it carries on thereby blocking your exit and denying everyone the incredible side-effect of more room.
4. The ‘quick’ self-check out register that won’t scan my item(s), recognize my card for payment, believe the number of bags used is in fact ‘0’ and then repeatedly reject the CASH used in place of shunned card.
5. Creating usernames and passwords for every irksome, technically defective computer app that facilitates the same service and yet no whole group; school, sports team, community centre, government branch or store reward program can agree to use one universal log-in. And it must contain an alpha-numeric, and/or symbol, be 25 characters long, have upper and lowercase letters, not contain your name or other personal information, not be a password you have used the past 4 times or contain incantations that may or may not conjure the seventh level of hell if you enter it incorrectly 3 times in a row.
6. Guardians who fill all the interview spots during parent/teacher meetings to obsess over their child only achieving a 98% in whatever class while some of us who desperately need help to guide our child out of the failing abyss that is mathematics are left trying to make arrangements to chat with a completely uninterested teacher whose only other available time is at 4 PM on Friday before another pro-D induced long weekend that, as chance would have it, also includes a snow-fall warning.
7. Computers and ‘smart’ phones that routinely drop calls, auto-correct incorrectly, lose data, lose files, lose contacts, arbitrarily move the cursor to random areas on the screen to wipe out hours and hours of carefully crafted copy that will never, ever, ever be so succinctly and eloquently expressed again (I think this has actually happened to me now 34,724 times)
8. Sexist lawnmowers. Seriously, is it so impossible to create a starter system on a gas mower that doesn’t require the user to have competed in the IFBB Pro-League and bench-press 210 lbs? Side note: I just had to look up what the women’s international body building championship was called because the Mr. or Ms. Universe Pageant refer to different competitions…sort of.
9. On that note (the sexist one), who designs vehicle consoles that don’t accommodate a purse? There is no place in most cars now that provides an accessible location to stash your handbag that doesn’t require you to reach over a soccer team’s worth of passengers only to find contents of said bag have spilled out and rolled to every extremity of the vehicle and consequently the loose change you needed for aforementioned soccer team’s post game treat is nowhere to be found at which point an improbable game of treasure hunt among the players ensues whilst you stall for time at the drive-thru.
10. Bike lanes.
11. Gas prices.
12. Solicitation calls during dinner (oh wait, I’m the one doing that).
13. Menopause (sorry guys).
14. Mcdonald’s new ordering procedure.
15. And finally (for now) a general nagging feeling that most of corporate America is conspiring together to manufacture less and less durable/useful/relevant everyday goods that we consumers are duped into thinking are indispensable to our lives. For instance, i-phone 12-15-122 amiright? All those smarty-pants techno geeks should use their super powers for good instead of endlessly tweaking cel phone cameras. Seriously guys, my phone doesn’t need to produce National Geographic worthy photos. I wouldn’t mind if my phone didn’t hang up on all my calls due to the ‘end call’ button being located on the side of my phone where I usually position my hand in order to hold the phone next to my face.
Whew, that felt good. Thanks for reading!
Many of you are probably surprised that there is only one entry devoted to bad driving habits as everyone knows I could happily fill a week with non-stop ranting about every idiotic, hair-pulling driving infraction witnessed during even the shortest trip to run errands. This sorry state of driving affairs is sadly, pretty much de rigueur out on the roads these days. And so, I am currently undergoing a self-imposed rehabilitation to de-sensitize myself to the atrocities of Vancouver driving. In my case this involves my daughters whacking me with a rolled up road map (that’s an analog version of GPS for those of you born after 1990) whenever the vitriol starts to pour from my mouth. So far I have a very sore right arm but I am still raving like a lunatic. Better out than in right?
Otherwise… h e a d e x p l o d ed !