small annoyances

I'm just not up to posting about the Uncle Allen ordeal. It's a long story, but I will tell you about it at a later date. With her cell phone post, blu got me thinking about other things that annoy me, so here's my list.

Small annoyances

Cheap people.

People who don’t flush public toilets.

Cashiers who don’t say “thank you” at the end of a transaction. A “Have a good day (like that’s sincere,) or handing you the bag with a “There you go” don’t cut it.

People who put the milk carton back in the fridge when there’s only a drop left in the carton.

People who emit a hand-covered cough right before they go to shake your hand.

That glob of gunk that forms on the pump end of hand lotion when it sits too long.

People who walk their dogs and let them poop on your lawn or the sidewalk but don’t clean it up.

When I go to use a flashlight and the batteries are dead.

Men who shake your hand and start pumping and your whole arm shakes.

People who spit when they talk.

The fact that DVDs have that tight wrapping and that security strip and you have to go and find a knife to cut it opened.

Pens that run out of ink in mid sentence.

Junk mail.

People who call and say “Guess who this is.”

Coming soon . . . the Uncle Allen ordeal.

Communicator/Reading List

Of course I'm not going to take Sparky's advice(so you can stop reading now Sparks and save yourself aggrevation) about psychiatry (hasn't the dumbass figured out I'm a Scientologist after all?) but since my Big 5-0 is going to come before the year's end, I've been making a list of things I want to accomplish over the next five years. Those of you who are in my age-range--remember the Soviet Union's infamous Five Year Plans? They'd have Five Year Plans, and more Five Year Plans, but I don't think anything was ever accomplished until the Great Communicator Ronald Wilson Reagan brought down Communism! YAY R.W.R!! What a Communicator he was:

RWR: Mommy, remember my heyday in movies?
Nancy:(adoringly) Yes, Dear.
RWR: I was quite the actor wasn't I?
Nancy:(adoringly) Yes, Dear.
RWR: I was handsome and debonair. Right?
Nancy:(adoringly) Yes, Dear.
RWR: Did I ever win an Oscar, Mommy.
Nancy: (sadly, yet adoringly) No, Dear.
RWR: Was I married to you or Jane Wyman when I was in Bonzo?
Nancy: (gritting teeth) It's time for dinner, Dear. Dessert is your favorite! Applesauce!

Anyway, I digress. As part as my 5-0, on my LIST OF THINGS TO DO OVER A FIVE YEAR PERIOD, I'm making a list of books I want to read and/or reread. So if you will, please list four or five of your favorites (or ones that you've been meaning to read, even.) List them here or email me at EmmaWrites@aol.com . I am thanking you.

I’m getting to be more and more like Barbara. Barbara is a woman who works at the same company as I do. A friend, Marcella, gave Barbara some old jigsaw puzzles because she’d heard that B loved them. Right there in the corridor B started crying about how kind Marcella was. I once told B that BP had gotten 6 bags of mulch and potting soil for me from Menard’s and hauled it all over the garden for me. She teared up and said it was a sweet thing for a husband to do. Someone else complimented her on her recent weight loss and again her eyes welled up. Hormones? Maybe.

Anyway, that’s me lately. I teared up after reading that Maira Kalman NY Times stuff that Tree sent. I well up when I see butterflies and hummingbirds, and when LP brings home a good school paper (maybe because that’s so rare!) I get misty when I see an old couple holding hands at the mall, or when that goddamn Prego commercial is on TV—the one with the melancholy violin music. Even when I read Spidey’s account of her recent weekend in the woods.

It seems that this happens when I see/read about GOOD things, not about the bad stuff. Maybe I need some stimulants! Just call me Babs. Arghh.