Peeves

They say when you have writer’s block to think about something that inflames your passion. Something you love intensely and immensely. Or something you hate. Despise. Detest.

Since I’m too jaded at the moment to write about something I love, I’m gonna spew on something I hate. A couple of things. Specifically, those petty, teeny, tiny, annoying l’il things that are the thousand and one paper cuts we all have to suffer through on a daily basis in life.

Some of my pet peeves.

Admittedly, most of my pet peeves are petty indeed. And most really don’t bother me, not in the long run. They don’t keep me up at night. They won’t bar me from heaven (at least I don’t think they will). But if I’m in a certain mood, a certain rare mood, a mood that’s mercilessly exacerbated by sleep deprivation and a negative mindset, if I’m in this funky evil type of mood and one of these pet peeves comes at me, then –

Watch out!

Here they are in no particular order …

How come when I get the trash out curbside by 7 am, the truck doesn’t come by until 12:30 in the afternoon? And when I decide to wait until I get back from walking my daughter to school in the morning, they zoom down the street at 7:55? It’s an iron-clad law! They must have operatives in the bushes across the street monitoring me!

Why are the commercials 10 decibels louder than the teevee shows? (I know this is a common pet peeve with people.) And it is me, or are they generally even more louder after 8 pm, when my two little ones are trying to sleep upstairs?

Why do I need an advanced degree in topology and a pair of space-age scissors to open a box of cereal? Every time I try to open up a small corner so I can pour my death sugar flakes into a bowl I wind up ripping a seven-inch vertical tear in the plastic bag? Every time!

This is a fairly common peeve, too, but lately I’m getting it in spades. Why is it that my children will generally ignore me and let me be until I hide in the corner with a book in my hand?!? It’s as if a neon sign suddenly appears over my head flashing IT’S NOW AN ACCEPTABLE TIME TO PILE ON DADDY!

Also, how come whenever I’m in the kitchen trying to sneak a chocolate football or a small holiday cookie, the little ones spontaneously and inevitably circle about my feet like tiger sharks? I swear they must have olfactory sensitivities comparable to bloodhounds when it comes to candy and cookies. They can also hear a candy wrapper crinkling at two hundred yards. Easily.

We have two cars. How is it physically possible that, every other day, given a random selection of either of these two cars, I will always choose the one that’s running on gas fumes, necessitating a trip to the nearest gas station and the surly attendents therein?

And the ultimate pet peeve, the $64,000 question of pet peeves, the daddy mack of pet peeves, is this: We live in a three-story house. Writing office and laundry room in the semi-furnished basement; kitchen, dining room, living room on the ground floor; bedrooms and full bath above that. Know where I’m going with this? How come every single thing I might need at any given moment, be it a book or a computer or an article of clothing (shoes, slippers, sneakers, jackets, or baseball caps) – whatever – the odds that it will be on a different level is one hundred percent. One hundred percent. Every. Single. Time. If I was to break down that percentage, I’d say this: if I’m in the basement or the second storey, the odds that my necessary object will be two floors away is eighty percent. Eighty percent! It. Never. Fails.

All right. ’Nuff of this. I need to meditate to get my blood pressure down …