Mildly Annoying Things

You know when it’s the week leading up to your ladies’ holiday, and you feel all raw and emotional and sad things are unbearably sad and mildly irritating things are making you ragey and you’re reading the Diary of a Wimpy Kid with your children and you didn’t realize how very mean spirited and awful it is, and it’s two days until your hair appointment and your hair looks and feels like orange straw, but with grey roots, and you have impotent rage about the impending time change and your husband thinks time change is “no big deal” and it’s “crazy to get all worked up about it” and Monday is a new moon and Mercury is in retrograde and why don’t we keep snack food in the house, omg, want snacks right now?  That’s the kind of day I’m having.

I realized yesterday that Barkley is going to be five soon, which means he is approaching doggie middle age, and I myself am approaching human middle age.  Or maybe I’ve already reached middle age, although I hope not.  I have an ultimate goal of being one of those sweet yet crazy little old ladies in the nursing home, wearing tons of lipstick which will bleed down into the lines around my mouth, and I will colour my hair orangey-red, and I will wear so much Chanel No. 5 that everyone will know I was in a room twenty minutes after vacating it.  I will wear jaunty little silk neck scarves in bright colours to hide the wrinkles on my chicken neck, and will paint my nails to match.  I will force the cafeteria in my nursing home to offer a vegetarian option and I will always have a bowl of hard candies in my room.  I think that would be fun, but I envision myself to be in my nineties, or late eighties at the very least, and so I do not think I have technically hit middle age yet.

Speaking of being an old lady, I do not want to be one of those mean ones who ram their shopping carts into people at the grocery store or complain about the lineups to the cashiers, and so I will blog about the things that have been irritating me today.  Although, technically, they aren’t irritating me so much anymore since I went to my beautiful friend’s restorative yoga class this afternoon so I’m actually feeling pretty relaxed.  Still.  Here is a list of the mildly annoying things on this sunny, blue-and-white day:

1) It snowed for about ten hours straight on Sunday; there is about a foot of snow on the ground.  This is nothing unusual since March is typically a snowy month.  However, by the level of complaints about the snow, you would think we were all living in the tropics and it suddenly and unexpectedly turned into the Arctic.  Also, the city road crews did an amazing job cleaning up the streets, all things considered, and yet the complaints about the city road crews were endless.

2) Because of the snow, I am dropping the kids off at the front of the school after lunch, rather than the alley.  First, people dropping their kids off for afternoon kindergarten park in the alley like they’ve never seen traffic before; they double park and park on blind corners and leave their cars and it is – in good conditions – a mess.  And so I tried to just avoid the situation by dropping off the kids in front of the school, but then my zen state was ruined by witnessing three people jaywalking with their small children across the busy street.  People: darting out between parked cars into traffic and expecting said traffic to stop for you is not a good lesson for your kindergarten aged child.  THEN one of those small children got stuck in a snowbank on the side of the road.  There’s nothing quite like watching a parent standing in the busy street trying to dislodge her child from a snowbank, meanwhile the younger siblings are darting around ON THE STREET.  I’m having heart palpitations just thinking about it.  It’s the same visceral reaction I get when I see pictures of babies on those Bumbo seats sitting on elevated surfaces.  Get the baby off there before it falls and breaks its little neck!!!

3) My friend Nan wrote about this today, but whenever anyone mentions the Paleo Diet I immediately picture that person with a club and wearing animal skins, hunting down sabre-toothed tigers and the like.  I find diet trends – when they are spoken about with fervour as they often are in the born-again dieter – to be annoying in general.  I mean, awesome if you’re into the Paleo Diet or low-carb or gluten-free or whatnot and it works for you.  What I find annoying are the attempts at conversion.  Hey, I’ve been a vegetarian for years and I have never once said anything derogatory about my carnivorous friends.  Particularly since I live with four of them (I am counting the dog).

4) The boys have another make up karate class today.  The oversharing, overly talkative woman will be there.  That right there should be enough but now she’s talking to ME.  God help us all.  She told me that outdoor sports – like spring soccer – are the only way to REALLY teach children about sports, and while I agree that there is something character building about playing soccer with snow on the ground, in the howling wind and sleet, I am ecstatic that my children are not playing this year.  I can’t wait to see what we will talk about tonight!

Speaking of which, I must go get ready to pick the kids up and head to the dojo – they got new belts this weekend!  White with the yellow stripe!  Excitement all around – and so I will sign off, feeling much better about everything.  What would I do without you to listen to me, dear readers?  I guess I would turn into Mean Old Lady.  xoxo