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

Comments

  1. Behave yourself or I won’t hold your hand? Jesus Christ, did you grab the kid, stick him in your car and race away from the stupid man who obviously didn’t deserve to keep his children?

    Nicole – I’ve always admired how un-crusade-like you are about vegetarianism. And I agree, people ramming their diet ideas down other people’s throats (see what I did there) is so lame. I got cornered at a Christmas party and lectured about candida yeast – THAT was fun.

    Everything I tried to do pretty much went wrong today, but I’m either Zen enough or too tired to get overly exercised about it. But our streets really ARE bad – we got a huge wet dump of snow last Wednesday, then everything froze – the streets are all two feet wide anyway, and if someone parks on the side you can barely get by. It’s a total clusterfuck. Sigh.

  2. My son recently started reading Wimpy Kid and when he was sick last week he started watching the movie on Netflix and it was SO UNPLEASANT. It was like going back to grade 6 for me, not my best year. It’s made precisely for kids who are 11-13 right now otherwise it’s uncomfortable because you’ve already lived it (me) or terrifying because WTF you’re only 6.5 and nearly 5! What! is! Happening! Thankfully he only got halfway through and then was back to Pink Panther. Geeeeez.

    Um yeah.

    There does seem to be a lot of stupid in (your? The?) world right now. I hope that sorts itself out.

  3. My only problem with the paleo diet – aside from the cutesy name, which makes me roll my eyes, because that is not what paleolithic man ate, folks – is that people who follow it are so zealous about it. And excited! And wanting to SHARE ALL THE THINGS!!! I have a lot of “paleo” branded recipes pop up in my Facebook feed. And folks talking about how much better they feel now, how they never get sick and they have more energy and rainbows fly out their asses when they run (after mammoths, presumably).

    It’s all so silly because that’s how you feel if you take bad eating habits and replace them with good ones, no matter if you do that by following the diet trend of the moment or just by making changes to your lifestyle.

    The best diet advice ever was that “Stop the Insanity!” woman back in the 90s. Eat Less, Move More. That’s it. It’s not rocket science.

    Can I be your roommate in the old folks’ home? We will need to learn to play old-timey card games, too. That is a gentle-but-slightly-risque form of amusement for aged scarlet woman, you know.

  4. Nan | Wrath Of Mom says

    I’m at peace with turning 40 in April, but I don’t think I can handle contemplating life in a seniors complex. Once in a parking lot I heard a father yell at his child “Behave yourself or I won’t hold your hand.” This makes no sense to me. The child who is well behaved can be trusted to walk safely beside their parent, but the unruly child should definitely be restrained and guided. For their own sake.From now on when people say the are doing “Paleo,” I’m just going to imagine them dressed as Fred and Wilma. It’ll keep me amused.

  5. I worked in a nursing home and I was always captivated by woman’s hair.
    “What colour is that Betty?”
    “Auburn”
    And then in my head I would laugh because clearly her head was purple and that she couldn’t see…not because she was old “couldn’t see” but “I can’t see because my wheelchair isn’t high enough to look in the mirror”
    I’m such a dick.
    Snow sucks. I’m over it.

  6. My roots are awful right now. But I don’t feel like dealing with them.

    My son reads Captain Underpants. It’s not mean, just hilarious. If you like potty humor.

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