Although I am generally a positive person, I do have some gripes. My list of things that were bugging me last year needs updating, which I shall now briefly, but not too briefly, do:
1. Congress. Need I say more?
2. Packaging. I just cut my hand trying to open a new CD, packed well enough for placement into a time capsule. Opening it involved two tools and blood. My blood. Wait! I see I complained about this last year. Apparently "they" didn't fix this yet?
3. Vaccum cleaner cords. No sooner have I worked up a sweat with my vaccum, or am two inches from finishing a room, than the cord unplugs itself from the wall. Mine automatically zips itself back into its internal storage, so I have to RE-pull the cord out and then RE-plug it. If my room were only 6 feet wide, the cord would be adequate, but I have rooms larger than a closet, so FIFTY FEET or more might be enough. The cord, when it does its zapping thing, always hits me in the leg or foot, too. Lawsuit material. (However, if it were fifty feet long, zipped itself back and wrapped me up like a mummy in electric cording, I might want to reconsider this one.)
4. The word VACCUM. or Vaccuum. or Vacuum. Even Spellcheck doesn't know how to spell it. Depending on where you are writing whatever, it always says I am misspelling it. Look it up. Use several dictionaries. Then vote. Or find a synonym. Please don't email me with your "correct" spelling. Keep looking. You will find more "choices," too.
5. People who can't ignore a cell phone ring while eating dinner. You're saying, "ME?" Cell phones IN GENERAL, are really being used as RUDE-MACHINES. Not only have they interrupted lovely dinner parties where we ALL had to listen to a conversation, but smaller affairs, also. When a friend and I are conversing about something important, and that damned thing rings...............LET IT RING. Even if it's not important..............
We witnessed a couple having dinner out. The man was fondling his wife's arms and hands, trying to get her attention. She sat there with her cell phone on her lap, looking down at it the entire time he was all but dancing a jig for her attention!
I see mothers pushing their quickly-growing-and-soon-to-be-out-of-the-house-forever beautiful children through grocery stores, talking to or texting a friend while the little child tries to get Mom's attention (any way possible.) Instead of saying, "Look, Tommy, this is called an eggplant," they're saying, "Hush. I am talking to my fourth cousin twice removed about her mom's toenail surgery." BE PRESENT WITH THE ONES YOU ARE PRESENTLY WITH! (You note three paragraphs on this topic. It is really bugging me!)
6. TV "Laugh Tracks": TV producers and directors............If it's funny, I will laugh at it all by myself! You don't need to have a bunch of hyena tapes in the background letting me know this is the "joke." Mostly there's nothing that funny, so STOP trying to cue me to giggle. If it isn't funny, it isn't funny, and no guffawing of strange voice is going to make me laugh. (No, I am NOT an old fogey.)
7. Facebook images saying, "Remember This?" Of course I remember the Corning Ware pans and the electric skillet..........I AM STILL USING THEM!!! These posts of "old" things keep showing up on my Facebook friends' posts, making me feel older than I AM! I realize that today's young people don't keep their hair dryers for forty years, but I don't need to be reminded I AM OLD by seeing my General Electric Deluxe Hair Dryer, complete with its plastic large-sized bonnet and nail dryer, dragged onto Facebook and portrayed as a dinosaur! It still works, I love it, right along with my Corning Ware.
8. Price Stickers: I previously mentioned the packaging, but I forgot to mention the price stickers that are glued permanently onto the gift I'd like to give soon. I've rubbed it with olive oil, warmly blown it with the aforementioned hair dryer, dug at it with a thin knife blade, rubbed it with my now nonexistent fingerprint, and banged the damned gift on a tabletop in frustration, thereby ending the problem. If manufacturers and stores have to post the price ON the item, at least make it REMOVABLE!
9. Greeting cards with only a signature inside: Hallmark wrote a nice little ditty inside the card, and you sign your name under the ditty?? Hello? PLEASE, SAY SOMETHING.............even if it's, "Hi, Old Fart, Yes, I am still breathing." I still send "The Christmas Letter," and picture you reading it with great interest, if not holiday glee. I want to know about your boring year, too!
10. Toilet paper holders installed stupidly. The men who install these things in women's restrooms need to SIT on the commode while they are doing it, and then try to pull the paper out. They should do this with bare asses and a real need for the paper, also. That should be a requirement of the job. Having my face rubbed across a filthy bathroom floor while I unravel torn tissue, or try to figure how to pull the paper out of a maze is not my idea of a good time. This action is performed while trying to keep a thick winter coat from touching the floor, by the way. Bending my right arm into a pretzel isn't fun, either. Hang the paper at eye level! That's where our eyes are.
Enough griping for this year. I am certain that The Powers That Be will fix these little things immediately.
Of course, I am still seeing those stupid coupons for Macy's, so "The Powers" may not be reading this.
