Foot Pneumonia

I’m currently on vacation in San Francisco California with my husband and the in laws and somehow the trip out here wasn’t worthy of a post. It was honestly the most trouble/annoyance free trip I’ve ever made.  And there hasn’t been too much here that’s been on my nerves either… which I suppose is the point of vacation. Though we all know they don’t always turn out that way.

I did however see something over and over again on the streets of the city today that did tweak at a pet peeve of mine.  Today was windy, cloudy and a high of about 58 in the city. I myself was wearing skinny jeans, flats, a camisol with a cardigan over it, and a matching beanie because well… I have no hair to keep me warm.  And while it wasn’t “cold” I kept seeing women wearing everything from long wool peacoats to scary Lion Witch and the Wardrobe fur coats, paired with flip flops, or sandals. Now… if it’s cold enough you need a jacket… aren’t your poor naked feet freezing? This reminded me of two things.  First, the time my mother yelled at me for being barefoot in the cold because I was going to catch “Foot Pneumonia”… my Mom is nuts, in an unbeleivably adorable way.  And second, another similar pet peeve of mine… sleeveless sweaters. If it’s cold enough for you to need a thick sweater on your torso… aren’t your uncovered arms cold?

All I’m saying is, shouldn’t all the items of your outfit be in the same season?  Or at least not functionally retarded and nonsensical? I’m trying to save the world from a Foot Pneumonia Pandemic.

Top Five Things I Find Annoying…Today (Episode 2)

I have decided to revisit a previous post of mine with a new list of the current top five things annoying me, because when it comes to me and the things that bother me about the world, there is always something, but you can never guess what it might be today.

#1.  People with an air of superiority. I want to throw them all off the pretty little pedestals they’ve built themselves.

#2. “Saved” Christians looking down on an atheist because they’re not as good and somehow not entitled to the same freedom to have their own beliefs (or lack there of), no matter how much you may disagree with them.  And don’t tell me you’ll pray for me… I might want to punch you in the face. And we heathens have poor self control at times.

#3. The Washington Post Sunday Crossword Puzzle. Nothing manages to make me feel less intelligent than those glaringly empty little white squares. And I’m pretty sure some of that stuff is plain old made up. But then we’ve already established in #2 that I’m a bit of a skeptic.

#4. People who are ALWAYS late. In today’s world where your Palm Pre can tell you when you’re going to need to take your next crap how is this still possible? There are clocks on phones, on iPods, on microwaves, on ovens, on cable boxes, on the task bar of your computer, on your wrist?… on WALLS! And somehow you neglected to look at ANY of them and caused me to have to wait 30 minutes for you to arrive past our agreed meeting time, or now the dinner I had ready for your arrival is cold or overcooked.  I believe this phenomenon is related to today’s #1.

#5. The fact that the “fashions” of the 80’s and 90’s are coming back to haunt me in my adulthood. I was in a Claire’s this weekend shopping for Halloween costume accessories and was disturbed to see 14 and 15 year olds picking out lacy Maddonaesque gloves, chunky plastic neon jewelry,  leg warmers, and a whole host of other travesties as their every day flare. The highlight was arriving at the checkout counter to be greeted by a plastic bin proudly displaying slap bracelet. For only $3.50 apparently you too can relive the 80’s

What a Croc

The topic of Crocs shoes was recently suggested to me as a blog topic and well… I couldn’t agree more. I must admit they are a phenomenon I have never truly understood. I wear a pair of flats all day without stockings or socks and my feet sweat more than is socially acceptable for any woman, so the thought of sticking my feet in rubber shoes does not appeal to me in any way. Sure, they have little ventilation holes in them but unless they also come with a clip on foot fan I don’t see those doing a whole lot of good. It seems like you might at well buy a tube if tough actin’ Tenactin when you buy your Crocs because athletes foot is nearly inevitable.

It would seem the only true justification of rubber footwear involves protection from water, a pair of rain boots for puddle jumping, some hip waders for fishing… you get the idea. But these can’t even suit that purpose given the previously mentioned holes. Ok, so then maybe it’s because they’re presumably non-slip being as they are made of rubber. I can understand therefore the appeal for restaurant employees to a certain extent, but honestly the only person who has truly ever owned that look is Mario Batali with his signature orange Crocs. And I have a feeling that’s due more to the fact that the Iron Chef looks like a Viking who could rip your head off, than anything else. I mean who’s going to tell him he looks ridiculous?

Lastly, it annoys me that this idea is seen by some as so unusual or special… rubber shoes people?  Yeah… we’ve done that before. It was the late 80’s and they were called Jellies, and THOSE were awesome. I mean at least my cute little clear purple rubber sandals had glitter in them… beat that style!

What are you Talking About?

It is a major pet peeve of mine when people who clearly know next to nothing about a given topic insist upon talking about it at length regardless.  This most often seems to be an issue when it comes to current events. In today’s world we get our news from so many sources in what is literally a 24-7 news cycle. There are tons of TV networks, radio shows, the internet, etc. and somehow people still seem to be clueless.  For example at work the other day I over heard a guy at work asking another co-worker “Did you hear that Venus and Serena Williams bought the Miami Dolphins?” I interjected that they had bought a fraction of the franchise but that I was 99% certain that no team was owned by just one person and that when people invest in teams they buy percentages of the franchise sort of like stock.  He rebutted that “you don’t think they can afford to buy a team? They both make like millions of dollars a year.” And I had to educate him to the fact that teams aren’t worth millions of dollars, NFL and MLB franchises are valued in the BILLIONS of dollars, I mean think about it… the players all make millions, just put that all together and think about how big we’re talking.  He still thought I was crazy. And I told him that if Serena and Venus Williams had just bought THE Miami Dolphins that there were going to be a lot of pissed off people like Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony and Gloria Estefan etc… because they just got their asses bought out.

The conversation somehow moved from The Williams Sisters to Jay-Z when he proudly told me that “Jay-Z owns a basketball team.” I corrected him that once again he own like %1.5 of a basketball team and some Russian dude just bought the majority share of the team.  I mean apparently this guy thinks that celebrities buy teams like us regular people buy socks. It just frustrates me to no end when people talk about stuff with an air of authority like they know what’s going on and fill the mind’s of others around them with crap and all the while have no freaking clue that they’re completely wrong. And I’m not expecting people to know everything about everything in the world, or even something about everything. I just ask that people be aware of the fact that they’re talking out of their asses and… therefore, shut the hell up.  There is an old adage that I remember Thumper from Bambi teaching me as a child “If you don’t have something nice to say, then don’t say nothing at all.” Now I’ve never followed that one very well myself and this blog is evidence of that, but I did adapt my own version of that thought. “If you don’t have anything smart to say, then shut your stupid ass up… I mean, don’t say nothing at all.”

Public Service

Almost every time I go to a restaurant or a store I am reminded of how some people in this country flat out don’t know how to act in public.  They are the people we lift up and unfold 10 shirts off a clothing display to look at them and make no attempt to limit the destructiveness of their actions or to repair the damage they have done because they have the attitude that “they pat someone to do that.” They are the people who go to a restaurant and ignore the waitress and point to what they want on the menu because they’re too busy talking on the phone and then later want 4 things on the side and something extra hot, or god knows what. And then they round their $40.13 bill up to $42.00 because they don’t get that you make $2.13 an hour so after her $2.00 tip you probably just made about $4.00 an hour… not a wage to live on.

That is why I believe that at some point in every American’s young life, each person should have to work in retail for 6 months and wait tables for 6 months. You having been in that position will learn how to tip, how to behave, that they do not have to be demeaning forms of work if asshole customers would stop making them that way.  I am always reminded of the scene in the movie Waiting where the customer thinks her steak isn’t cooked correctly and says “How hard is it to do your job?” Well mam… thanks to people like you, pretty damn hard most days.  I myself have worked in both fields, they were my first jobs in high school, and the part-time jobs that got me through college, and they drove me nuts because some people genuinely just don’t get what goes into it.  When I shop I try to avoid messing up displays and refold the things I’ve touched, and when I try on clothes that I decided I don’t want I put them back, instead of dumping them on the girl in the dressing room. Every time I am at a restaurant my husband and I prebus our own table when we are done with our food, and unless you were a complete idiot you’re getting at least a 20% tip.  Why… because I’ve been there and done that an I know how to act in public. I sure wish the rest of the world did.

Can’t Talk Right Now… Leave a Message

My adventures at the dentist have been many lately. Firstly, about a month ago I finally worked up the will power to go the dentist and deal with among other things the gaping hole that had been visible in one of my molars for over a year. I had finally  convinced myself that playing in the hole with my tongue was NOT in fact going to make it go away. I take of work early, I force myself to show up… and am told that my insurance cannot be verified… what the hell people!  I, a completely stressed out hormonal mess leave the office and call my husband crying “I didn’t get to see the dentist! *Snortle*”  I end up finding out the HR dept. of my employer has given them my wrong social security number. A few weeks later it was fixed and I made a new appointment, which was even harder to make than the first one.

I show up to that one too, against my better judgement, and sure enough, after x-rays, digital photography and what felt like an archaeological expedition of my mouth I was given the prognosis. Five cavities all between teeth resulting in ten total filings.  So I schedule and appointment to come back and deal with the cleaning and the filings on the left side. That’s where today comes in.

I’m not the first person to write about how they hate it when they go to the dentist and they talk to you while they’re massacring the inside of your mouth, but it truly is annoying.  That being said, the hygenist was fairly good about only talking to me when she had her hands out of my mouth and I was free to move, swallow… and you know speak.  And aside from the fact that she made my gums feel like ground beef and scraped my teeth so hard I swear they’re smaller now, she was just… great.  The dentist, however, would ask things like “Is that sensitive?” Or “Are you doing OK?” etc… while I have her hands and those of an assistant in my mouth with picks apparently called “explorers” and suction tubes and water sprayers and what amounted to a foam rubber jack holding my jaw open.  And I’m sorry but there are a lot of things I can do while being accidentally water boarded by a dentist, and holding a conversation is NOT one of them. At one point I was only able to express my discomfort by making an ugly face and choking in my own saliva. It was… awesome. I was paying far too much attention today at the dentist especially to all the crap they were shoving in my mouth. I’m pretty sure at one point there were wooden shivs in my mouth… as if we were trying to level out the new window we were having installed! And now I know why she numbed the entire left side of my face from chin to lower eyelid, I think she could have drilled in my ear and I wouldn’t have caught on right away.

And just think… I get to go back again for them to do the other side.

Left is Always Right

If you are from this country or have ever driven in this country you should be fully aware of the fact that people drive on the right hand side of the road.  And I for one was taught by my very capable mother and I’m sure reminded by others that the “right side” rule applied to other things as well. When you got up or down a wide staircase you stay on the right side for people to pass, when you walk down a hallways you stay on the right side in consideration of other people walking by… you get the point. It’s called manners, and it’s just how we do things.

Why then… oh please tell me why! when I am walking down the right side of a hallway and end up smashing into another person while rounding a blind corner… that person feels the need, neigh feels they have the right to give me the stink eye. You’re the dumbass walking down the wrong side of the friggin hallway! The only response you should have to damn near knocking me over is: “Oh my God I’m so sorry!” Let’s work on that for next time shall we?  Nothing gets me more fired up than when the person doing something wrong or stupid or otherwise inappropriate in a given situation is the one who dishes out buckets of scorn like it’s Christmas at the all you can hate buffet.  It makes me wonder of these people are just jackasses or truly that ignorant that they believe their victims to be in the wrong.

Follow the Leader

I consider myself to be an intelligent person, now that being said there are several modern day phenomenon which I must admit I do not understand. One of them is traffic. I understand stop and go “traffic” where there are stop lights because well… that makes sense. You have to all stop, and then as the light turns green there is an inevitable lag between the first car, second car, third… you get the idea, all getting moving again. But why is there traffic on interstates. They have no true beginning or end for the most part and no stop lights. And I understand accidents occur and lanes are blocked etc. which is an obvious exception. But even in high volume situations, isn’t driving on the highway a very large high speed game of follow the leader? I mean in theory (and perhaps this is where I go wrong… theorizing) there is one guy leading the pack on the highway, one guy with no one in front of him, on a long lonely road (cue country music). And if that one guy keeps moving, then everyone behind him, no matter how many of them there are should keep moving.

This is the point of my ponderings in which I realize that this theory is based upon the subsequent theory that the people following the leader are familiar with the concept of merging. And you’d think by now I would have realized this couldn’t possible be the case. But even the average hick up from a merge, a brake light here, a slow down there… does that need to bring everything to a halt? Does a brake light on the New Jersey Turnpike overturn a tractor trailer on interstate 85 in Georgia is some sort of bizarre mutated Traffic Butterfly Effect?

I don’t get it and the more I think about it, the less it makes sense and the more I want that flying car that science fiction movies have been promising me since the early 1980’s. Those movies were all set in the crazy futuristic word of 2015 and had flying everything. Either GM was really set back off the timeline by their recent bankruptcy or… they’re a bunch of lying bastards and I intend to find out which.

I mean if there is something I’m missing please explain I’d love to understand how something so simple seems to so regularly go so wrong.

Team Spirit

So, football season has officially arrived and being the awesome wife that I am I have been watching football all day.  And I’m actually one of those women who likes football, I know the players I can have an intelligent conversation about the teams, I play fantasy football… I ACTUALLY like football.  Unfortunately a lot of girls seem to pretend to like football. I suppose for some it’s the only way they can hang out with their boyfriends or husbands on Sundays, Monday nights and the occasional Thursday between mid September and early February.  But it seems like some girls pretend to like football because “the guys think it’s hot.” And I freaking hate it when girls play those games.  And without fail they always root for the team their boyfriend/husband likes. Or the worst of all, they still root for the team their Daddy rooted for, because they don’t have enough available brain cells to make their own choice. Sadly I don’t think they even realize they are being ridiculous.

I can just imagine it now:  a girl wearing a pink Tom Brady jersey (because he’s like… SUPER HOT!) sits in a Buffalo Wild Wings with her boyfriend, drinking an appletini and talking about her favorite receiver, “you know the black guy… what’s his name? Oh yeah Adrian Fitzgerald from the San Diego Giants.” You should not be able to root for any team without knowing at least 3 players on the aforementioned team, at least know what their colors are, and be able to tell someone what city they play in (bonus points if you can also name the state that city resides in).  And for the record on the topic of your favorite teams color: whatever it may be, I know without a shadow of a doubt that it is not now, nor has it ever been… baby pink.  So unless it’s October (Breast Cancer Awareness Month), you actually are a baby, or you have accidentally washed your white jersey with a red sock, throw away your pink jerseys.  Football and pastels just simply should never mix, I hate it when girls try to fem up every single thing in the world. It’s a sport where big sweaty dudes smash into each other, people scream, drink beer and wave Terrible Towels… Oh God! They don’t make pink Terrible Towels do they?

Hairy Situation

Today upon entering the bathroom at work (yup… we’re back in the bathroom people) I discovered something gross on my seat which I see all too often. A lone curly hair approximately 3/4 of an inch long.  Which got me to pondering, because (and I don’t think I’m alone in this) when I see a hair on a toilet seat the only place my brain is able to go is “EEEWWW!!! A PUBE!”  Is this me having me head in the gutter? Or is this the typical response? I’m sorry but if it’s short, dark and curly and in an area you would have taken off your pants… it’s all I can think of.  If that means my head is in the gutter then so be it.

Which got me to thinking about the fact that it’s 2009… and even if you’re not waxed down to a Brazilian… I would hope in this day and age that women are at least landscaping to a certain extent, perhaps shaving, at least a trim. I thought they were.  Like the hair I saw this morning… why was it almost an inch long? Are they going to braid it this weekend?  I really don’t need or want to know what’s going on with you and your vagooter! For heaven’s sake, if your free loving au-natural ass takes the beaver out of its cage, please have the courtesy to check that it hasn’t shed on the seating… PLEASE.  You can do it while you’re wiping off the piss you sprinkled on there while hovering.

I don’t need anymore flash backs to the terrible videos they showed us in Human Sexuality class that were all made in the 70’s when everyone was apparently much hairier and they had not yet seen the technological advances of the razor or wax.