Friday, November 23, 2007

Cranky Rancher!

WARNING: This blog post contains coarse language which may be offensive to some readers. GET OVER IT!


The Bag Lady has some pet peeves she’d like to share with you. She is normally of a fairly sunny disposition; is in fact quite cheerful, but there are some things that really piss her off, and she has decided to make a list. The Bag Lady is a list-lover…in fact, she delights in making a list of the things she wants to accomplish every day just so she can put a big fat check mark beside things she has done. This also serves as a reminder the next day of all the things she didn’t get done the day before! She makes a list of things she needs to pick up at the grocery store; she has a list of things she needs to do when she goes to town. She has not yet reached the stage where she needs a list of her myriad lists, but it can’t be far off!
On to the pet peeves:

1. Leaking squirt bottles. You know the ones she means – the cleaners you spray on everything from windows to shower stalls - that always dribble that last little bit over your hand.

2. Public toilet stalls built for paper thin people. The kind where you have to straddle the toilet to get the door open. Why the f*** can’t they open out instead of in? (Actually, there are a lot more things about public toilets that annoy the Bag Lady, but this is not a toilet post!)

3. Those right-handed debit card pin-pads. For those of you who are right-handed, this isn’t going to make much sense, but the south-paws out there are nodding their heads. You swipe the card down the right-hand side of the pin-pad – try doing that with your left hand, whilst holding said pad in your right. You all know if you don’t swipe it with a nice, smooth movement, it won’t read the card properly. What genius decided that the whole world was right-handed? What’s wrong with having the swiping part across the top? It’s discrimination, that’s what it is! (Of course, the Bag Lady is quite accustomed to adjusting to the right-handed world, so she turns the pin-pad upside down. So what if the clerk looks at her funny?!)

4. Cat litter pans. Need she say more?

5. Jars of condiments that are sealed tighter than Paris Hilton’s clothes. First, there’s plastic shrink-wrapped around the lid that you usually break at least one fingernail on before you get a knife and risk slicing off a finger, then, once you get the blood stopped, there are those little paper seals UNDER the lid. Sheesh, someone might actually want to get INTO the damned bottle!
Lately the Bag Lady has noticed that the brand of bleach she buys is sealed in the same manner, but the little paper/plastic seal they put under the lid is attached with some kind of damned Super Glue – so stuck on that you have to use pliers to pull it off (a knife won’t penetrate it), then it comes undone so fast, you spill the bleach all over yourself. The Bag Lady has learned to wear protective gear when she has to open a new bottle of bleach.

6. The grammar-checking thing on Microsoft Windows. Yeah, she KNOWS it’s a fragmented sentence – she wrote it that way deliberately!

7. Those Temptation Treats for cats. If the Bag Lady had known they would turn her sweet old cat into the cat from hell, she would never have opened that free bag that came in the cat food bag! Now she has to find a 12-step program for her cat’s addiction. What the hell is IN those things, anyway?

8. Twist-off beer caps that won’t turn.

9. Clothes that suffer from closet-shrinkage. What’s with that, anyway? It fit when she hung it up in there a couple years ago…

10. Mechanical stuff going wrong. The Bag Lady can do a multitude of things, from sewing to minor household repairs, including plumbing, carpentry, etc., but she is totally inept when it comes to mechanical stuff. She just doesn’t ‘get’ it. And doesn’t want to learn, thanks anyway!


(The Bag Lady did not have the best of days yesterday. One of the hydraulic hoses on her loader exploded, spewing hydraulic fluid everywhere! Of course, it was not easy to get off, so the Bag Lady and the Cowboy were up until all hours last night, and, once they got the fire put out - seriously! - finally got the damned hose off. So the Bag Lady has to spend the day in town, hoping someone can build a new hose to replace the old one. And she is supposed to have a table in the local craft sale, and needs to get more things ready for that, and...have a good day!)

7 comments:

Ann (bunnygirl) said...

OMG, with the hydraulic issue and trying to get ready for the craft sale, it's no wonder the little things are eating at you today!

Those same things irk me too, although the degree to which they bother me is tightly coupled to my overall state of stress.

As for condiments, we all know pill packaging is the same way. Very hard to get into. I worry that if it's so difficult for me now when I'm relatively young and quite strong and healthy, what'll it be like when I'm older and perhaps ill or frail? I guess I'll just die because I sure won't be able to access my life-saving meds!

Then again, I do live by the university. Maybe I can run an ad in the student paper offering to pay some strong young man from the football or weightlifting team to come unpackage my medications for me each month. I'm sure in another 40-50 years, that's what it will take to get into those damn bottles and blister packs!

And LOL on the Microsoft Word grammar check! They should have separate checks for fiction and non-fiction writers!

Hilary said...

Aww poor Baggie!

I can relate to a number of those things, especially those stubborn heat-sealed plastic bottle covers. I just use a sharp knife and slice around the edge, rather than try to pull them off.

Bathroom stalls.. they've gotta open inwardly.. otherwise your next peeve would be about the stupid doors that open suddenly and smash into you while walking past. ;)

A couple of your peeves (about debit card use and clothing-shrinkage) touched on some of the same material as a couple of Frank's amusing columns from a few years ago. I'll forward them to you.. if nothing else you'll be laughing by the time you're done. :)

I hope today is way better.

the Bag Lady said...

Bunnygirl - the Bag Lady likes your thinking!! When she is old(er) and (more) decrepit, she's moving close to a university so she, too, can access those strong, young men!!
Hilary - this day just keeps getting worse and worse! The Bag Lady thought she would make really good use of her time while waiting for the dryer to finish drying the clothes she wanted to wear today, and work on another bag. She uses a serger to finish the seams (for you non-sewers, a serger sews a nice, finished seam, trimming off the excess fabric with a REALLY sharp knife as it goes) -- she had a moment's inattention and ruined a bag!! It was almost done, and the serger whipped into a spot that didn't need to be serged, cutting the fabric - AARGGH!!
Anyone want to buy a bag, cheap? The Bag Lady mended it (she can still use it for display today), and, according to her brother, these are works of art, so it will be a collector's item (ahem)...

Reb said...

Oh dear, I'd love to give you a hand, but I'm rather far away. You will manage to get through, you always do.

Crabby McSlacker said...

Great list of peeves--I'm all for peevishness, especially now that we Americans have gotten our thanksgiving out of the way and are no longer required to feel all grateful about everything.

And since it wasn't a toilet post, I'll hold off, but I'm sure there's enough material for quite a few more posts on public toilet annoyances and I'll be happy to throw in a few complaints!

Mary Ann said...

I'm with you on the Word grammar check tool. I simply HATE the sentence fragment rule and no matter how often I click on "IGNORE RULE" it never does.

the Bag Lady said...

Well, the Bag Lady suffered through the "day from Hell!!" and is back home, ready for a marathon of sewing to meet the orders she took at the craft sale. The sale is on again tomorrow, and hopefully there will be a few more customers, who will buy the bags the Bag Lady has already made up! It is a busy season, and there is a lot going on this weekend, so there were very few customers today.

Took the hydraulic hose in to have a new one built and the fellow misunderstood the instructions (in spite of having been told THREE times, and leaving a note for him!!), so when the Bag Lady returned to pick it up, it was wrong!! She was forced to take one of the pieces to a machine shop and have them do some repair work on one piece, necessitating a lot of waiting around with thumb jammed up ass!! Got home just in time to pack up the car and head off to the craft sale. Sigh.
With any luck, tomorrow will be better.
Thank you all for your coments today, and sorry the Bag Lady wasn't around to respond to all of you individually!
Reb - thanks for the emotional support, and it is too bad you aren't closer!
Crabby - public toilets deserve a cranky post all their own - perhaps there is a collaboration in the making!
Moana - that is exactly what the Bag Lady hates the most about it! Ignore, dammit, ignore!!