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!)