The Annoyance: My grandmother-in-law's cooking.
Why It Shouldn't Bother Me: It's free food! Made with grandmotherly love
Why It Does Anyway: I think free food loses the appeal when you can't actually eat any of it. Through a combination of a wussy stomach and being a mildly picky eater, I have a somewhat limited diet. Kane's grandmother knows this, invites us over for dinner...and then makes exactly 1 dish out of 6 that I eat. I manage to feed myself daily, with enough of a variety that I don't go crazy. Yet she consistently makes the exact same meal every time we come over, and wonders every time why I eat very little. I don't think it's too much to consider someone's diet when you invite them for dinner. It's one meal you make a little differently. I don't feed my vegetarian friends chicken if they come over, and I don't make a chocolate dessert for my friends who don't like chocolate. My sister in law is allergic/intolerant to like 70 different things, yet when she visits us we make food she can eat and we all enjoy.
When there is something I can eat, I get all excited for about two seconds. It is a complete non-exaggeration that EVERY dish she makes contains at least a stick of butter. It floats atop the potatoes, too saturated to mix in. The brussel sprouts are swimming in a gleaming pool of creamy yellow goo. My poor stomach just can't handle that. I eat half a serving and am filled with so much grease I think my organs are going to shoot out of I sneeze too hard. It's just...too much. Before someone comments that she's just a good Southern cook...she's from Spain. I do not believe that Paula Deen-levels of butter are the top cuisine over there.
The Annoyance: When shirt sleeves/collars are not even.
Why It Shouldn't Bother Me: People, you know...move. Things are going to get ruffled up.
Why It Does Anyway: It's...not...even. I literally get all twitchy if someone's sleeve is half rolled up or their collar is half popped. I have to invade someone's personal space to fix it. If I notice this while I'm conversing with you, anything you say until it gets fixed is not going to be heard. I'm too busy restraining the urge to just tackle you to the ground and fix your shirt. Actually, the more I think about it, the more this looks like "you have mild OCD about this and may want to chill out" than a minor annoyance. Uh...moving on...
The Annoyance: When people leave their turn signals on for miles after they changed lanes.
Why It Shouldn't Bother Me: People get used to it automatically turning off, so if they changed lanes, they simple forget about not having turned enough to trigger it off.
Why It Does Anyway: From my perspective (this may tie in to the above annoyance), it's really distracting. Firstly, it's all blinky blinky and it's attracting my attention, like it was designed to do. I am giving you my attention. I don't know if you forgot to turn it off or if you're planning to leap lanes at any minute like a highway gazelle. In addition to all the other things I have to watch when driving, I have to give extra focus to you because your backside is flashing in my face. A lot of newer cars not only have the standard signals in the back, but also on the sides/mirrors. I can't help but see it, which again is the point, so please DO SOMETHING so I can go back to my regularly-scheduled driving program and not having to keep extra watch for you to try and ninja your way across 4 lanes at once.
Secondly...it makes very concerned about you as a driver. Those things make noise inside in the car! Do you not hear the clicky sound? Even if they don't make noise, they blink on your console. The fact that yours has been going for 7 miles tells me you haven't checked out your dash in quite some time. You don't know how fast you're going or if some "imminent death" warning light has popped up. It shows me that you are incredibly non-observant about your surroundings, which again means I have to pay extra attention to you because I can't trust you'll notice where your exit is and that at any moment you may hop 3 lanes in one go and then we may all die.
Final point - I also get annoyed when people turn on the signal for one direction and then go the other way. You are again laughing in the face of the intended purpose for the turn signal. When we all die, it's probably your fault.
The Annoyance: People telling me I should love the cat.
Why It Shouldn't Bother Me: Many people love animals and don't understand why I don't love this adorable little fuzzball.
Why It Does Anyway: The same way that you can't really generalize all people because we are all unique precious little snowflakes? Also applies to animals. Just because your cat is an angel who snuggles up next to you and is just "TOO CUTE!" doesn't mean that mine will be the same way. And in fact, mine isn't. I've talked at length about how I loathe this cat and all the ways it wants to ruin things for me. You having a cat does not make you an expert on all cats. Mine is just not well behaved, and I don't like it for that. If my cat is really just so wonderful, you're welcome to have it. I'll fake out my husband with a stuffed animal that has a recording of the cat's "possessed by Satan and calling back to hell" meow/growl.
Furthermore....how do you expect this to work:
You: You should love the cat!
Me: Oh, thank you! I couldn't love the cat before, but you telling me to just made all the difference!
Um..no. The next option always seem to be "well, let me tell you all the ways my cat is great! That will make you like yours!" Again, no. It makes me like your cat, but as we discussed, no two cats are the same. In fact, it actually makes me hate my cat more because he is nothing like your cat. So, good job there.
Lastly: It is okay to not like things! I love mushrooms and shrimp, but my husband doesn't. My best friend loves spicy things and I can't stand them. My good friends are huge soccer fans and I am completely indifferent to it. It's going to happen! We are different people who like different things, and that's okay. Just because you have a hard on for kitties doesn't mean I need to as well. Having this conversation just makes you seem like an ass:
Cat Lover: Love the cat!
Me: Ok...what's something you don't like?
CL: Purple is an ugly color!
Me: Well, you should like purple! It's wonderful and happy!
CL: No! It's stupid! You're stupid! You can't make me like purple!
Me: And you can't make me like cats.
CL: But my cat, Mr. Fluffy Bootkins, is TOO KEWT! YOU MUST LOVE ALL CATS!
Me: *sigh*
I might have mis-remembered a few details of that conversation, but that's the general idea.
The Annoyance: People who call me and don't leave messages.
Why It Shouldn't Bother Me: If you called, it stands to reason that you want to talk. I can easily call you back.
Why It Does Anyway: Leaving a message tells me that you need something from me. I used to have a phone that would turn itself off fairly often. As such, any missed calls I had wouldn't show up as a notification once I turned it back on. I would really have no idea you called, unless you left a message. I'd get people annoyed with me for never calling them back even though I didn't know they called in the first place. I even made my voice mail recording specifically request that you leave a message or I might lose that you called. And people still didn't. And still got mad.
As you may have guessed or remembered from an earlier post, I hate using the phone. There's such a disconnect in not being able to read body language that I feel like I can't communicate effectively over the phone. Texting and emails work better because you should be stripping all that subtext away when you type. The phone crosses that boundary. As such, I like being prepared for conversations...hence why I want you to leave a message. I hate seeing a missed call several hours later, only to actually call the person back and have them say "oh, I don't need anything. Just seeing what was up, but it's too late now." This becomes awkward (see the previous post about awkwardness on phones), and could have been avoided with a message stating "if you get this before 7, let's grab some dinner!" If you say "hey, do you have the code for X"...I can look it up, call you, and get it to you. Otherwise, I'm left scrambling once you tell me what you need because I wasn't ready for it.
Lastly...it really helps me know if you meant to call me, or if it was a butt dial. (Though this doesn't always work because a friend ass-called me once and didn't know it. The call went all the way to voicemail where I ended up with a 5 minutes voice mail of him drunk and trying to put on his pants. Actually that worked out really hilariously.)
So those are some things that really bother me and probably shouldn't. I guess I'm a mildly bad person or something. I am toying with some new post ideas. I had a wacky dream I kind of want to illustrate.
~Melody
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