Pet Peeves

And now we begin our interactive portion of my blog. I’m blatantly stealing this idea from a fellow blogger. Names have been changed, but yeah, it’s theft pure and simple.

As a former Social Services worker, we vent…a lot. But in a creative and constructive way, mind you. We get it all out and we are able to move on.

So let’s vent! Let’s make a list of our pet peeves. OooOoO…I’ll start!

Grocery carts. Yes, grocery carts and their drivers. In my humble opinion, there should be driving and parking lanes in the supermarket. Complete with grocery cart police, tickets and jail time for the worst offenders.

When you go into a grocery store, generally, so do about 700 other people all at the same time. It gets very busy and very crowded. I start breaking into a sweat as I cross the threshold. Oh, this is gonna be bad, I think to myself. It’s a science to try to manoeuvre my cart without crashing into anyone. I loosely follow the rules of the road to try to cope. Stay to the left, pull into the curb to have a closer look at the food items.

I’m waaaaayyyyyyyy too polite. Do others afford me the same respect? NNNOOO!!!!!! It’s mayhem! Every shopper for themselves! If they see something interesting two feet away, they abandon their carts IN THE MIDDLE OF THE AISLE to go and have a look!!!!!!! Oh God, I can feel my blood pressure rising just thinking of it. So, you have a few people trying to be orderly, most people just out for themselves and the rest of us have to try to figure out how to get ‘round these inconsiderate shoppers who seem to be wandering off muttering “look at the pretty colours!”

But the worst, the absolute worst, is when they gather in groups. I think they have a cult or something. And they have their monthly meetings - you guessed it- in the middle of the grocery isle on a Saturday afternoon. I think they chant about broccoli or something.

Outwardly, I suppose I look frustrated an annoyed. A smart-mouthed comment may slip through my lips. Inwardly - there's twisted metal everywhere as I lob a hand grenade into the centre of the mass to clear a path.

So, what about you? What’s your pet peeve?

If You Wanna Be My Luvaaaaa

For the modern woman, dating can be such a quagmire. What are the rules? When do I declare my undying love? When do we have sex?

When you are in, shall we say, a dry patch...there's only one way out of it, and that is to get you a little sumthin' sumthin'.

Now, if you're looking for Mr. Right, you are not allowed to give him any sugar right away. You have to wait and you have to get to know each other. It's a fact.

But you will spontaneously combust if you don't have your engine tuned up. Therefore, you have to get your lube job elsewhere.

So, basically, you need to separate "Potential Mr. Right" and "The Mechanic", if you know what I mean. They each have their skills and abilities, but they must not be considered for the same ....job.

You wouldn't go to the hair dressers to buy eggs, would you?

So the rules are different for Mr. Mechanic and for Mr. Right.

Mr. Right:
- No sex for three months
- No declarations of love before you have sex
- No talk of marriage, co-habitation, key exchange in the first year

Mr. Mechanic
- Have sex, lot's of sex
- Do not inquire as to his health or well-being
- Do not ask any questions that are designed to get to know him better
-Chose him purely on his physical attributes. But, in a particularly lonnnngggg dry spell,prepare to invest in paper bags that are roughly head-sized

And finally, for variety, purchase a vibrator, whip up a tiny suit for it on your sewing machine and introduce him to all of your friends as your new luvvaaaaa....

It's Not You, It's Me

You’ve met a man and he’s simply dreamy. You’ve been seeing each other for a little while now and things are going really well. So far, he seems to tick quite a few of your boxes. Let’s face it, though, you’re not 21 anymore.

You’ve had to whittle most of those “must haves” on the list down to a few basic hygiene requirements and a criminal record check.

You’re past the “Will he call?” stage. Oh, he called all right. You are having hot sex all of the time. You are a veritable sex machine. You spend every single waking moment together. When you’re not together, having hot sex, you’re talking together on the phone. For hours.Usually about how hot the sex is.

You think he may be “THE ONE”.

You know you shouldn’t, but in a slow moment at work, you doodle your first name and his last name together on a piece of paper. Upon threat of death you would never admit it, but you have pictured that walk down the isle. You see that off-white-off the-shoulder dress as clearly as you see your own increasingly lined reflection in the mirror.

So when you see him tonight and the first words out of his mouth are, “We have to talk”, you try not to get too excited. You immediately picture him asking if he can leave his toothbrush in your bathroom, a pair of his knickers in your underwear drawer and maybe, just maybe, he wants to exchange house keys.

But you know in your heart of hearts that “we need to talk” is never a good thing. Ever. It’s always, always, always the door that opens into Dumpsville. You’ve been here before, you know what it looks like. You’re intimately familiar with the terrain. The roads in Dumpsville are all paved with broken hearts.

Mostly yours.

And sure enough, he tells you his tale of woe, ending with the classic “It’s not you, it’s me”.

The different variations of “It’s not you, it’s me” include such gems as:

“I’m just at a point in my life where I need more space”
Translate: You suffocate me

“I’m not at a point in my life where I can make a commitment”
Translate: Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free

“I’m not good enough for you, you deserve better”
Translate: I was only ever here for the sex. It was never going to be anything else for me. Now that you’re getting so serious, I’m outta here

“I just don’t know what I want right now”
Translate: I’m bored and I’m off to find a new conquest

So, unless you plan to get thee to a nunnery, dig out that vibrator, get in a supply of wine and chocolate, and start calling all of those girlfriends that you ignored because you were so caught up in your new, whirlwind relationship. Have a good cry, rail against the injustice of it all and sing,“I Will Survive” at the top of your lungs repeatedly.

Because you will.

Survive.

You will eventually pack your bags and move out of Dumpsville. You’ll get a new home in Independence Land.
Your address will be something like,

Ms. I. Value Myself
123 I Am A Strong Beautiful Woman Street
I Respect Myself,
Independence Land
H0N RME

And should Mr. “It’s Not You, It’s Me” ever darken your door again, he would find himself most unwelcome.

Because you are no longer going to settle for anyone other than Mr. “I Love You Just The Way You Are”.

Growing Old Gracefully

Gracefully, ha! What's graceful about it? For one thing, there's the hair. Facial hair. More than one kind. The first one to appear was a thick, black hair sprouting from my upper lip. A moustache! I was growing a moustache! As if that wasn't bad enough, they started popping out from under my chin. Fast forward to a full beard just like granny used to have. Just great. I am now the fastest plucker in the west. But that's not all. I go to sleep with all extra hair plucked to within an inch of its life and every few months I wake up with a thin, white hair about two inches long on my cheek. How is this possible? I swear it's not there the day before, it just magically appears in the morning.

And have you noticed that writing gets so much smaller as you get older? I hit 39 and suddenly started squinting at regular-sized print. By the end of that year I was the proud owner of my first pair of glasses. Now at the ripe old age of 43, I seem to have to hold the book pretty far way in order to make out the words. The size of the print in any book I want to read is now a serious consideration. I've avoided the large print section at the library, but it's only a matter of time.

I remember, way back in the 80's, staying up past 9:00 at night. Now, I twitch if I'm not in the immediate vicinity of my bed by 8:30pm. Pull an all-nighter these days? Well, ok if I set aside three days to recover.

I also find that professional people, you know, like doctors and lawyers, they're all starting to look like they're 12 years old. The other day, I went onto the liquor store and jokingly asked the 9-year old serving me if she wanted to see my ID. She never cracked a smile. She sent me a smouldering look that said, "Move on Grandma, you're so not amusing".

Now the night sweats, they're just charming. No, I didn't pee the bed, I just soaked the sheets with a lovely sheen of perspiration. Very attractive. I know I'm soaked with sweat during the night because I feel it when I get up 5 times to go to the bathroom!

This is bad. I think I'm going bald. I'm not a good-looking woman. My best feature is my hair. And I think it's falling out at an unnatural rate! I may have to fashion a comb-over, just like my father. This is very upsetting. I really feel bad for men who suffer from premature baldness. Is there such a thing as hair plugs for women? I don't have the kind of face where I'd look good if I shaved my head to cover up the fact that I was bald. Sinead O'Connor I am not. How do ugly women manage hair loss?

I have so much to look forward too, and possibly in the not-too-distant future. I really dread those wrinkles you get around your mouth that make it look like a bum-hole. How do you cope with that for goodness sake?

I think growing old gracefully is so hard because in my mind I'm still 24. And in this deluded mind of mine, I expect to look in the mirror and see a young, unlined, facial-hair free reflection. My mind is no longer connected to my body, I think. My mind thinks my body can go like the freakin' energiser bunny. My body reacts in a more age-appropriate manner and tells my mind where to go. Loudly and painfully.

Grow old gracefully? Maybe if you're skinny with a full head of hair and really good-looking with great skin. Plastic surgery, and lot's of it, seems to be the only solution to me.