Category Archives: Annoyances
And do the Hoagy Pogey While You Bang Your Head Against a Mirror on Friday the 13th
I spend more time trying not to waste time than I would have spent wasting time without the attempt to avoid it. The wasting of the time, I mean.
I hate going places to get things fixed.
Because I hate waiting in line, and I hate having someone tell me to my face that there is nothing they can do, and that I should just GIVE IT UP, FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE, YOU STUPID IDIOT. THAT THING IS DEAD AND JESUS CHRIST HIMSELF COULDN’T RESURRECT IT!
They haven’t actually said that, but I know they are thinking it.
So, lately, my Apple devices have been giving me various problems. And I decided that I should go online to figure out how to solve them. I’m a pretty tech-savvy person, so I figured I might be able to do it myself.
There is loads of advice on the internet on how to fix your Apple devices. I would venture to say that there is more advice on the internet about this than about how to fix anything else – including your zipper or your credit.
It took me awhile to figure out that most of this advice, given in very reliable-looking technogeek jargon, is full of crap.
I have done everything recommended on every forum and it has not made a bit of difference. I did get a bit suspicious when one guy said that you have to hold down the Home button and the Power button while you stand on your head and drink a cup of coffee. But he said it worked for him, so I went with it.
It turns out that spilled coffee does not improve the inner workings of Apple devices. Neither does throwing them across the room while you try to keep burning coffee from going up (or down) your nose.
So I am trying to figure out if the people on those forums accidentally fixed their devices and just figured that whatever event preceded these miraculous repairs must have been responsible.
Or, do they have so much time on their hands that they can visit every forum on the internet and giggle wildly as they type in stupid, but remotely possible, advice to gullible people like me?
Well, I have learned my lesson. Yessir. No more ridiculous attempts to fix things on my own. I made my appointment and the Geniuses of Apple can sort through this mess.
Let’s keep that little coffee incident between you and me, okay? People can be kind of fussy about warranties.
I Know this Pegs Me as a Pessimist, but I Can’t Think of One Situation Where More Cockroaches Might Actually Enhance My Life
Yesterday I realized that dead cockroaches in the house are the perfect metaphor for my life and got to experience my heart leaping as it always does when I discover a perfect metaphor while it simultaneously plummeted in disgust – a not uncommon reaction when contemplating dead cockroaches in the house.
This emotional paradox was precipitated by my encounter with a dead cockroach in the living room yesterday. Actually, it was not completely dead, just nearly dead (a stage of expiration which I find highly amusing in The Princess Bride and Spamalot, but is much less laughable when I’ve grabbed an entire roll of paper towels to pick up a cockroach and he vehemently begins to protest from his prone position with legs waving violently in the air and somehow manages to wedge himself into the perfect position in our plumbing to clog up the toilet which I used to dispose of him – although I might grudgingly admit that the roll of paper towels that encased him might have contributed to that situation.)
Anyway, this reminded me of what the pest control dude told me a few weeks ago when I called him to take care of this exact problem – the regular sighting of upended arthropods within our abode.
“I’m going to put out some poison around the perimeter of the house. In the next couple of weeks, you’ll probably find some more dead cockroaches in here,” he informed me.
“So, let me get this straight. I called you because I keep finding dead cockroaches, and you are telling me that your solution is to give me more dead cockroaches?”
“But they’re dead. Dead is good.”
“No, dead outside is good. Dead inside is a problem. And dead insect corpses littering my floor and crunching every time I walk is a bigger problem that will result in me relocating to the mental hospital – and probably canceling your contract.”
Of course I didn’t say the last part. That’s whatimeant2say. But I knew the results of prolonging the conversation…
“You’re lucky you have dead cockroaches. Some people live in huts with live ones crawling all over the place, spreading disease and laying eggs in their ears.”
To which I would reply, “Some people go their whole lives without seeing a cockroach. Some people have other people who work for them and never try to persuade them that more cockroach cadavers is actually an improvement to their living conditions.”
Why can’t I be those “some people” just once? Why do I always have to be the in-between “some people” who don’t have it great, but could have it a whole lot worse?
Just once, I would like someone to say, “Everyone has it worse than you. There is no better-than-this.” Just once I would like to be the happy cockroach, racing freely through an open field without a care in the world, instead of the somewhat dead cockroach counting his blessings that he hasn’t been flattened by a shoe – his last comforting thought as he is flushed down the toilet.
I forgot to take a picture of the cockroach, so I decided to give you a picture of Wonderbutt sniffing (or getting ready to eat – depending on your perspective) my husband’s prize Amaryllis instead. You’re welcome.
And on the other side it would say, “And Hates Cutesy Bonding Activities That Require the Use of Wooden Spoons”
I think you people know me better than the people who know me better.
Yesterday, I got a wooden spoon in my box at school. It said, “Positive”.
We did this thing at the beginning of the year where we decorated wooden spoons and wrote someone who inspired us on one side, and one of the qualities we most admired about them on the other. Now we are supposed to pass the wooden spoons secretly to people we work with who exhibit these traits.
So far this year, I have gotten “Fun” and “Positive”.
Granted, I just started working at this school last August. But I cannot imagine what I have done to give anyone the impression that I am either fun or positive.
My idea of fun is sitting in my armchair with my farting bulldog watching The Daily Show.
As for being positive, when I complain about something, and someone says, “It could be worse,” I say, “Well, it could also be better.”
Maybe that sounds positive to some people.
Some people also seem to have gotten the impression that I am smart – probably because I teach gifted students.
They obviously have not seen my bathroom drawer full of abandoned hair appliances that I bought because the infomercials convinced me that each one was the solution to my frizzy hair.
Or the long scar on my hand that I got because I thought I could remove the wall-sized mirror in our bathroom by myself, but didn’t actually plan where I was going to put it once I got it off the wall.
If I was going to put a spoon in my box, I think that it would say, “Cranky Klutz Who Repeats the Same Mistakes Over and Over…”
But that probably wouldn’t fit on the spoon.
See? Not positive.
from: happyhaiku.blogspot.com
I Guess I Should Depend on More Than the Daily Show to Keep Me Informed
Dear Man Who Rescued Me from My Solitude While I Waited for My Daughter to Finish Swim Practice, Foolishly Thinking I Could Spend My Time Writing:
I was so overcome during our conversation the other day that I could not find the words to properly thank you. So, here it is.
First of all, thank you so much for offering me your used earbuds so I could listen to your daughter’s video on your phone. Your generosity apparently knows no bounds.
Secondly, thank you for educating me about gun control. Now that I know that the government is out to get us, I am going to save up some money for an AK-87 (the bigger the number, the better, right? but I thought an AK-97 would be too greedy) so I can defend myself. Because when the government finds a way to persuade the military men and women who have sworn to protect our country to start dropping bombs on my house, I want to be ready.
Once I was edified about my need for an arsenal in every room of the house, your insights into the welfare system and health care illuminated how completely selfish it is for my friend to ask for assistance for his son, born prematurely, who maxed out his health insurance life-time benefits before he turned one. I can’t wait to inform him that his money-grubbing ways are, in a large part, responsible for our titanic national debt.
I only wish you had been around to admonish me before I made my foolish choices in the last two presidential elections. Of course, you would have had to find some kind of loophole in the 22nd Amendment in order to keep the man who, “at least you knew where you stood with him” in office. I say just blast a hole in that pesky little alteration to the Constitution with your assault rifle “that isn’t any more dangerous than a revolver”. That’ll knock some sense into people.
I’m probably leaving out something important, but I think you can get the gist of my gratitude. It’s not every day that someone takes as much time as you do to rectify all of my clearly preposterous beliefs and assumptions.
I’m only sorry that you did not get the chance to enlighten me on abortion and gay marriage.
Maybe next time…
Sincerely,
Mrs. Cap’n Firepants
You’ll Never Find the Skeleton in my Closet Because It’s Buried Under All of the Other Junk
When do real people clean out their closets? Seriously. I ask this because I have been polling my fellow teachers about what they will be doing when we get the whole week off for Thanksgiving next week, and nearly all of them said that they will be cleaning out closets. This is the same response I get when I ask what they are doing for Spring Break or the rare three-day weekend. And summers.
I, too, plan to exorcise the demons lurking in my closets during the break next week.
Which leads me, again, to the question, “When do real people clean out their closets?” “
“Real people”, meaning “not teachers.” Also not multimillionaires like The Man Who Must Not Be Named Because I Don’t Want You to Think I am Obsessed With Him, who probably has people to do that for him. Real people.
I mean, do you just not clean your closets out? Ever? Is it because you are so obsessively compulsively neat? Or, is it because you never buy awful-looking purple polka dot shirts that seem quite fashionable at the time, but never seem like the quite right thing to wear whenever you are getting dressed in the morning and so you have to buy more things so you don’t leave the house naked and then they don’t fit anymore and you suddenly have this traffic jam of clothing on rods in your closet which makes it easier to just throw things (clean or dirty) on the floor so you don’t get attacked by a hanger that suddenly cuts loose from the two different shirts that were entwined around it, nearly blinding you in the right eye and forcing you to question the need to actually wear anything other than yoga pants and a t-shirt for the rest of your life? Are you saying this does not happen to you?
That’s just not normal.
I know. You’re like Monica on “Friends”. You have that one locked closet where you stash everything so the rest of your place looks neat. She wasn’t a teacher, either.
http://friends.wikia.com/wiki/The_One_With_The_Secret_Closet
You Have Heard of Google, Right?
So, the other day I meet this guy for the first time. During our conversation, he finds out what college I attended, and, hey, what a coincidence, he went there, too.
Okay.
Then he proceeds to tell me an outlandish story about an 8-year-old genius that attended this college when he was there (at least 15 years before I happened on the scene), and how the frats would have keg parties specifically planned for this kid, in which the kegs would be full of root beer.
Uh-huh.
And then, how this kid was consulted by the student body when the college found a way to keep them from “sudsing” the fountain by putting a chemical in the water. And the brilliant boy genius figured out, not only how to counteract the university’s evil plan, but also how to add his own chemical that would make the suds ten times worse.
Yep.
My new acquaintance then says, “Gee, I wonder what ever happened to that kid.”
And I say, “Why don’t you Google him?”
And he says, “I don’t remember his name.”
Seriously? You can tell me how the football team used to run on the field carrying this kid on his shoulder, how he tested out of every college subject, how the professors wanted him to do the teaching, and you can’t remember his name?
I don’t think I’ve mentioned this, but I am a Google Genius. And I can tell you, even without knowing this kid’s name, that you made this whole thing up.
I wish I’d had this power when I was in college, when the guy I was dating called to cancel our date, and told me he was at the hospital with a friend “who is having stomach problems” – and it turned out to be his girlfriend miscarrying his child.
Or when my mother told me that she was a medical doctor, with a specialization in Psychiatry. Even though she never went to medical school.
Pathological Liars – A Dying Breed.
Except in politics.
Thanks, Google.
To the Person Who Left a Poopy Diaper in the Home Depot Parking Lot
Hah! You thought you were going to ruin my day. But, guess what? My day was already ruined before we drove to Home Depot for our monthly argument about what-color -paint-we-should-paint-the-walls-this-week. And you know what else? Brown was not one of our options, any way. And it was only 104 degrees in the parking lot, so we hadn’t reached the predicted temperature of 135 degrees yet, so your little package had not attained its maximum stink level yet when I almost stepped on it.
Hey, I’ve been there before. You’re trying to live your life, and your baby keeps interfering. That walk from the parking lot to a garbage can is just 15 yards too long. You’re running late, and you’ve got to tile your kitchen before Hoarding, Buried Alive airs because your husband already has the DVR set for Dog, the Bounty Hunter. Something’s gotta give, and it looks like Proper Disposal of a Poopy Diaper is the winner.
That’s unfair, I know. You probably had a really good reason for leaving that diaper in the 13th parking space from the front door, row 6. You’re probably a police officer who found a crying baby sitting in her car seat in the middle of the parking lot, and you knew right away when you picked her up that she needed her diaper changed, and you changed the diaper, and then got a call on your radio that you needed to respond to a 422 or something RIGHT AWAY, and you had no choice, but to abandon that diaper right there and then.
At least you took the baby.
So, don’t you worry about me. I’m fine. It takes a lot more than a randomly placed poopy diaper to derail me. I’m good. Not bitter at all. Not sitting here obsessing about the type of people who leave poopy diapers in parking lots and other random public areas. Not sitting here trying to type something interesting and all I can think about is a poopy diaper. Not judgmental. Not trying to figure out what kind of image I can include with this post that won’t gross out my readers.
I’m fine.
Rather than leave you with the disturbing image that I had burned into my brain today, here is a photo of my dog, Wonderbutt, asking, “What’s wrong with you people?”
You Should Probably Not Ever Take My Advice
It turns out that it is not such a good idea to yell at the airlines the night before you are going to take a flight.
I turned up at the airport at 7 a.m. to find out that my flight to Boston was cancelled. Not delayed. Cancelled. Kaput. And no one had bothered to actually post this on the internet where I could have seen the information before I left the house. Not that I checked. But that’s beside the point.
I will not bore you with the story of me standing in line in front of reservations while I simultaneously attempted to call reservations. Suffice it to say that I got a seat on a later flight.
None of the ticketing agents seemed to find it a problem that my later flight was due to arrive twenty minutes after my connecting flight in Dallas was due to leave.
“It’s gonna be tight, but you might make it,” one of them assured me. Uh huh.
Shockingly, I missed my connecting flight. I stood in another line to try to get the next flight to Boston. I was told that I was on standby and to listen for my name.
Now, you might find this surprising, but I don’t use the last name “Firepants” when I travel. I use a clever pseudonym, bestowed on me by my husband, which no one can spell, much less pronounce. So, when people say, “Listen for your name,” they might as well say, “Listen for when I say the Pledge of Allegiance in Ukrainaian” because I’ve got to listen to everything said for the next hour in the hopes that I will recognize the new, butchered version of my name.
This time, though, my correctly pronounced name was called in a record five minutes. I jumped to the counter, amazed that things finally seemed to be going my way. The woman at the counter checked my non-Firepants identification. And issued me a ticket. I went back to my seat, and sighed in relief.
Until I looked at my ticket. Wrong name. First and last. Both wrong.
How could this be? I showed her my i.d.! Why do these people make me dig through every pocket in my super duper carry on bag to find my i.d. if they are just going to give me the wrong ticket anyway?
And, now that I had the wrong ticket, I had a huge moral conundrum. Hmmm.
I thought about getting to Boston before midnight. I thought about sleeping in the Dallas airport. I thought about how Wonderbutt would handle this situation.
And I ate the ticket. Because I knew the darn airline wasn’t going to feed me.
Sigh. I didn’t eat the ticket. I went back to the counter, where a rather long line had suddenly developed, was berated when I went to the front immediately to return the wrong ticket so the poor lady who tried to get it would not be turned away, and slunk back to my seat as a Standby again.
They called me back. Complete mispronouncing my name. But when I got the new ticket, everything was right.
The moral of this story is that you should not eat tickets that don’t have the right name on them. And do not buy fake i.d.’s in Mexico.
I’m just sayin’.
Beware the Wrath of Mrs. Cap’n Firepants
This is going to be a Yelling Post. It is that time of the month, and I am sorry if that is T.M.I. but I feel that I should give you fair warning.
First of all, I would like to yell at the veteran bloggers out there who either A.) did not warn me that there is some kind of summer slump that completely decimates your number of readers, or 2.) did not tell me that the quality of my writing has plummeted so deeply that I am shedding fans faster than Wonderbutt can pee all over my new furniture.
Secondly, I am yelling at Apple. Or Adobe. Or all technology companies. To Flash or not to Flash. I don’t care. But come up with a friggin’ consensus. Because of your shenanigans, I have to bring my 10 million pound laptop to my conference in Cambridge next week.
Which leads to me airline companies. It’s not all of you. Just the one that I happen to be flying tomorrow that charges for people to check one bag. I would say your name, but you will have my life and, more importantly, my luggage in your hands tomorrow. You took away my meals. You took away my free wings and my tour of the cockpit. And now you want me to pay to check one suitcase!!!!!!! Which I would not have to bring if I did not have to bring my laptop. Because I was planning to bring my super lite iPad.
My laptop not only weighs 10 million pounds, but it is antiquated. Plus, I dropped it a couple of years ago, and the back button has never been the same. But, now I have to bring the laptop because my conference at Harvard requires access to “Flash-enabled” websites. Which means my brilliant idea of taking one personal item and a carry-on is out the window. Because I HATE dragging a Bunch of Stuff with me when I have to change planes – and a 10 million pound laptop plus a full carry-on falls within my definition of a Bunch of Stuff.
So, now I must check a bag. And pay $25 for that checked bag. Going and coming. And they will probably lose it. And then I will be stuck at Harvard with an antique laptop and no clean underwear. And everyone at Harvard will laugh at me. Because of the horribly old laptop. They won’t know about the underwear. I hope.
The airport Stormtroopers better not got through my antique underwear.
photo credit: pasukaru76 via photo pin cc
I’m Surprised it Didn’t Just Fall on our Car
As you may know, mattresses and I have a somewhat turbulent relationship. Lately, it seems as though we have mattresses coming out of our ears. Which is an interesting mental image when you think about it…
Conversation between Cap’n Firepants and me as we are driving along the highway:
Me: What are we going to do with the 40 year old mattresses that we just picked up from your mom’s apartment?
Cap’n Firepants: I don’t know. I think when we order the new mattresses that they will pick up the old ones.
Me: From our garage?
Cap’n Firepants: What the -
He swerves to avoid a box spring mattress that is lying in the middle of Highway 281, with its guts, including wooden boards, strewn all over the highway.
Cap’n Firepants: Someone is going to get really screwed up by that.
Me: I think I figured out what we can do with those mattresses.
The epitome of patriotism – littering your country’s roads with old mattresses that cause multi-vehicle car crashes.
photo courtesy of http://sunburnhighways.wordpress.com/
