Pet Peeves and Other Observations

We're all trapped in our houses until historic storm Jonas wears out his welcome so I thought I'd start talking about pet peeves to get us all going.  Sure, I could read a book, watch a movie, do laundry, pick up around the house, change the sheets on my bed, but meh.  Those things are boring to me now and we still have at least 24 hours of this to go. This might be my cry for help.

I'll start with the obvious one.  How about all those terrible drivers when it snows?  Sheesh, the least little bit of snow falls out of the sky and no one can drive in this place!  Honestly, if only I could meet one of those terrible drivers I'd give them a piece of my mind.  Of course, I've yet to meet one.  Every single person I talk to complains about the terrible drivers but no one ever is that terrible driver.  No one ever says, "It's me! I am just the worst driver when it snows.  You nailed it!"

While we're on driving I have some other observations.  How come every time you're the last in a long line of cars and there's plenty of space behind you, the driver merging into your lane always speeds up and squeezes in between you and the driver ahead of you?  Why don't they just go to the end of the line?  Every time the last in line driver has to slow down to accommodate the other driver since there normally isn't a ton of space between the two cars.   Which leads me to another obvious observation, tailgating.  We all hate it.  We all do it.  We should stop tailgating.

Do you give the thank you wave when someone makes space for you to merge your car?  You should.   I've noticed that's coming back again.  How about when someone blasts their horn at you?  I wave then too.  We all make mistakes so whatever I did, I wave to say I'm sorry.

Finally on the topic of driving - if you're not good at merging onto highway traffic at the intersection, just stop and wait for your opening even if it means waiting for the light to change and all traffic to stop.  Don't drive to the very end of the merge lane and stop.  Now you're just sitting there and everybody else who does know how to merge into moving traffic will try to go anyway and then you'll think they took your spot - which you couldn't have found anyway - and so you'll try to jump in.  Frankly, I'm amazed that more people aren't injured or killed because of this. I'll tell you what my Dad told me when I was a new driver taking on the world, "It doesn't matter how fast you get there.  It just matters that you get there."  So sit and wait because it won't kill you.

Here's another observation.  How come people can't get the grocery cart over to the stand and they just leave it in an empty parking space?  Sometimes the cart is in the space right next to the cart stand!  This happens at all stores with carts, not just grocery stores, but we've all been to the grocery store lately so this one is on my mind.  I just wonder why it's so hard to do this.

How come when you're in the grocery store people will park their cart on one side of the aisle and shop on the other so they're blocking the items with their cart?  Or, when someone is looking at a group of items, people will wheel up in front of them and block them, then sometimes, but not always, they turn around and see the other person and say "Oh, sorry about that."  Sometimes I've noticed people will just leave their cart in the middle of an aisle blocking everything and walk more than 10 ft away to shop for items.  Now nobody can go around them and finally someone will push the offending cart aside and then the person jumps back over and says "Sorry!" It's almost as if people just aren't aware that there are other people using the store all at the same time.

Here's one of my biggest pet peeves - people who don't pick up after their pets.  We live in a really nice place with great walking paths and it's too bad that there is dog poop all around.  I have a saying that I'm trying to make mainstream "May you step in the dog poo tomorrow you didn't pick up today."  I think it should be on a sign and that sign should be posted all around the path system.  I get it that sometimes people forget their bags and sometimes yes, I get it, I have a dog, it's just not in a condition that it can be picked up.  In that last case I always hope it rains within the next 24 hours to clean it up.  We have so much dog poo around town though and there are free bags, let me repeat that FREE bags available in a lot of places, so that excuse kind of goes out the window.   Some people say they can't see it in the dark.  Bring a flashlight.

Here's a good one - complainers!!  Seriously, how about people who complain all the time?  Hopefully you all realize I'm making a joke here.  How about people who don't get jokes?  They're the worst!

So those are just a few of the Pet Peeves and Observations that have been on my mind.  Feel free to leave yours in the comments.  I'd love to read them.