No sense beating around the bush today:

P is for Pet Peeves

That’s right. I coulda saved this post for R, and made that letter stand for rant… I could have even used three other topics I thought of, all on my own (the most for any letter, I think!): popularity, procrastination, and perfectionism. On each of those, I’ll give a short graph, then get right into ye old pet peeves.

First: popularity. I was never the popular kid. No, not me: I was the weird kid with her nose in a book and no social skills. But now, as a teacher, I’m constantly asked questions. All I hear all day is “Ms. George, Ms. George, Professor George, Dr. Jorge, Ms. Jones”… as I tell my students, it makes me feel like the most popular girl at the school dance. And let me tell you, it is exhausting. Maybe being the weird kid in HS was actually a blessing.

Second: procrastination. I think this comes from being trained as a journalist. You work on the things that have deadlines… right before the deadline. Deadlines motivate me. Otherwise, I pay it no mind. This may be why, when I was working on finishing up my book, I wrote the last 6,000 words or so the day before the first draft was due to the publisher. (Bad me.) And why, although I worked on this post hours and hours ago, I’m just getting back to it.

Third: perfectionism. This is a habit I am attempting to break, somewhat unsuccessfully. I feel like if I’m going to do something, I need to do it the utmost best of my ability.  And of course, sometimes that’s not possible. Sometimes things just have to get done.

The blog posts are good example of dealing with number two and three, actually; I can’t be perfect on these posts, and I can’t procrastinate too long.

Anywho, on to the main event: pet peeves, most of which revolve around people driving. Or actually, their inability to do so properly.

• Okay, people, when you are at a round-about, and someone is waiting to see what you are going to do, please, please, give us a little turn signal so we know if you are going to turn and thus whether or not we can pull out!
• In general, use your {insert bad word of your choice here} turn signals! Despite my extensive training, I still cannot read minds!
• You are NOT special. I don’t care whatcher mama tole you. You just ain’t. You ain’t got no right to park your car in front of a store and leave it running while you “go in for a minute”. Your stupid car is blocking traffic and pedestrians.
• If someone clearly is trying to get in front of you in traffic, with their signal on and everything, please, for the love of all that is holy, slow your {insert bad word here} car down just a notch and let me in! I don’t have my {insert bad word here} signal on for my health, you know!
• Don’t ride up my bumper so close you’re practically deflowering my car. My car and your car ain’t pals, let alone intimate relations. Especially don’t ride up my bumper and stay there when there’s miles and miles of space to go around me. (Having said that, cars doing that to me is my karma for riding up car’s butts when they were in the fast lane yet going slow… something I did when I was younger and much stupider.)
• Don’t ride up my bumper, then speed around me, then get in front of me and slow down. Really? Really?
• I know I’m becoming old and curmudgeonly, but, you people do realize that blazing past me at a million miles per hour when I’m already going over the speed limit may a) garner you a ticket and b) not get you where you’re going any faster, right? I simply luurrrrveeee, darlings, when that happens, and I get off my exit, and lo and behold, that car that just did that is sitting right in front of me.
• Driving too fast in a parking garage. Dude. It’s a parking garage, not the autobahn. There are cars of various lengths parked alongside where you be drivin’, and lawks a mercy, I might be walking next to one of them there parked cars. Slow your {insert bad word here} down!
• Speaking of parking… if you can’t drive it, don’t buy it. If you can’t park it, for sure do NOT buy it! If you’re driving, presumably you are not blind, and can actually see how poorly you’ve parked when you get out of your vehicle…  So hows about you get back in and re-position that there vehicle of yours so that it’s not taking up all the space another car might actually fit in!
• If someone is waiting ~ like they should ~ in the right-hand lane to turn right, don’t go around them on the left to turn right! I mean, really!
• If it’s a lane to go straight, don’t turn left!
• If it’s a left-turn lane, don’t go straight!
• And I can’t even begin to describe all the cray-cray things we saw drivers doing just today…

Welp, I guess that’s about enough ranting. Until (sometime) tomorrow, when we visit the letter Q…