eas•y•go•ing  adj.

1. Not easily worried or angered; relaxed and rather casual; calm.
2. Unhurried.

I consider myself mainly easy going and there’s not much that will make me lose my cool – ok, maybe that’s not really true, at least I was, up until a year or so ago.  So, before I get this off my chest, I thought I should look up what easy going actually means to see if I really am and I’m happy to say that I still consider myself in the easy-going category. I am sometimes hurried, and I do worry occasionally, but I think generally I don’t anger easily and I have a relaxed and calm way of being (today though, not so much).  My family is likely rolling their eyes and laughing at me, but this is my blog and today, we will just have to agree to disagree.  However, sometimes things get the better of me, and today was one of those days.  I’m not sure if it is my age, my MS or a combination of both, but I am finding myself occasionally irritated by things that never really twisted me up before. Today, was one of those days, so I thought today would be a good day to get some of that off my chest. So, here are a few things that annoy me, and I’m quite sure that someone reading this will agree with at least one of these things.  I will be back tomorrow with a better attitude, I promise…

This morning, I had a Doctors appointment which is on the other side of town and requires me to travel over a bridge.  If you live in this town, you know where I’m heading with this. Our bridges are horrible, ok not the bridges themselves but the traffic on the bridges is out of control.  People in this town don’t know how to navigate over our bridges…..when you block the intersection and then barge ahead ignoring those that have the right a way don’t expect me to be all happy go lucky. Daily, traffic backs up for kilometers, and this is February, you should see it on a long weekend in July. So annoying.

While we are talking about traffic, the next thing that gets my goat is people who can’t pick a lane – whether its on the highway or at the grocery store. And by all means people, please stand somewhere or drive somewhere that will block anyone who is ready to actually commit to a lane. EVERY SINGLE TIME!  You know, it seems like people are oblivious to how much space they take up in a limited area – like parking their cart in the middle of an aisle so no one can pass from either direction. When I go grocery shopping, it is serious business, I don’t mess around, I don’t have the energy to mess around.  I go in with a list and I am ready to get er’ done – so please don’t wander around aimlessly and look at every label on every can of soup.  Here’s an idea, go home and make yourself some homemade soup, it’s much better for you. And, you know what kind of bread you like,  so please don’t stand there, with your cart in the middle of the aisle and stare mindlessly at the bread.  You know what kind you like, just buy that one and get on with it.

And back to the road – it makes me cuckoo when people forget to turn their blinker off and people who drive 5 miles per hour below the speed limit in the passing lane. The list could go on and on and on, but I’m not going to go any farther because my family will invariably bring up my own driving skills, which they describe as less than stellar.

Have you ever been excited to buy something only to get it home and excitement turns to frustration when you try to open the package?  I swear you need an engineering degree to open some packaging.  One time I bought this awesome thingy to open plastic packages, but the contraption was stuck in the very plastic package that it was meant to help me open. WTH?? Needless to say, it gets my goat!

There is a place in our mall where I sometimes go for a pedicure (mainly because it is cheap, and you don’t need an appointment and they do a decent job).  But it always happens that the people doing mine and the rest of the peeps getting pedicures, are all talking in another language with each other and totally ignoring you, even though you know they understand English.  How do I know this?  Because if you ask a question, they answer you…..in English.  Why am I there giving them my hard-earned money and they can’t even speak to me in our own language or even speak to me at all?  I know, I know, it’s my choice to go there, but I think it will be different each time I go but it doesn’t seem to change. I may or may not go back, I guess I just need to decide if the aggravation is worthy enough for me to choose to get a pedicure somewhere else.

Another thing…..we keep raising money for those organizations who are looking for “cures” for the horrible diseases in the world (Cancer, Multiple Sclerosis, Arthritis, Alzheimer’s, etc), but even after the billions of dollars donated we still have not found a cure for anything? Come on, do they really expect us to believe that?  Frankly, I am left questioning what they are doing with all the money?  All I see, is more medications being developed, not cures.  And yes, they are usually medications that may help the disease itself, but the side effects cause terrible damage to other parts of our bodies and can cause fatal infections and even other diseases, that we then have to fight off with more medications. Please, somebody find a cure – for something!

And don’t get me started about stores with less than adequate tills open. Stores with 15 till spots and only 2 cashiers working with a line up of 20 people and their own workers are urging you to try the self-serve tills today.  I’m confused, if you are going to pay multiple workers to direct people to the self-serve stations, why don’t you just pay them to run a till? And then to top it all off, how many times did you go to the store for groceries and come home to realize that you forgot to get what you actually went in to buy, or am I the only one who does that, even though I had a list?

Do you have a front loading washing machine?  I do, and it frosts my knickers when I find stuff that should have gone in the washing machine 30 seconds after I’ve pressed start on the cycle and the door has locked and I don’t have enough for another load.  And while I am on the topic of clothing – who else struggles between wanting to put clothes on during the weekend or not?  Surely, I am not the only one.

I don’t know if you know this about me, but I’m not much of a wallflower and I think I have funny and important things to say, that’s why I am always surprised when I start telling a really great story and suddenly realize that nobody is listening – happens to me all the time.  In the words of my dad – nobody listens to me!

Here’s another one – I hate finding out there’s no toilet paper after I’ve already peed, even worse is going into a public bathroom and going into the only empty stall and see that someone dribbled on the seat or even worse, took a big you know what and didn’t flush.  How rude can you get? And on that subject – It irritates me when I am all comfy in bed and then realize I have to go to the potty.

Ever had a pistachio nut that just won’t open?  Enough said

I’m going to end it right here, but I feel like I must add a few more without going into great detail on them, you can let your imagination run wild!

• Body Odour
• Student Loans
• Call Centre operators who I can’t understand
• Bullying
• People who talk loudly on their cell phones
• Mumblers
• Sloppy socks
• Movie Talkers

But seriously, some things just get on my nerves. I can’t be alone in this can I? Now that I’ve got this off my chest, I feel much better and am ready to make my way back to my easy going way of being!

What are some things that drive you crazy? What’s bugging you?

Until Tomorrow,

Raegan