#Tuesday Ten: Pet Peeves

Last week, I started a conversation about pet peeves on my Facebook fanpage (are you playing over there? I’d sure love to have you!). That led my friend, Rabia from The Liebers, to invite me to participate in today’s Tuesday Ten since it was about pet peeves. More than happy to air my petty grievances to the world, I accept, Rabia.

1. People who smack their food – Seriously, unless it’s peanut butter or you’re under the age of 4, there is no reason to hear any sort of smacking noise. Close your mouth, folks.

2. People who cannot figure out the difference between “me” and “I” – This is kind of nitpicky, but it drives me bananas. My parents drilled the correct usage of these words into our heads as children, so none of the five of us make this mistake. I plan to do the same to my offspring

Example: Bob and I love to go shopping. (This is correct. When you take it apart, you could have, “Bob loves to go shopping” or “I love to go shopping.”)

Example: Bob and me hate watching football. (This is not correct. One doesn’t say, “Me hate watching football” unless one is Cookie Monster.)

Example: Come to the game with Bob and me. (This is correct. If you broke it apart, both “Come to the game with Bob,” and “Come to the game with me” are grammatically correct.)

Example: Come to the game with Bob and I. (This is not correct, and it makes my eardrums (or eyes) burst. Would you say, “Come to the game with I?” You would not. So stop saying it.)

3. Nails – During my junior year of high school, my anatomy teacher taught us about nails and how they form and how they grow and how they’re basically disgusting. It is rare that you’ll find me with nails much longer than the end of my nail bed. I also can’t handle it when my children’s nails get too long. They know I’m going to come after them. It’s also highly frustrating to type with nails longer than the ends of my fingers. And, with any sort of nail, you run the risk of dirt getting under there. I learned this the hard way when I first started teaching and kept coming home with black nails from white board markers. Ech.

4. Screaming babies at a store at 10 pm – Someone is going to throw a virtual tomato at me for this one, but I seriously do not understand why people take babies shopping at 10 or later at night. Now, I do get that some people work different shifts and can only go shopping at certain times of day. And I totally understand that they may not have someone to watch the baby — I’ve been a single mom, I get that. But what drives me batty is when the baby (or toddler) is crying because it’s 10 pm and well past bed time and the parent is getting mad at the kid and spanking it, etc. Ask Aaron. He knows now to just shake his head with me if or when we experience it — which we usually don’t anymore because we don’t ever go out, and our kids go to bed at 8.

5. Dust on my car radio display – I can’t handle it. It’s like having smudges on my glasses. I must have a cleaned off/dusted radio thing in my car. I’m almost obsessive about it. One piece of dust, and I’m swiping my hand over it to fix it.

6. Unmade bed – Sweet molasses, I cannot sleep in a bed that isn’t tucked and folded and made up nicely. It drives Aaron bonkers, I’m pretty sure, that I make the bed before we go to sleep if it hasn’t been made before we start our day. And God forbid that any of the blankets are twisted a little. I just can’t handle it. He’s also not allowed to help me make the bed. Just get out of my way.

7. Interrupting – You know that Knock Knock joke where the answer to “Who’s there” is “Interrupting Panda” (or something like that), and then when you say, “Interrupting Pan–,” you’re interrupted? Well, Miss Sassy Pants told me that one and almost lost an eye. I jest. I wouldn’t actually poke her eye out, but it took a bit to get me to laugh. I honestly and truly hate being interrupted when I’m talking. I hate it most when I’m clearly telling something important to one of my family members, and they decide it’s time to discuss the score of the NASCAR race (Are there scores for NASCAR? I don’t even know — because I’m trying to talk!).

8. Whining – I get that when you’re sick, you are entitled to a few good whines. But when you are fine and well-rested and not hungry? Don’t start it. I make a point of illustrating to my children when they sound like a whiner. I imitate them. It paints a really good picture.

9. Stacked dirty plates – Old food is gross. Old food on my fingers because someone stacked their plate on top of someone else’s plate that was smeared with mashed potatoes and gravy is just disgusting. Family has learned that I’d rather have my dishes all over the counter instead of stacked on top of one another waiting to be put in the dishwasher. Better yet, just put the dishes in the dishwasher for me.

10. Published/professional writing riddled with grammatical mistakes – Someone reading this will probably find a grammatical mistake. I’m human. I get that everyone is human. But I really do get annoyed with published material that I read that has really bad mistakes or missing words. Mostly, I’m annoyed because editors are paid a billion dollars (not really; I enjoy over-exaggerating) to make sure that doesn’t happen in the finished product. So really, my frustration is towards the people who are paid to make sure the problem isn’t there and have made the author look like an idiot.

Phew. I feel better. What are some of your pet peeves?

Tags: blogging, petpeeves, theliebers, tuesdayten