Pet peeves

This is a completely gratuitous post on: Things that irritate me or How to piss me off.

• Fundamentalist religionuts and any pseudoscientific garbage, but those are just a given.


• Mispronunciations. Especially people who mispronounce nuclear as nuke-yoo-lar (our favorite former commander-in-chief, for instance), realtor REE-lit-or (I've know actual realtors who can't pronounce this word) and mispronunciation mis-pro-noun-see-ay-shun. Bill is completely unable to pronounce labyrinth and pronounces it lab-er-nith, but that's just cute.*


• People who say irregardless. The word is either regardless or irrespective, people! Pick one, but don't combine them. From my 1974 edition of Webster’s New World Dictionary, irregardless is defined as a substandard or humorous redundancy for REGARDLESS.


• Snowboarders, with the exception of Kia, with whom I've never skied, and my son. He irritates me for other reasons. Snowboarders don't seem to have the brain capacity to understand that most skiers go back and forth across the slope, not straight down, and seem to be constantly surprised when skiers turn and go the other way right into their path such that they scream by at 50 mph barely missing and frightening the skier (me, anyway) half to death. In addition, skis make a pleasant shush, shushing sound - snowboards literally roar as they go by. I'm constantly swearing at snowboarders and calling them fracking moron idiots under my breath. Redundant, I know, but it makes me feel better. Ok, I don't always say fracking. Frelling? Smegging? (30 points if you can name all three Sci Fi shows - without a search engine). One ran into me earlier this year on a completely wide open slope with just the two of us on it, and then was bent out of shape when I yelled, "moron" at him (more out of fear and surprise than malice. Ok, maybe there was a little malice).


• Led vs. Lead.
  
  Lead (lěd) - a heavy, comparatively soft, malleable, bluish-gray metal, sometimes found in its natural state but usually combined as a sulfide, esp. in galena. Symbol: Pb; atomic weight: 207.19; atomic number: 82; specific gravity: 11.34 at 20°C.
  
  Lead (lēd) - to go before or with to show the way; conduct or escort
  
  Led (lěd) - the past tense of lead.
  
  LED - light emitting diode


• Fracking big SUVs, perhaps just when they're driven by idiots. UPDATE: Andrew reminded me that it's a general rule that fracking big SUVs are always driven by idiots.


• People who say Safety Deposit Box. It is SAFE Deposit Box, people! We just watched an episode of Fringe where ALL the characters said safety deposit box over and over and over. I, of course, had to yell, "SAFE! The word is SAFE!" every time. Yeah, okay. I was probably more annoying than they were. Probably. Same thing happened recently with an episode of Alias.


• Bigotry of any sort against anybody for any reason. Except snowboarders. Bigotry against snowboarders is fine.


• Cruelty to animals. Humans included.


• Having the television on just as noise in the background. I'm constantly coming into the living room and turning it off because NO ONE IS WATCHING IT! Unless I'm watching something in particular, I don't like it on at all. I have happily gone without TV for years at a time (I did use it to watch movies occasionally).

When I asked Bill to list things that irritate me, he said, "People who make slight grammatical errors and misproNOUNciations" (I already had that on the list). "And people who don't change lanes soon enough for you." No, Bill. That's just YOU.

*NOTE: Bill says he's not cute, he's ruggedly handsome.

(Note to self - figure out why there are no bullet points. Barry, help???)
UPDATE: Ok, now I have the funky flowers, but I guess they're better than nothing

On being alone

UPDATE: Being alone is all well and good, but sometimes it would be nice to have another person in the car when I'm going skiing and have to put chains on the tires to get there...

At the age of about 8, I was lucky enough to have a horse-crazy mother who was finally able to fulfill her lifelong dream by getting me a pony - Paleface - and then later, a horse - Najmah (she also got herself a horse for a while). By the time I was a young teen, I was doing things like riding Najmah through the Dairy Queen drive-thru and sharing a hamburger with her. I ate the burger, she ate the bun. This was Texas in the '70s, so the only really unusual thing about that was that I was riding English style instead of Western. Although I often rode with friends, we lived in a rural area where I was also able to just saddle up and ride off by myself pretty much whenever I wanted. It was very liberating.

It would be just me and Najmah. Usually Whiskey, our border collie, would come — ostensibly for protection, but in reality she mostly just chased squirrels (she did attack and drive off a much larger Keeshond who was trying to bite Najmah's heels once). I had a feeling of exhilaration and well-being and thought I never felt alone or lonely because I was enjoying the company of other beings. I had these same feelings years later with my horse, Sandpiper.

The weird thing is, I get the exact same feelings when I'm skiing, and I'm almost always alone when I ski. I even prefer to ride the lift alone if the resort isn't too busy. Making conversation with a complete stranger on a long lift ride can be interesting, but is sometimes just too stressful. My mother actually recently asked me if I get lonely skiing. No, never. It doesn't bother me to have lunch at the resort restaurants alone, either.* I have more recently started riding my bike regularly, and yes, I get those same feelings. I often ride with friends, but far more often alone.

I actually kind of find it sad that the "company" was all in my head. This, of course, doesn't mean that I didn't love the horses. When we left Texas for California, we had to leave them there, and I missed them terribly and cried for weeks (that was back in 1979, and I'll still get choked up thinking about it). Or perhaps I should say that I WAS enjoying their company, but that wasn't why I wasn't lonely.

I like company, but I guess I'm also just comfortable being by myself.

* My mother told me once that she had never eaten in a restaurant alone. I was flabbergasted. I've even been to movies by myself.