Annoying Things, Awesome Things

I’ve just been accumulating a list of awesome things and annoying things that I’ve noticed lately.

Annoying:

Especially now, with the house next door on the market, strangers often park in front of our house. I don’t mind that. I welcome a new family. What I hate is when they choose to park with their entire passenger-side wheels on the grass. They are scootching way, way over for no reason at all. Our road is wide enough for full two cars to drive side-by-side on the pavement (even though they are not supposed to do that, I have seen it done). They are parking that way on the off chance that a terrible driver sideswipes them, thinking that maybe six or eight inches will make a difference. The chances of both of these things happening is very, very small. But if they compact my grass by parking on it, they will absolutely, definitely make my lawn look crappier.  If anyone was wondering why there’s a cinder block there right now, it is a booby trap/deterrent. And if you think that you need to point out the irony of trying to prevent the crappy-ification of my lawn by putting a crappy cinder block on the edge of it, well, you actually don’t need to do that, thanks.

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J’s band and chorus concert was  the other night, and this couple behind me kept talking, and by “talking” I mean talking and not whispering, in the middle of almost every song by every group. Sometimes the man was punching at a phone while talking to his companion. I gave him the kind of look that would shut up any–well, I was trying to come up with an adjective for adult (intelligent? halfway-cognizant? self-respecting?), but I think that I mean that I would have expected literally any adult would shut up when confronted with my steely glare. Not these two. Even Cute W, who is much more patient than I am, gave a couple of pointed stares. It is situations like this that demonstrate how important it is to disallow people from concealing and carrying weapons, because if I’d had a gun, I probably would have shot that guy. I mean, what kind of person can talk right through a fifth grade band playing the Star Wars theme song? Someone who should probably get shot in the face. I know that’s wrong. And that’s why it’s best if I don’t have access to firearms.

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Sometimes I watch shows or read books and think, “Wait, was whoever made this story up on drugs at the time? Is getting high the only way to truly connect with this plot and these characters? Or am I just unbelievably lame?” And either way, whether it’s because I should be actively high while watching it or because I just need to be less lame, it makes me think that I should have been the type of person who did more drugs instead of just the teensiest, dip-your-toe-in-the-water experiences, but now I am 45 and it just seems like that ship has sailed and I will have to remain disconnected from some pop culture forever and ever.

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Speaking of pop culture, you know that song, “7 Years” by Lukas Graham, where he sings about how “Soon we’ll be thirty years old”? I feel like, every time I hear that song, it actually ages me. Like, I understand that every minute that I’m alive I’m aging by a minute. I mean, I’m resigned to that.  But when that song is playing? I really feel myself actively aging. Like it’s dog years or something. Which is why I switch radio stations every damn time.

Awesome:

Ever since M read Romeo and Juliet in school, one of her favorite phrases is “God’s bread! it makes me mad!” I’m sorry, dude, but that’s adorable. I believe it’s what Capulet said when Juliet was not being cooperative about his pick for a suitor. But M will fit it into all sorts of situations, like, “I just cleaned this room and J messed it all up. God’s bread! it makes me mad!”

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The guys attempting to flip our neighbor’s house decided that they would attempt to transform our “shared” driveway into an “adjacent” driveway by getting rid of a lilac bush and a bunch of grass and covering it with some asphalt that doesn’t remotely match the rest of the driveway. It also goes right up to the foundation of the neighboring house, causing drainage, snow, and ice issues. Well, just a few months later, the weeds from the paved-over lawn are poking through the asphalt. One weed’s already poking out, and there are several spots where it’s buckling. I am taking malicious pleasure in this.

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Remember those colored jeggings from that post a while back? How I bought some teenage-looking clothing, and my snotty little teenager was pointing out that it was not exactly designed for my age group.  I ended the post saying, “I’m not sure that those colored jeggings will ever see the light of day.” Well, I wore them a few days ago, and M walked in and said, “Mom, are those new jeans? They look really good.”

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There is nothing I love more than when my kids are happily hanging out with each other. They’ve been going on long biking adventures lately, and even though a teensy part of me is fretting that they have been abducted, I am mostly thrilled. Now that it’s spring and we have some windows open, one of my favorite things is walking into my bathroom and hearing the girls giggling with each other from where they’re sharing a hammock below.