Stuff That Winds Me Up

I’m not someone who loses their temper very easily.

I’ve not always been like that. When I was younger, my little brother used to be able to wind me up easier than one of those self winding tape measures – he just pressed the button and I was ready and willing to punch, scream and pull his hair out.

As I’ve got older I’ve got a lot calmer, more rational and far more laid back – but certain things still have the ability to really get my goat  - so I thought I’d do a list of them so you all know what not to do in no particular order; you'll probably find that the more something irritates me the more I have written about it.

1.       My laptop.

My laptop is one of my favourite possessions. I don’t know what I’d do without it. But there are there are times when I’d quite happily throw it out of a window from my first floor living room. For example, whilst writing the last sentence an AVG notification popped up telling me to renew my licence. WHY could it not have chosen a time when I was actually looking at the screen?! I wrote another whole sentence before I noticed and that is HUGELY frustrating. Other times when it is going slow I find frustrating. When I want to do something, I want to do it NOW. Not in half an hour, when it’s sorted its shit out, not in three hours, after it’s completed a scan, but NOW!!!

2.       My Mobile Phone.

When I don’t have my mobile pho ne I am barely able to function. It doesn’t have to actually work, I just have to be able to turn it on and see the reassuring glow from its screen to know that I am in the safe hands of o2. And yet, I have never yet had a mobile phone that is capable of doing everything that I require of it. For example, my Samsung Jet was incapable of making me a breakfast smoothie, my blackberry was unable to scratch my back when required and my Samsung S3 Mini does not come with a built in butler service. But once again, the main thing that irritates me is its lack of speed. I rarely close all the applications that are open on it, but I expect the phone to be able to multi-task as well as my brain does, and I get extremely frustrated when it takes 2 minutes to open Candy Crush when I am also running Instagram, Facebook, Chrome, AVG, and What’s App simultaneously.  Technology should be advanced enough to keep up with me already. If it doesn’t, why the hell doesn’t it?!

3.       Losing stuff.

I am, as you are probably aware, dyspraxic. This means that I have an appalling short term memory. I can remember stuff that happened when I was still in the crib like it was yesterday, but I cannot remember what happed two minutes ago when my boss asked me to book our contractors into Selfridges. Luckily, I have developed mechanisms to help me cope with this – I write EVERYTHING down. Sadly, this does not help me when I lose the list. The second I put something down, I forget about it. Usually, I can cope with this, as it only takes about 5 minutes of searching to locate whatever it is I have lost. Sadly, things start to go downhill when that five minute time frame is up. That’s when I start to get angry. As I approach the ten minute mark I start to lose control of my emotions. Usually, this is where I start to shout at objects that get too close, or any people who happen to be unlucky enough to be standing too close – especially if they don’t appear to be helping me look hard enough. At around 15 minutes I start to get a tad violent. Mainly towards objects, but don’t stand too close to me just in case. By 20 minutes I’m in tears, usually from rage and frustration towards myself, but I like to externalise it by blaming anything and anyone else, internalising is unhealthy, I believe. By the 30 minute mark, I’m hysterical, bordering on madness. The worst part is, that I find myself unable to STOP looking and calm down. I MUST WIN. Therefore I must keep looking.

4.       Cheaters.

I am an extremely competitive person. Most people won’t play board games with me because it is not worth the fight that occurs if I lose - and I always lose. I am a natural born loser. If someone is being competitive with me, I will not play with them because I hate people who rub it in your face; bad winners are worse than bad losers I feel, but then I wouldn’t know because I’ve never won. At least being a bad loser is understandable. A winner should win with style and grace. And competitive people are NEVER good winners. But what I hate worse than any of that, are the people who cheat. What is the point of winning if you don’t win for real? Why cheat and take away everyone else’s chances of experiencing that feeling of having won? If I find out that someone has cheated at something, I will refuse to do pretty much anything with them ever again I’m a forgiving person the majority of the time. I have, in the past, forgiven the same person for the same thing over and over until I really can’t take it anymore, but I cannot forgive a cheat. Something interesting I have also noticed is that people who are willing to cheat at board games are also more likely to cheat on their partners and in life in general – but I don’t know if that is just coincidence. Either way, the scumbags that cheat at monopoly deserve to have the death sentence brought back for them. I swear to God. (The Sexy Guitarist just randomly laughed in the background about something and said “Haha, I win!” I nearly lynched him. Now THERE’S a bad winner.)

5.       People who think they’re always right.

This works mostly for people who think their OPINION is always right. If the subject being debated is a scientific fact, then who am I to argue? But when it comes down to things like Religion, I get extremely angry with people who try to shove their beliefs down my throat. I was raised as a Christian (although I’m not very good at it), however, I find that the people who are WORST for this impingement are other Christians. The ones who hang out in the centre of town and sing/dance/preach at you as you’re doing your payday shopping spree. Yes, you are entitled to your beliefs, but WHY do you feel that it is necessary to spew those belief at all the poor Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims (of which there are an abundance in this city) who are in town simply because they want to get an eye test or some Millie’s Cookies? Why are you ramming what you believe down their throats? You may believe that you are right, and maybe you are, but that does not mean that you have the right to go around pointing your finger and being all “HA, you’re going to hell!” it’s just another way of being a bad winner. And doesn’t Matthew state, “Judge not, lest ye be judged”? Why not hang around in the centre of town with a sign saying, “You might be right, but I might be right. We’ll find out.” People will hate you less.

6.       Mornings

I am not, and never have been, a morning person. I don’t really like GOING to bed – there’s so much I want to do and I never seem to have time for it, but I like LEAVING my bed even less. When I wake up in the morning I must be treated with caution, love and care; a bit like a bomb that hasn’t gone off since WW2 that has just been discovered underneath the local nightclub.

The SG’s most recent hobby seems to be to see if he can get me to explode. This morning I was woken with “go do the washing up, and get me some breakfast; I’m hungry.” Needless to say he was astonished when he found himself washing up and frying sausages and bacon simultaneously only seconds later, whilst I sat on the sofa reading my book with a satisfied look on my face. I don’t think he could work out how that happened, and is still a bit puzzled about the whole thing.

When I wake up in the mornings I like cuddles and talking and closeness. Or I like to feel like I have a plan for the day. I like to know where I’m going and what I’m doing. If I can get a bit of both then all the better.

7.       People who talk to me when I’m trying to read.

I like to read. A lot. But I find it incredibly frustrating when I’m trying to read and someone decides that that is the right time to have a conversation with me. The only people who do this are the people who are not readers themselves. Come on people, you don’t walk into the cinema and try to have a conversation with the person sitting next to you all the way through the movie, do you? With reading it’s ok if you’re having a proper conversation, but if you’re wanting to say a few words, stop, then say a few more so that I’m stopping and starting – consequently reading the same sentence over and over again – just don’t bother, because I will make you eat this book.

8.       Other people’s lack of spelling and punctuation

We all went to school right? And in the exception of a few cases (eg, a valid reason for being unable to go to school or dyslexia and similar problems) we were all taught to read and write. Therefore, there is no excuse for being a 14 year old that is unable to work out which “there” you are supposed to use. No excuse for not choosing the right “to”. HOW THE HELL do you think you are going to get a decent job that doesn’t involve spending the rest of your life cleaning up drunk people’s poo if you are unable to write, “There they are! With their cat”

“They’re happy?”

“Yes!”

IT’S NOT FRIGGING HARD PEOPLE!!!

What about punctuation? The number of emails I receive where the people writing them do not understand that a full stop is still used at the end of a paragraph. You don’t just hit enter and hope for the best. Commas are completely disregarded and most people wouldn’t know the difference between an apostrophe and an armadillo. But then, I am also aware that most of the people who fail to pay attention to these extremely important little things are the ones who are at the bottom of the pile in the work place. Spelling and grammar is so important because everyone takes their first impression from what they see. Dyslexics can and do use spell check – why can’t you?!? And there is absolutely NO excuse for failing to use a comma.

These are all the things that infuriate me most, although I may add to this list in due course....

I did mention that I’m much CALMER than I used to be, right?

And as a bit of revenge for saying "I Win", here is a picture of SG asleep on my sofa last night... who wins now, SG?

The Badly Chosen Boyfriend and the Pizza Incident

We all do it. We all have that boyfriend/girlfriend in our past that, when we deign to think about them, we think, "Why the hell did I ever consider them as date-worthy material? Was I temporarily brain damaged? Was I being controlled by aliens?"

My first long-term boyfriend was possibly the worst person I could have ever chosen to date.

I’m not saying he wasn’t a nice person – he was in fact the opposite. He was quite self-centred, but on the whole wouldn’t harm a fly.

The reason he was so terrible a choice for me is because we were so completely and utterly incompatible. I found him boring, irritating, selfish, immature and he had no loyalty whatsoever.

We used to have conversations and I’d find, on later trying, that I could not recall a single word he said. He was interested in History (Yawn), Politics (Kill me) and creative writing (about history and politics. Dear GOD).

I, however, at the grand old age of 18/19 was interested in design, reading (not about history or politics) and having fun.

Emotionally, I was far more mature than he was, despite his being about 3 years older than I, and I was less inclined to live by everyone else’s rules than he was. I would get frustrated with the fact that he would never do anything without saying things like, “my Dad says it should be done this way” or “My friends say I should do this”.

I was far more likely to take other people’s advice on board and then choose the method I thought best, rather than what everyone else thought best.

The Bad Choice Boyfriend was such a stickler for doing it the way you are told and not straying from the instructions that we ended up having the worst argument of my life over a pizza.

I had come home from work at Vision Express one evening, knowing that the BCB was cooking for us, and when I got home he suggested pizza. As I do have a bit of a penchant for pizza I happily agreed, and off he popped to the shop over the road to grab a Chicago Town. Upon arrival back he started reading the instructions, and I warned him to NOT put the pizza on the top oven shelf, as I know that our oven got too hot and it would burn before it cooked. I immediately stopped paying attention and went back to doing whatever it was I was doing before he returned.

BCB joined me, but within 10 minutes I could smell burning.

“You need to check the pizza, something’s burning,” I warned.

“Nah, it’ll be something on the bottom of the oven,” he replies, and remains where he is for a further 5 minutes, while I fidget and panic about my food, but decide to remain where I am and not “take control” as I was often accused of doing.

After checking on the pizza he exclaims, “The pizza is burnt!” to which I replied, “Did you put it on the top shelf, or the middle one?”

“The top one, like the instructions told me to.”

I pointed out that I had warned him not to put it on the top shelf, and explained that I had told him that due to prior experience with our oven – it was a fan oven and the instructions were for conventional ovens.

He decided to go back to the shop and purchase a new pizza.

Attempt two of cooking the pizza went down in exactly the same way – BCB was not one for learning from his mistakes, and this time, instead of calmly explaining WHY the pizza had burnt, as I had the first time, I was pissed off. “How could you possibly manage to burn ONE pizza, let alone TWO?!?” I screech at him, incensed. “It’s not fucking ROCKET SCIENCE, it’s a FUCKING PIZZA!!!”

“Well, I’m SORRY. But I was just FOLLOWING THE INSTRUCTIONS like you’re SUPPOSED TO!” he yells back.

“FINE, I’ll COOK THE BLOODY PIZZA THEN!” I continue to screech.

“NO, I’m QUITE capable of cooking a SHITTING PIZZA, thanks.” He replies, and storms out, back to the shop to purchase their last mighty meaty.

Christ knows what the shop owners thought about our pizza eating habits.

BCB returns armed with the mighty meaty and shooting daggers at me like it’s my fault that he’s a complete moron.

I have turned to my common state where I am so frustrated and enraged by his incompetence that I am incapable of actually speaking to the boy and therefore completely ignore his presence.

The pizza successfully makes it into the oven, this time he assures me that it is NOT on the top shelf, so my anger wanes a little bit. I know he’s not doing it on purpose, and he really can’t seem to help himself when it comes to following instructions, so I relax a little and begin an awkward attempt at reconciliation.

After about 10 minutes he goes into the kitchen, refusing my offer to do it for him with irritation, and returns after fiddling about a bit and deciding that all was well. He reassures me that the pizza is looking healthy and will be ready to eat soon, rather smugly.

After five minutes he goes back to the oven, and suddenly all I can hear from him is, “SHITTING BOLLOCKING BLOODY PIZZA!!!”

I turn on the sofa, almost in slow motion, and I see BCB holding what looks like a black Frisbee in front of him. Apparently he had decided that the pizza was not cooking fast enough on the middle shelf, and during the brief “checking on the pizza” interval, had once again moved it onto the top shelf, which explained his earlier smugness.

Naturally, I flipped out. I have never been so filled with rage, before or since. All I wanted was a bloody pizza. I would have settled for ANY pizza at this stage – even one with anchovies on it.

I was incapable of speech for about 60 seconds, and then when I managed to make a sound it was a high pitched shrieking noise that could only be heard by small dogs and rodents.

I think it was on that day that I realised I was dating someone who was quite possibly mentally handicapped. There is no other explanation as to how someone managed to burn a pizza -

Not once,

Not twice,

But THREE TIMES.

When People Have Ugly Babies I Never Know What To Say

I’m at that age now where all my friends are pairing off or having babies. In some ways I feel quite left out as obviously, The Sexy Guitarist and I are not quite ready for that level of terror to enter our relationship yet, and believe me, I do NOT want a proposal just yet, but at the same time the level of romance and commitment shown at that stage of a relationship is one of my main goals in life. Like every other  human being on this planet, I just want to be loved to a point where someone is willing to devote themselves to me, and I want to love someone enough to be able to devote myself to them.

Children, on the other hand, scare the living shit out of me. And it’s only recently, seeing my closest friends have a baby and watching him grow up that I’ve started to seriously consider popping out my own little gremlin - in about 10 years perhaps.

My friends have all been quite lucky, child wise. I have not met one who can officially be considered an “ugly baby”. Two of my closest friends have what I would consider to be the prettiest child I have ever seen. You know who you are!

I was with these same friends a few months ago in their home town, walking through the centre to go to an event with  The Sexy Guitarist, when they bumped into a fellow parent of an almost toddler, and in the arms of this parent was an alien. I SWEAR TO GOD. Having instantly assessed the child and its level of attractiveness and found it to be extremely lacking, I was at a complete loss as to what to do. I knew, with a certainty that could kill, that I MUST NOT SPEAK TO THAT PARENT. If I did I would end up saying something like, “oh, what an... interesting looking child!” in a fake enthusiastic voice that no one would mistake for a genuine compliment, and I would definitely be punched by an enraged, hormonal mother. Not the way I intended spending my weekend.

We are all told that every mother believes that their child is beautiful, but even this mother would not be able to overlook the abnormal dimensions of her child’s head. Its skull was huge at the top and narrowed down to a chin that was the same circumference as its neck. It had huge, unblinking eyes and the veins on the top of its head were visible through its translucent skin.

I assumed that this child MUST have some kind of disability, and I was being cruel in recoiling from it, but upon later asking, it turned out that the child was just Ugly.

I know that this is a really, really shallow and heartless thing to say, but I hope to GOD that I have a beautiful child. BEFORE you all jump down my necks, this is not because I would love my ugly child any less than I would love my beautiful child, but because that poor kid is going to have a lifetime of revolted looks shot at it, bullying, self confidence issues, and much deeper issues; I do not want my child to have to deal with that.

But then, maybe the child’s mother is living unaware of how disturbing her child’s looks are? She was not a particularly attractive young woman herself. She too had a slightly odd shaped head, although it was better concealed by her hair, and judging by her looks I dare say the child’s father has a very, very slim chance of being good looking himself (we’re only human, we’re all shallow - so jump off the bus to denial and join the path to “lets tell it how it is”.) and all this compounded to produce a child that looks like it had just crash landed at Roswell, but that doesn’t mean that the mother is aware of her childs misfortune.

I decided that I should do some research to discover how the internets thinks I should react to an ugly baby, and here are the results:

1) Before meeting the child in question, assume it will be ugly. This will prevent any unexpected shocks that may cause heart failure or outbursts of "OH MY GOD, WHAT IS THAT?!?"

2) Check Facebook photos. If it's ugly, you might be able to tell from here. If not, you can at least evaluate the parents attractiveness levels and make a estimate based on their attractiveness levels.

3) Put off the visit. This will give you time to prepare, and as the website I found suggested, allow the babies features time to "Straighten out a bit". You'll be lucky, I reckon. once an ugly baby, always an ugly baby.

4) Before you visit, prepare compliments. This does mean that you'll sound rehearsed but it also means that you won't have to hesitate and possibly get punched by enraged parents.

 - if you try and make some genuine compliments you're more likely to get away with it, e.g. saying that the baby looks happy. Everyone likes a happy baby. Unless they are startlingly ugly, of course.

5) Failing at compliments? Make yourself look like a twat instead. If you do baby talk at the child then everyone will forget that they want you to say nice things about their child and will want to make you go away instead. FAST.

6) Focus on the parents. YES, its all boring drivel and no, unless it is one of your closest friends, you are not going to give a damn about how sore the mothers nipples are or how little sleep father is getting. No, you don't care that baby had it's first hiccup last week, especially seeing as if it hiccuped right now you'd run in fear of your life - the alien may be trying to eat you! But it's better than the silence caused by a parent waiting for you to think of a compliment.

7) Don't try to over compensate, or everyone will know you're lying. stick to the compliment and do NOT over exaggerate, over analyse or keep talking. say it and get out.

OR...

8) You could do it my way. Keep your mouth shut and get the hell out of there ASAP.