Sorry, I’ve been swamped.

I’ve been a bit overwhelmed with work lately, I haven’t had time for much else.

Plus, I’ve been a bit tired (from the stuff that has overwhelmed me) and I don’t have the creative juices flowing when I get too tired.

However, I do have a few things to write down.

I started to make a new list of annoyances and put them on my “Jim Annoyance Scale”

               *Side Note 1 – perhaps you remember that from a previous post.

But then it occurred to me that 2 of them aren’t actually annoyances.

I think these might actually be more of a complaint than an annoyance.

Something might annoy you, and yes, you can complain about that annoyance, but if it doesn’t happen all the time, if it’s not something that occurs on a regular basis, then when it happens, it’s an annoyance.

We might complain about traffic, especially around here in the summer.

               *Side Note 2 – for those readers that might not know what I’m referring to when I say “around here”, I live in a coastal community and summer traffic is horrendous.

But heavy traffic doesn’t occur  all the time.  So heavy traffic might annoy me and I might complain about it, but it’s not every day. 

And, another key distinction is that my complaining won’t change things. 

It is what it is. I can complain about summer traffic and the heavy traffic might annoy me, but I am trapped in that circumstance.

I could choose to go around it and go a longer distance, or I could adjust my schedule to do the things I have to do earlier in the morning before that traffic gets bad.

Or I could just stay home.

Here is an example of an actual ‘complaint’.

Lettuce.

Not the actual leafy vegetable itself, but my complaint lies in the way it’s packaged.

At the local grocery store, they sell the lettuce in a plastic bag.  The lettuce is placed in the bag, then the opening is twirled around and the twirled excess is taped down to keep it from reverse twirling and opening.

TAPED.

And not lightly taped either. 

Nope.

They use some type of a wide almost packing tape to secure it.

And this wide tape can not easily be removed to allow you to reseal it using that same tape.

Oh no.

The tape removal destroys the plastic bag, rendering it useless in your effort to reseal.

Why use this wide piece of tape?

And why put this wide piece of tape across the entire length pf the twirled excess?

Why not just secure the twirled excess with a small piece of tape at the end of the excess twirled plastic?

See, in doing that, I would reuse the plastic bag and maybe secure it with that same piece of tape, or a piece of my own tape, or even a cloths pin.

But no.

Instead I have to get a new method of packaging and storing my lettuce.

See, that is a ‘complaint’ because it is how it is.  An annoyance would be, “I don’t like it when I purchase lettuce and the tape they use sometimes won’t allow me to reuse the plastic bag”.

The fact that it doesn’t happen every time annoys you when it does.

But you know what you are getting into when you purchase the lettuce and it happens EVERY TIME, making it a complaint.

Here’s another complaint.

What in the world with an order of mozzarella sticks being a quantity of 5.

5.

What’s with the odd number of mozzarella sticks?

Wouldn’t it make more sense to have an even number, say 6?

I’m in a family of 4, and when 6 comes to an order, it’s quite easy.  Each gets one and perhaps the remaining 2 are cut in ½ and each person gets that ½.

Easy peasy.

But with 5?

I’m not going to have ¼ of a mozzarella stick if the 5^th piece needs to be equally portioned out.

And if there are 3 people, then each person gets 1 and then there are 2 left to portion out among the 3 people.

Doesn’t someone get left out?

Do the 3 people play rock/paper/scissors for the remaining 2 mozzarella sticks.

Too much dilemma which could easily be avoided with having an order of mozzarella sticks being 6.

And no, I am not on a crusade to get an extra mozzarella stick in my order and throw the entire mozzarella stick world into chaos.

I am merely asking that restaurants take this into consideration and help a family of four avoid the drama.

Again, that is a complaint.

Now, here is an annoyance and for this I will grade it on my “Jim Annoyance Scale”

This one scores a 2, because it’s easily dealt with most of the time.

2 – when pizza isn’t properly and thoroughly cut.

I’m not talking about when you get a pizza and it’s been cut and the cheese that has melted has joined back together.

No, I’m talking about a pizza that has not been cut thoroughly enough and the crust hasn’t been properly severed from the adjacent piece.

Then you either have to rip it apart and toppings fall off into the next piece.

               *Side Note 3 – and Heaven forbid a topping fall BRIEFLY onto an adjacent piece of a picky 3 or 4 year old watching the process.

It’s easily resolved by just cutting it with a knife or a pizza cutter.

Being easily resolved is what makes it a 2 instead of a larger score.

That’s all I have for now.

And it just occurred to me, I wrote the word ‘twirled’ quite a bit in this post.

And I apologize for my not posting very often.

Phew ….. I’ve been busy lately.

• Ramblings