Pet Peeves

Pet Peeves- The thing about pet peeves is that yours are normal….everyone else’s are psycho. My peeves are a normal part of who I am, and I don’t see why everyone else doesn’t “get it”. I am always looking for the things that make my life seem normal and under control. I am not one of those folks that seem to just take life as it comes, but I don’t freak when it doesn’t turn out the way I plan. I suppose my peeves consist of what I consider “responsible” behavior. I want to be on time. Always. I want to be on time even when it is probably okay to be “fashionably late”. I just think it is rude to show up long (or sometimes short) after you say you will be somewhere. Now, let me say that I know things happen that you don’t and can’t plan for. You know, things like alarm clocks that don’t go off, cars that won’t start, or rude little old ladies that can make a Minister of Music want to shoot a bird in the figurative sense. I don’t usually judge other people against my own sense of what is important. I have always figured that when you say “I will be here at such and such a time, that is a promise, and you’re supposed to keep your promises. Because of this, I am usually the early arrival at anything I have on my schedule. I have become known for this in the family. I put things on a list; I wear a watch, and make contingency plans in case of fire, flood, and nuclear holocaust. It is probably horrible for my family on vacation (they have wrongly called me “Clark Griswold” after the Chevy Chase character in the “Family Vacation” movies) when I pull out the schedule, look at the watch, and say “All right people, we are wasting daylight!” Maybe it is because leisure time is too important to waste being leisurely. There is so little of it in my life that I want to experience as much of it, and cram as many positive occurrences into it as possible. I mean, I’m not an ogre when my plans and schedule go awry. Life is too short to get tourqued about whether or not we got to see the whole museum of early telephones or not. I can get over it. When I really lose it is when I feel that there is something that can be done about it, and I am not allowed to “fix” it. The side trips to the antique stores, looking at glass chickens and knick-knacks from the 1970’s that someone decided had become collector’s items drive me nuts. I do this for my dearly beloved, who could live long and die happy firmly ensconced in the depths of tourist trap heaven. Now, she has turned up some treasures in these old places, and I have seen her wheel and deal like a sultan in an Arab bazaar. I just don’t possess that gene. I feel that time is better spent experiencing the things that aren’t close to the house, the geography and history of the area. She sees the same area as new ground for modern day archaeology. She would make an awesome Egyptologist or someone like that, somebody that needs a lot of patience, is interested in “getting to the bottom” of a situation, and doesn’t mind getting dirty to do it. I all, I suppose that life will not end if I’m late. My world will not fall apart if I don’t get to see everything during one trip. And those glass chickens sure do look good in the kitchen window.