Things that annoy me

(Note: if I were to make this a series, this would be part 1 of about 1,000.  There’s a lot of stuff that annoys me)

• Quinoa: The package instructions say to wash it first.  Have you ever tried washing quinoa?  First, it’s so tiny that you need a really fine colander to even attempt this.  And be careful when pouring it from the package - one wrong move and you’ve got hundreds of little quinoa balls (quinoas? pieces of quinoa?  what’s the grammatically correct way to say that?) all over your kitchen counters and floor. Then, once it gets wet, it sticks to absolutely everything, so transferring it from the colander into the pot is a task that requires a lot of patience and that ensures at least 1/4 of the quinoa you originally measured out will not get cooked.  Once you successfully get the quinoa into the pot, the cooking process is actually fairly easy.  But just wait until you have to transfer it to Tupperware/a plate/your mouth. Load up your fork or spoon too much, and look out for a quinoa avalanche.  The only thing worse than spilling dried quinoa is spilling cooked quinoa.  You’ll inevitably miss a piece, only to find it weeks later, shriveled and hardened, hiding clear across the kitchen from where you dropped it. 

• Washing jeans: It’s bad enough that the “look” these days is jeans that are so super tight you can hardly breathe, let alone eat (although I often rock loose boot cut jeans.  I just hate wearing them to work or anything “formal-y” because I feel like a schlub.  I generally work with a lot of super fashionable women who would never be caught dead in baggy jeans.  It’s a huge bummer.).  But to top it off, on the rare occasion when your jeans get physically dirty and need to be washed (because we all know that pants - especially jeans - don’t need to be washed until they’re either stained or so dirty that they’re standing up on their own), you have to basically contort your body to get them on the next time you wear them.  And not eat the entire day while you’re wearing them. And you get semi-permanent lines in your stomach from the waistband.  You’d think that jean makers could come up with some sort of solution. Some never-dirty material.  Or some non-shrinking cotton.  I know that you’re supposed to air dry jeans, not put them in the dryer like I do, but honestly, who has room for that?  It’s not like I live in some house with a big yard in Tuscany where I can pin everything to my clothesline and let the air turn them into magical, incredibly well-fitting jeans.

• People who have no spatial awareness and stop suddenly on the street and either force you to run into them or who turn around and run right into you: I don’t understand what the issue is. You’re clearly on a crowded street.  Your head moves both directions and I’m assuming that you at least have decent peripheral vision. You’re not in a car, so even if you pass your destination/turn/quarter on the ground, it’s easy enough to walk a few extra steps in order to safely turn yourself around.  So what gives?  Why must you stop and turn suddenly just as I’m trying to pass you?  It’s not even like you slowed down slightly. You just stopped.  As if you hit a wall.  An invisible, imaginary wall.  Face it - it’s NYC. People walk too fast and too close to you to be stupid enough to pull something like that. Take a few extra steps.  Pull off to the side to get your bearings.  Because as close as everyone in NYC is forced to be on a daily basis, actually running into someone is something to be avoided at all costs.

• People who stand on the left side of an escalator/moving walkway: Someone once told me that walking on the left side of an escalator or moving walkway is something that people only do in NYC (or I guess equally impatient locales).  I have no idea if this is actually true or not, but if it is, it should be stopped. The greatest thing about escalators and moving walkways is that they offer something for everyone.  If you want to be lazy, then you can get a free ride from point a to point b.  And if you’re in a rush or want a little exercise, then you can get from point a to point b twice as fast by walking on the already moving surface. People who stand on the left side are evil people who are trying to tear society down bit by bit.  There’s no reason to stand on the left side.  Especially when you see everyone else standing neatly in a single file line on the right side.  This is one instance where conformity should be mandated.  If you’re standing on the left side and make me have to say excuse me and get up your ass until you move, I might just have to spit in your hair. And if you’re standing on the left side - even though there’s a space on the right side - and you make everyone walk around you, you’re the worst kind of human being. 

• Having loud, personal conversations at work: I get the fact that people have lives and things that need to be taken care of, and that often those things need to be taken care of during business hours (because they involve other businesses who are only open during business hours).  But if you’re sitting in a cube, or even if you have your own office with a really thin door or walls, a little bit of common sense needs to come into account.  If you need to talk to your gyno about that weird itch you’ve been having, take the conversation to a more private area.  If you need to rehash your oh-so-dramatic break-up with everyone you speak with, do so quietly (seriously, nobody that you work with wants to hear it. They definitely don’t want to hear it 10 times within a few hours).  Hell, even if you just need to get your commuter benefits set up properly, do so quietly (although sometimes these conversations can be amusing, they get really old and really annoying after awhile - trust me, I’ve heard entirely too many of them).  Nobody needs to know your business. Nobody cares. So do everyone a favor and find your favorite empty office or conference room and make any non-work related calls in there.  And always remember “This is my library voice.”

• That one eyebrow hair that you can't seem to pluck. Ok, this could just be me. But it feels like anytime I pluck my eyebrows, there's always one piece of hair that doesn't pluck. I try to pluck it, and then it breaks off, leaving only a stub left to pluck. I try to pluck that stub, and it keeps getting smaller and smaller, but never actually gets plucked. And then it's too little to grab with the tweezers, so it just sits there, all stubby. And doesn't get plucked until it's grown out to a sufficient length so that it can be grabbed by tweezers. Sadly, this happens to me fairly often.