Count Blessings, Not Bags

When Charlotte doesn't want to do something, she yells, "But I hate that!" We're trying to get her to use a different phrase, but I think it's hard for her because I often use the word "hate". Actually, I use it too much.

For instance, I hate it when...

I wave back at someone who wasn't waving at me.
I forget to shake the bottle, and my hot dog or hamburger is squirted with "mustard water".

I put on clean socks, and then I step into water that was spilled on the bathroom floor.

I eat a cookie with a raisin that was disguising itself as a chocolate chip. (What a dirty, sneaky raisin.)

I am trying to go to sleep in the summer, and I have to keep flipping the pillow to find the "cool spot".

I misinterpret "How's it going?" as a real question instead of a simple greeting.

I try to parallel park. 

I floss my teeth and find evidence of a meal I ate two days ago, "But we had steak on Tuesday..."

I see an inch long hair growing out of the top of my ear. "But that wasn't there yesterday! Was it...?"

I am asked to read a high school student's poetry (professional poetry is bad enough): 

        My death went unnoticed
        You couldn't save me
        Black is my heart
        Veiled is my soul
        Darkness surrounds me
        Surrounds me forever

That poem was written by an upper middle-class kid who drives a bright, yellow Honda. If you only read the first letter of each line, her poem is "MY BVDs".

I had intended this post to begin with a humorous list of pet peeves, and then I'd move onto something I really hate, and that's yard care. 

But when I see news reports about what the typhoon victims are facing, and then I think about myself stamping and yelling because our maple tree dropped several bags' worth of leaves on the ground... I get embarrassed.

Thousands of people lost their lives, and I'm angry about spending a couple of hours outside getting some air and a little exercise? Not only am I acting like my three year old, I'm on her maturity level, too. Time to grow up, Dad.