Top Ten List: Things that Turn Me Into a Raving Lunatic

I work from home. This means that I am actually inside my house the majority—if not all—of the day. Every day. Therefore, the list of things that drive me crazy has been steadily growing. I don’t know if it’s just that I’m becoming less patient, or maybe I just need to get out more. Either way, the members of my (poor?) family are both the perpetrators of some of these acts and the recipients of my all-out insanity when they occur. This is my list of the top 10 things that make me nuts from (1) being those things that I find difficult to ignore to (10) those things that when I see them they turn me into a raving lunatic.

1. Black flies I can live with most insects, like small spiders, ants, and even caterpillars. The one insect, however, that I cannot tolerate in my home is the black fly. I don’t mean gnats or little flies, I’m talking about the large, black ones, the ones you always see buzzing around dead bodies on crime shows. Since these flies remind me of death, I will stop at nothing until I squash it.
2. Being asked to  get something after just sitting down This is part of being a mom. I get it, and I promise, I don’t swear at my children when this happens. I do, however, usually let out a loud sigh of frustration on hearing things like, “Mom, can you pour me some milk?” or “Mom, can you help me find my glasses?”  Why can’t they think to ask me while I am still standing up?
3. Not loading the dishwasher I’m sure that I’m not the only one out there who gets angry at the site of a sink full of dishes. My issue isn’t so much with having to load the dishwasher, especially when it’s already full of clean, yet-to-be-put-away dishes. What makes me see red is when I’ve already completed the dreaded tasks of unloading and reloading, and although there is clearly room in the dishwasher for another plate or knife and fork, I still find them left in the sink the following morning, just waiting for me to find them a spot.
4. Cable Company Ever since canceling cable a few months ago, I get daily calls from a subsidiary company trying to get me to come back. I have yet to actually speak to the person on the other end of the phone because, let’s face it, those people are really persuasive—it was hard enough canceling the first time!

5. 

   Lost remotes As I mentioned in a previous post, we no longer have cable, but instead use Roku devices on all of our televisions. This means that there are four remotes in our house, and each of them can be used on any one of the TVs. The problem is, these remotes are a bit small, and easily fall in between couch cushions or get hidden under magazines on the coffee table. When this happens, rather than anyone actually looking for the remote, they go to the nearest room and take another one. Of course, when I am finally able to sit down and relax, the remote isn’t anywhere to be found.

6. Lost [fill in the blank] Okay, whenever anything is lost, I freak out a little. It’s not that I get angry, or start swearing—unless it is my car keys or cell phone as I am walking out the door—but I become completely obsessed with locating the missing item that I can think of little else. Sometimes this “searching” can go on for days, or at least until I have either lost my mind and given up or I have finally found the missing object.
7. Bad Grammar I’ll admit it, I watch too much TV, especially reality TV. Although shows like Storage Wars and Cash in the Attic are relatively harmless, many of them are the equivalent of watching a train wreck—and I just can’t look away. The one thing that makes me cringe violently is when someone on the show can’t speak properly. It might be the Editor in me, but when I hear someone say “You did good,” (all the moms on Dance Moms) or “These are the ingredients-es,” (Theresa on Real Housewives of New Jersey) I find myself yelling obscenities at the television.

8. 

   Bread/food left out in the open Fortunately for everyone in my household, this does not happen very often, because when it does, I become a ranting lunatic. I don’t know what it is about finding a new loaf of bread already turned stale because someone forgot to tie the bag back up, or when a fresh bag of chips are just a little soft the day after opening them and leaving them out on the coffee table all night, it just pisses me off. Is it the $3.00 just wasted? Or the fact that I will need to go to the store a day or two sooner? Either way, I hope after reading this, it doesn’t happen again.

9. Interrupting me while on the phone What is it about kids that they can be completely well-behaved when you are busy doing laundry or washing dishes, but the moment you sit down to have a conversation with your sister or a friend, they begin to fight, to scream, to ask annoying questions? You are then left either pretending that they aren’t there, glaring at them while shaking your finger in a menacing way, OR continuously putting the other person on hold to scream at them. Aaaggghhhh! Why do they do that?!
10. Making a mess—even a small one—after the cleaning women has left I am not an indulgent person. I work hard. I don’t complain (too much) about having to work full-time while still taking care of the kids and the house with little help from anyone else. I honestly don’t mind it. The one extravagance—if you can call it that—is that I have a woman come to the house every other week to clean. It’s fabulous, especially when I get to walk through a clean house for a few hours before the kids come home. But, God forbid, the moment I see something left on the floor, or even just left a little askew, I fly into a rage (okay, maybe a slight exaggeration, but it is how I feel). I ask my children over and over again, “I just paid to have this cleaned, can’t I enjoy it for just a couple of days?” It never works.

So, this is my list, what’s on yours?