1. I hate it when people don’t replace the toilet paper. I’m not talking about replacing the toilet paper at a truck stop or a public restroom where touching anything bathroom related might give you a communicable disease; I’m talking about at home or at work. I work for a small company with roughly 30 employees. Only about half a dozen of us are female, including myself and the cleaning lady, yet, some of these women won’t replace the goddamn toilet paper. Seriously, how hard is it to take a roll off of the back of the toilet where one or two rolls always live, unwrap it from the sanitary paper in which it comes and put it on the holder? I just did it and it took me less than a minute. We’re a small company, only six women use the ladies room and one or more of us is just damn lazy.

2. I hate that people take cleaners for granted and sometimes treat them as if they are invisible. As I alluded to in the previous paragraph, we have a cleaning lady at work. She’s very nice. She has a three year-old son named Christopher. She’s trying to learn English as a second language, but she’s having a hard time with it. My Spanish is so rusty that I’m not much help, but we’re trying to teach each other. We’ll point to items and she’ll say the Spanish and I’ll say the English word for what it is. Whenever she cleans the bathroom, it’s spotless. Not only does she put toilet paper on the holder, but she places spare rolls on the back of the toilet. She actually folds the toilet paper on the holder into a little triangle on the end like you’d find in a hotel. She doesn’t have to do that, but she does it anyway, because that’s the type of person that she is. She cleans up our shit. She puts toilet paper on the holder. She takes out our trash. She is a person with a name and a life of her own. She is not invisible. The next time you see a cleaning person, say hello.

3. I hate being working poor. I’m broke. I mean, I’m really broke. Last I checked, I had $8 in my checking account and that was a few days ago. At my last job, I was severely underpaid and then I was unemployed for seven months. I couldn’t make ends meet so everything extra went on credit cards and now those same credit card companies want their money which I don’t really have. It sucks being poor and I’m tired of it.

4. In conjunction with #3., I hate reading the news and seeing yet another jerk off who was making eleventy billion dollars a year by stealing profits/tax dollars from shareholders/taxpayers. Here in California, there’s been a rash of rinky-dink government officials paying themselves a ridiculous amount of money and when they’re caught, rarely are they prosecuted nor are they required to give it back. Fuckers. Apparently, I am in need of a government job.

5. Poop. I have two animals – a dog and a cat. It seems that most of my spare time is spend collecting poop and putting it into tiny biodegradable plastic bags. It’s as if I thought to myself, “Hey, I don’t spend nearly enough time cleaning poop out of the litter box. Maybe I should get a dog!” And I did. Like the book says, Everyone Poops, but damned if my animals don’t make more than it even seems possible. It just can’t be healthy to poop that much.

6. Bird poop. As much as I just complained about cleaning up after my animals, they are my animals. I decided to take on the responsibility of raising them, therefore, dog and cat poop is, sadly, a big part of my life. However, I don’t have any pet birds, yet I have to clean up bird poop. I park on the street. My street is a pretty street, lined with big, old trees. In those big, old trees live craptons of loud, useless birds whose sole purpose in life, other than taunting my animals, is to crap as much as possible on my vehicle. Speaking of an unhealthy amount of poop, one day I went out to find my entire side window covered in lousy bird poop. I have several theories on how my car window could have been sporting such an egregious amount of poop: a) it was a whole flock of birds that all took turns pooping on the same spot like a competition b) we have pterodactyls in my neighborhood c) a bird literally crapped its insides out and died right there because its innards were now splattered against my car window or d) a bird held its poop for roughly three years to be able to crap that much. These birds never seem to poop on the street or the sidewalk, but always on my car. Go poop somewhere else. Get a life, you lousy birds.

7. I hate when people don’t remove the protective plastic covering that comes on any sort of electronics item. It’s the plastic seat cover of the electronics industry. Say you buy a new phone. This phone will come with clear plastic crap all over it to make sure that you are the first person to scratch it up. It is not intended for permanent use. They sell plastic covers that are designed for permanent use; I know because I have one on my phone. When you walk around with the factory plastic on your crap, you look like a moran. This goes doubly for leaving stickers on baseball hats. What is that fad about? Take that crap off.

8. Cooking blogs. There are a goddamn shit ton of food blogs on the intrawebs. Everyone seems to have one (except me). I use StumbleUpon a lot. If you don’t know what Stumble is, you’re missing out on the internet. Go sign up. I’ll wait. I hate when I stumble onto yet another cooking blog. I cook. I enjoy cooking. I also eat. I enjoy eating. However, I don’t  want to stumble on a damn cooking blog ever. You know why? Because I’m either hungry or not hungry. If I’m hungry, looking at your delectable food items makes it worse. If I’m not hungry, I don’t want to look at delectable food items. You can’t smell the internet. You can’t say, “Yes, I’d like to try a free sample of that, please,” and have someone hand you something on a toothpick. It’s a picture and some words. So far, the internet is not edible. If I do want to make something specific, I will do a search and find a recipe. Please stop bringing it to me. I don’t care about your Great Aunt Molly’s Apple Cobbler.

9. Phone call holidays. I am not a phone person. I really can’t stand talking on the phone. If I must talk to someone I prefer to text message, but even then, I keep it short and sweet. If I have to type out more than five words, I pick up the phone. Being a non-phone person, I hate holidays where I’m required to make an awkward phone call to one or both of my parents. Me: Happy Father’s Day! Dad: Thank you! Me: what are you up to today? Dad: Not much. Followed by an awkward pause where I try to calculate how long it will be before I can politely hang up. My dad isn’t a phone person either, so the two of us having a phone conversation is just shitty. Fuck you, Father’s Day. Fuck you right in the eye.

10. Theme parties. I don’t know what it is about my friends, but they can’t just seem to throw a party. It’s always got to be some sort of theme. We just bought a house and we’re having a pirate party! There will be grog, plundering, pillaging and planks to walk, so dress like a pirate! What am I, five? Even when I was five, I don’t remember having theme parties other than, hey, it’s my birthday. Theme parties leave me with three options: 1) go dressed like a pirate and kick myself for being a full-grown idiot 2) don’t dress like a pirate and have to deal with askance looks from pirates for not participating in their reindeer games 3) don’t go. Generally, given my antisocial, antipiracy nature, I choose option 3.

More Things I Hate.