1. Lottery tourists. I stopped into a convenience store the other day and the line was insane. Most of the people were buying Powerball tickets, because the jackpot is enormous. Lottery tourists are people don’t normally buy lottery tickets. They only do it when the jackpot gets big. Because they don’t normally partake, they had no idea how to buy tickets. I watched one idiotic person after another wait in line only to realize they’d have to fill out the lottery form if they wanted to pick their own numbers. The people who regularly play the lottery are annoying, too, especially when they buy multiple tickets, but at least they know how to buy them.
2. The lottery. Even if you buy three thousand Powerball tickets, your odds stay exactly the same: one in over 292 million. The chances of winning the jackpot are only slightly better than having your name randomly pulled from a hat filled with the names of everyone in the U.S. including the people who were born yesterday. Yet, millions of people think they might be the one. I admit that while I was waiting in the interminable line behind all of the lottery tourists, I considered buying a ticket. Then I thought better of it. My odds are about as good with a ticket as they would be had I just thrown that $2 in the trashcan outside.
3. White people. I’m embarrassed to be one of them sometimes:

4. Voicemail. My work phone has a glowing orange button on constantly, because it never occurs to me to check voicemail. Thankfully, it doesn’t blink or I’d have to cover it with a post-it or something. I work best through email. I like email because I have a written record and reminder of what I need to do, and I don’t actually have to talk to anyone. Unfortunately, some people don’t seem to understand my severe preference for email and insist on calling me. Their message will sit in the purgatory of my voicemail box for weeks or months. I wish I didn’t even have a work phone.
5. I hate when people tell me what happened in their dreams. I don’t even care about my own dreams. My sister has a recurring stress dream where she’s getting ready to go somewhere and she can’t find her shoes or people keep interrupting or her clothes don’t fit, etc. I have heard every possible variation of the “I’m not ready!” dream, including the one where I was holding up the works, because I couldn’t find my panda bear hat in time for the wedding. I often wear panda hats to weddings. It’s my thing. Don’t judge.

I don’t even have a panda hat, which is a great oversight in my millinery collection and should probably be remedied posthaste. #StupidShitWhitePeopleDo. Even though my sister’s stress dream is essentially the same dream every time, she feels the need to tell me what happened in all of them.
6. Static electricity. Particularly as it pertains to fine hair in winter. My hair is so fine that I wear children’s ponytail holders, and even at that, I have to ring them around at least five or six times. Not having much substance to it, my hair gets staticky when it’s dry, i.e. all of winter when heaters are going. When it’s cold enough that I’d like to wear my hair down to insulate my neck, I can’t because of static cling. There is nothing more irritating than having your hair stand on end like you’re at the science center just by walking down a carpeted hallway:

7. Parents who bring their toddlers to the off-leash dog park, let both dog and child run free, then get angry when my dog licks their child’s face. It is an off-leash dog park specifically for big dogs who are basically the same height as your toddler. What did you think was going to happen?  It’s a dog park, not a kid park. Fortunately, the worst my dog will do is lick them.
8. People who seem to think there’s something wrong with me, because I don’t have nor want kids. There’s plenty wrong with me, but not that. I don’t want to be responsible for something that costs an absolute fortune to raise, cries all the time, spits up food, poops itself, will actively ruin all your sleep, peace of mind and your most prized possessions, and can’t be left unattended for more than three seconds without doing something life-threatening, yet I’m the weirdo.
9. Overly dramatic people. “OMG, someone took my cupcake from the break room! THE WORLD IS GOING TO END!” Yeah, it sucks that someone stole your cupcake, cupcake, but if that’s really your biggest complaint in life to the point where you’d leave passive aggressive notes in the lunchroom, you’ve actually got it pretty good. No one wants your fucking cupcake (except maybe the guy who stole it). Besides, I can’t find my panda hat and I’ll never make it to the wedding in time!

10. I hate when people randomly stop in a door way, hallway, in their cars in a parking lot, or anywhere else where they are in my way. Then, after your fifteenth “Excuse me,” when they finally acknowledge that they are not, in fact, the only fucking humans on earth, they act like you’re the one in the wrong. At a big box store right after Christmas, I was trying to get down an aisle when some woman stopped dead and backed her cart right into me. I said, “EXCUSE ME!” somewhat more adamantly than I might have otherwise, since her cart was still on my foot. She said, “Well, excuse me, lady. You don’t have to be rude about it. Of all the nerve…” which, of course, made me try to explode her vacuous brain cavity using my mind-exploding powers. Unfortunately, I have not perfected the art nor science of exploding people’s heads using only my mind. I failed again and limped away grumbling.

More things I hate.