easily annoyed

People in this town apparently are genetically unable to return their shopping carts to the correct locations. Inconveniently, WalMart is also unwilling to find cart-returning people. It drives me crazy. There are carts everywhere! Maybe I've just lived a sheltered life but I've never seen it this bad anywhere but here. In my cozy little hometown, even the rednecks knew how to push a cart into the corrals. Sure, you'd have stragglers sometimes, but here it's bad enough that we have actually taken M's car to Walmart instead of mine just because his is less pretty already so the dents and scratches won't matter as much. Well, we did that until I threw a diva fit about how I cannot live my life being afraid to drive my own car. Anyway. (Hi, this has been your daily installment of "Why K Is So Hard to Live With".) What I really don't get is how people aren't even embarrassed about shoving (yes, unconcerned with the civilities of modern life, they also enjoy giving them a nice shove upon occasion instead of merely leaving them where they are before getting into the car) the carts away and speeding off. Another favorite of mine is when they push them up on the curb and leave them. There's a stupid buggy return place three car lengths away and there were two shoved up on the curb--you know it took more energy to do that than it would have if they'd sedately walked over and returned it. And they'll do it even if you watch them, which is a level of crazy which I just cannot comprehend. Most people, in my experience, do something they know is socially unacceptable only when people aren't looking. I just cannot understand the motivation. Why, why, why? Are you so freaking busy that you can't walk ten extra steps and push the buggy into its correct location? Do you ENJOY having scratches and dents on that brand-new car? Are you just such an ass that you have no concern for those other people who inhabit the planet and who have to get out of the car to move a cart before they can park? What is the point?

Other things that annoy me include:

• seeing numbers in the middle of sentences unless there are extenuating circumstances or are quite large and uneven. I keep this one swallowed because people that I like very much do this (I am married to one of them but I think I have broken him of it during the editing-his-book process) and it's a small thing and it is arguable as to how wrong it is and all that, but it just looks so ugly to me.
• we have no long distance service, even though we submitted our application thingie to the local plant board back in say, November. They claimed to have activated our service but our dear, dear phone service company, BellSouth, continued to take credit for our long distance bill. When we moved, I cancelled the Bellsouth long distance--I would have done it sooner had it not been for the fact that they close at seven pm and I always forgot until eight but we STILL didn't have long distance. And the plant board? They don't answer their phones. But.. tomorrow. They say. (Actually, the only reason this is annoying is that M can't call his parents. All other long distance calls are made with the cell phone.)
• I ordered a batch of books from Amazon with our most recent credit card gift certificate, and one of the books has the back cover slit off at the binding about three quarters of the way down.
• Bill O'Reilly. And have I mentioned that he is completely crazy? No, I mean CRAZY. (Link is from an author's blog that I don't read that often because it is too angry for my tastes but I have enjoyed some of his books very much, including the one in which there was a minor demon named Yancey, but so much trendier to link to him than the thing he linked to.) I assume that story is true as it presumably took place on the air and all but I'm not interested in researching it. Also, it made me laugh to see that there's a Bill O'Reilly sucks message board with thousands of posts.
• I have spent two full evenings installing and fiddling with a computer game which is causing me grief and I have barely played it in the slightest after all that trouble. I think I have one more evening's worth of work before I can enjoy it, though. Long story.
• I just asked M what else irritates me and his eyes rolled back in his head and he says, "EVERYTHING irritates you! Everything but potatoes and even THEY irritate you sometimes because they're not PEELED and CHOPPED already!" And, what irritated me about that? I couldn't even answer him because I hinted for him to peel and chop potatoes for me for dinner, although I didn't end up going with that plan.
• One more thing that annoys me greatly is that absolutely nothing ever sounds good to eat to me anymore. The queasy has taken over my life. I think it's probably past time that I call the doctor about the fact that apparently I am overdosing on metformin but that takes so much EFFORT, and then again, that annoys me about myself, too.. I would apparently rather suffer from daily nausea than make a stupid phone call.

You know what's funny? I'm not even in a pissy mood. Actually, I'm better able to write about things that annoy me when I'm NOT actively being annoyed. I think it's because I am an oddball. *nod* Anyway, I am off to read one of the books that have not been dissected with (presumably) a box cutter.