skip to main |
skip to sidebar
PETA would have a field day with me. I love animals…all animals. (I don’t include reptiles or amphibians in this category…they are…well…reptiles…and...um...amphibians. I did have a frog once and a turtle (and my brother had a horned toad - or horned frog if you're a TCU fan). And I actually don’t mind handling snakes – as long as I’ve been assured they are non-venomous. But I would not consider either species for a pet. My definition of pet is something that you can hold in your lap and PET…have you tried to pet a snake? In your lap?? Right, my point exactly.)
I have every confidence that I will someday end up in the newspaper:
"Eighty-six year-old woman found dead in apartment with seventy-four cats, three dogs and a goat."
(The cats are a probability, the dogs a possibility...the goat just sounded good for the story.)
I have had pets my whole life. I wouldn’t know what to do without a little furry presence around the house. I think I would be considered a “cat person,” because I’ve mostly had cats. But I love dogs, too. We had two when I was growing up, a black Cocker Spaniel that I don’t remember, and a Pekingese named Minka when I was in high school. But mostly cats.
Although I am fairly non-discriminatory…I like anything with fur – even rodents. I love hamsters, they’re so cute and fuzzy little guinea pigs (every time I see one I expect it to talk like Rodney from Dr. Doolittle) and even rats. I think rats get a bad rap…they make excellent pets.
I gravitate to animals. If I walk into someone’s house and there’s a dog or a cat, the people can fend for themselves…I engage in conversation with the furry critter. People think I’m anti-social…but I’m not, I’m just more social with animals. So…I guess that would make me “anima-social”….hmmm….
We went through a period a few years ago when Cleo (my current furry roommate) was a great huntress. And she wouldn’t just bring me a dead mouse as a present, she’d invite them into the house to play. My rule is, if it’s survivable it gets caught and returned to the wild. If it’s beyond help, the cat can have its way with the poor thing. (I used to scold my cats…but I understand this creates severe psychological problems for Kitty – hunting is instinctive behavior and should therefore be praised, not condemned. I worked on that for a long time, and while I just couldn’t bring myself to praise my cats for slaughtering helpless creatures (and they didn't eat them, they just slaughtered them), I don’t discipline. I just try to remain neutral.)
One day a very small, gray mouse was invited over for a visit. I discovered this addition to the household when it skittered across the living room and ran up the drapes behind the couch. While I’m not afraid of mice, per se, it is somewhat startling when one runs across your toes. So I did let out a yelp. When I’d calmed down I found myself staring up at the valance, where the little guy was staring down at me, breathing heavily (and little heart pounding...assumably). Teeny and furry and gray...twitchy pink little nose...twitchy pink little ears...
What to do? What to do?
Well, it looked like it was in excellent health, so the “catch and release” rule was obviously in effect. I got a large Tupperware container, the step stool and proceeded to stalk the mouse. I carefully moved the lamp table away from the drapes, slowly stepped up on the stool…and the mouse immediately ran down to the other end of the valance. I was concerned that this would probably happen again…and again and again…and we’d get nowhere. So I started talking to the mouse. In a very quiet, calm tone of voice I just kept reassuring the mouse it had nothing to worry about, I wasn’t going to hurt it and I definitely was not going to give it back to the cat.
I went to the other end of the couch, carefully moved the other lamp table away, slid the step stool up to the drapes…all the while carrying on this quiet, gentle one-sided conversation with the mouse. I stepped onto the stool and very slowly lifted the container up to the mouse. It just sat there for a moment and then, incredibly, it hopped into the container. I kept talking (and kept the container away from my body so it didn't freak out) and just as slowly stepped down. I walked to the kitchen door and as soon as I’d reached the threshold, the mouse leaped out of the Tupperware into the garage and disappeared.
That guy…what’s his name? Monty Roberts? The one they call the Horse Whisperer and based the Redford movie on? Well, eat your heart out, Monty. I’m a MOUSE WHISPERER!
For now,
Nedra
Pet Peeve. Great term. Means something that annoys or irritates you…to a degree greater than it does to other people. We all have them. I have a lot, but there are a few that top the list.
Recorded telemarketers/political campaigners/poll-takers. Stated simply: I hate them. And I know I’m not alone. If you want to talk to me, if you want my opinion, if you want to try to sell me something (try being the optimum word here, because you won’t succeed. Trust me.)…then for heck sake do it in person. Having to take the trouble to get up and get to the phone and answer it and then hearing a canned spiel makes my blood boil. You won’t get past “Hello, this is So-and-So…”
Right up there at the top with the automated dialers is real, live telemarketers that won’t take “NO” for an answer. I make every attempt to be courteous, I realize they are trying to make a living…but if I’ve said “no” politely twice, that’s all you get. After that I turn nasty. And you don’t want to make me nasty on the phone.
One of my biggest (work) pet peeves is the junk mail I get here at the office. I get junk mail at home also…and that ticks me off, too…but I don’t have to distribute that. There’s only one recipient at home…and it’s black, tall, round and made of plastic. And the lid swishes up and down as I distribute the junk mail into it.
At work I have to sort the junk mail and take it around to people’s offices. It is university-generated junk, mostly. Advertising sales at the bookstore or the creamery outlet, or theater productions, or lectures, or HR classes and seminars, or athletic events. The ads usually come on half-sheet or quarter-sheet pieces of colored paper and they invariably flutter out onto the floor when I take the pile of mail from the mailbox, which increases the irritation exponentially. I think…no wait…I know that the irritation is because of the enormous waste of university resources these seemingly innocuous little slips of paper represent.
Within minutes of distribution, these pieces of paper end up in the recycle bin (hopefully) or the trash (usually). And it’s not just the fact that we’re killing perfectly beautiful forests for the paper…that’s just the half of it. It’s the price of man power involved, as well. It takes someone time to design the thing, to print the thing, to cut the thing into halves or quarters or whatever. Then there are the distributions costs…to over two thousand people on campus. Not to mention that there are people paid to pick up the recycling or dump the trash. Now we all have computers…or most do, anyway. The university maintains a website and a list-serve for bulk emails. There is also a fancy, four-color glossy “newsletter” that goes out once a week to all faculty and staff. Surely there are better ways of getting the word out that don’t involve tons of paper (and my sanity) each year!!
The last one I’ll mention is referenced in the subject heading. R.O.W. Don’t know what it means, do you??? Well, nine out of ten Utah drivers don’t know what it means either!
Right Of Way. (Traffic term.)
Why is it that people behind the wheel of a car lose all sense of community? They are in a potentially-deadly half-ton heap of glass, rubber, metal and fiberglass and believe me, most of them are only out for themselves. If they want to go there, they go there. Someone in the way? Someone wanting to go the same direction? Tough. They also don’t realize or remember (if they ever learned it in the first place – doubtful) that if you are turning across a lane of on-coming traffic you are supposed to YIELD. [Yield: to give up or over; relinquish or resign…to give place or precedence to… The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, Second Edition, Unabridged] (Really unabridged…it weighs a ton and has its own little podium-thingee).
It’s called RIGHT OF WAY, people…get with the program!
A corollary to this infuriating non-practice would be the refusal to recognize a yellow light (sometimes even a red light) at an intersection. Yes, I know the old joke: Red means Stop, Green means Go and Yellow means GO LIKE HELL. But there’s this one intersection in Orem…a busy one…State Street and University Parkway. (Sounds major, doesn’t it?) Right by the mall. I don’t know why this is always worse than any other intersection…but it is. Especially if I’m heading west and the cars are turning left, going north. I have counted six or seven cars turning against on-coming traffic after their light has turned red. (Not just pink…Red. Fire Engine Red. Cardinal. Scarlet. CRIMSON.) Sometimes you get lucky and only two or three will turn against your green light. (Hallelujah.)
This practice, of course, leads to everyone else going against a red light because they didn’t think they got their turn at the last go ‘round.
I suppose almost all of my pet peeves – or at least the really pernicious ones – have to do with civility and consideration. I think I’m a considerate person. I try to give way if someone was incredibly stupid and forgot to think ahead and get into the correct lane, and is frantically signaling to merge. I am nice to sales people, even when they’re incompetent. I answer the phone with a smile in my voice, even when I know it’s another inquiry about hall advisor positions from someone who doesn't know what "2 years college or equivalent experience" means or thinks it’s just a cushy job that pays you money to stay home and play with your kids. I practice good etiquette in restaurants and on airplanes. I'm patient when waiting in lines. I try not to complain or make a fuss. And in reality, most people do, too.
It’s those darned motorists turning left in front of me…
For now,
Nedra
Maybe I’m not particularly “with it” (wait…who am I kidding…I’m definitely not “with it”), but anyway I just don’t get it. I watch my share of “reality” TV – I love watching Project Runway and The Next Food Network Star and Iron Chef America and Chopped. I guess it’s my competitive nature. And (to me at least) there’s point to those kinds of programs. (Most of them make me hungry, but I’m not sure that’s the producers' objective…then again, maybe it is.)
I don’t include “vote me out of the house/off the island” types of programs…because I think those are just cruel and stupid. But I am absolutely dumbfounded that people would actually watch programs about Jersey girls who are bitchy and spoiled or about rich sisters and their family squabbles or women who are willing to prostitute themselves to wind up with a flower at the end of an episode.
Other than shopping, fighting, applying (too much) makeup, dressing up in slutty clothes, partying or swabbing tonsils with a stranger, what do they really DO?? And why do people find this interesting?? (In current "text-ese" WTH???)
It would be different if people like Snooki (what kind of idiotic name is that anyway??) went around donating to children’s hospitals or spent time reading to the blind or handing out trophies at Special Olympics games or organizing food bank drives…that type of activity would be worthwhile and worth our attention. But what did she…or Paris Hilton or Kim Kolciak (I didn’t know who she was either – Real Housewives of Atlanta) or Tori & Dean or Jessica & Nick (yes, I know they broke up...weren't you just devastated???) or any of a multitude of other current “celebrities” really, really do to merit such fame and press exposure?
Hmm…well, I suppose it’s because they’re all willing to expose themselves…every unpleasant, petty, banal aspect of their shallow lives to a nation-wide audience. They say everyone wants their fifteen minutes of fame, but unless you’re terminally narcissistic, that’s a tough way of achieving it.
Maybe I don’t have enough time on my hands…or perhaps I have too much, but either way I can’t see spending the hours and hours a week it would take to keep up with people like that.
Now I know that there are people who are passionate (notice that I didn't say "obsessed") about their favorite reality show…and that’s fine, and I suppose there are reasons to get emotionally invested in this season’s latest Idol or who dropped the most poundage this week or who remembered the lyrics to Michael Jackson’s “Pretty Young Thing” last night. Basically they are glorified game shows and it’s nice that people get a chance to do that.
But when you stick a camera (or a multitude of cameras) in somebody’s over-priced, over-decorated house and record the day-to-day doings of people who do nothing to contribute to society except broadcast their indecorous and unseemly behavior, that’s when my remote goes CLICK! and I go find something – anything! – else to do.
If that’s reality I’d rather live in Fantasy Land.
For now,
Nedra
