Tales of the furious five

Do you know what gets on my nerves? I'll tell you. I'll tell you what gets on my nerves. I will create a list that reflects those things which have found my nerves and got right on them. And that list shall include five things, because that is how I roll.

1. Carpenter Ants. Carpenter ants, I thought we had a deal. You would live far away from me and not gnaw through things that belong to me and I will not squish and or/poison you. Well, carpenter ants, you blew it. It was a nice agreement for a while. I was happy. You were not dead. But look what you've reduced me to, carpenter ants. Look at me now. Squishing and squashing and setting out traps and generally being unhappy with the whole lot of you. You feel free to writhe around all you want after I squish you, and wave your pathetic legs in the air in a sad disconcerting way. I don't care. Get out of my dishwasher. Stupid bugs.

2. Trains. Do you know what is more annoying than when you're just trying to get home and there's a train crossing in front of you and it just goes slower and slower and slower until finally it stops and just sits there in front of you like a stupid dead ant with no intent to do anything? And everyone shifts into park and sighs and says "This is

going to be a while" but dammit you just want to go home, and you're reduced to thinking about ways you can jump over the train or crash through one of the weaker looking boxcars because damned if you're going to spend precious minutes of your precious life sitting watching a non-moving train instead of eating dinner with your family or blogging angrily or something? Well, I tell you this, citizens, I do not. I do not know what is more annoying than that, but I've got to think that it doesn't help when that train finally starts moving, but it's moving backwards.

3. Backaches. If you have a job that requires you to lift objects, bend over, stretch, or just sit motionless in front of a thing, then you do not want a backache. And since every job in the world requires one of these things, that means that I'm talking to you, personally. I have a backache, and it means it takes me four minutes to stand up and I have to walk like an penguin with the shits and whenever I pick up a sofa I have to explain to the other lifters that I hurt my back and they all roll their eyes and think, "Right, sure, you just don't like doing actual lifting." And then I waddle back to my desk and take three minutes to sit down and meanwhile my vertebrae are slowly rotating my spine into a double helix and it's all my own fault because I didn't lift with my legs because (and here is my terrible secret) I still don't know what that means. I lift with my arms, not my legs! And my back! Until now. Do you have any idea how frustrating it is to wait for a train with a sore back? It makes me want to kill an ant or something.

4. The power cord on my computer. If I don't sit in just the right way, the AC power will not get into my computer and I'll switch over to battery backup. Then the screen dims and tells me that I have 94% of my power remaining (21 minutes). And then two minutes later, I have 6% of my power remaining (3 minutes). So I sit cross-legged, with the cord draped over one foot and sit perfectly still, unless my back hurts, in which case I move my foot and the power cord stops working. Why doesn't it work? Something wrong with the wiring, maybe? I'm assuming it was eaten by ants when I wasn't looking. Possibly it happened during the twelve hours I was waiting for a train. So I'll get started on a project or blog entry or something and then sneeze, which is hell on a sore back, and then suddenly it's a race against time to find the perfect position before my cable shuts down. Well, screw you, cable. Screw you three degrees to the left and push you in slightly and there we go, the power's back on.

 5. Cranky people. Don't they drive you crazy? You try so hard to be friendly, but they're just in a bad mood and they just want to slam their door in your face and insult your perfectly reasonable policies. And when you've had a whole day dealing with cranky people, it starts to seem like it's a conspiracy against you. Like all these people's moods are being controlled by barometric pressure or the phases of the moon so you ask your daycare provider if, overall, the kids were all hellions this particular day and when she says no, you wonder how that can possibly be true. Is it some other factor? One that affects only adults? Or very specifically geographic in nature? Or anything else that doesn't lead to the fact that maybe they're cranky because they've had to deal with me, who has a sore back and ants in his dishwasher and I've been sitting in front of stationary trains for the last nine hours. STOP IT I'M NOT TRYING TO BE IRONIC HERE, YOU oh crap there goes my power cord agai