Getting it off my chest....

[Willow2]

Anyone want to join in on a thread just devoted to sounding off about (non parenting) things that have annoyed you? Well here goes...
I would like to say a big thank you to the absolute xxxxxx that pranged my car while it was parked outside my house sometime in the last 48 hours. The fact that you didn't feel it necessary to leave your details just adds to my love for you. You are probably one of the caring commuters who parks in my road (for free) all day before taking the train to town - glad that we can be of service. Nor should you let the
fact that your journey has turned our quiet little cul-de-sac where kids play footie in the street into the fifth lane of the M25 worry you in the least. And don't be perturbed by the fact that I, and all the other mums in the road, can now no longer park anywhere near our houses when we come home with the supermarket shopping and a car full of screaming kids. Hey, it's all just helps make our day even more fun. So thank you, nameless stranger, for completely annihilating the front of my car and losing me my no claims bonus. My week had looked really boring, now, thanks to you, there's so much to do... I have to go to the police station, get insurance quotes, fax my insurers and then wait for them to send an assessor round to view the damage. And then, if I am really lucky, I will lose the use of my car for several days. Gee things are looking up. You have really made my day.
Sorry chaps, just had to let it out.

Rant on completely different topic. Current advertising campaign for Kellogs Fruit Winders. Why are they using images of torture for a kids product (or for any product)? I particularly hate the blackcurrant/elephant/mouse ad. If you've seen it, you'll know what I'm on about. My 2.5 ds always asks me why the blackcurrant is crying - what are you supposed to say - because it is about to be stretched to death by two terrified elephants????!!!!
I know that it is a cartoon about fruit and that as far as we know fruit doesn't have feelings but I really hate these ads. Summoning up the energy to write to Kellogs Fruit Winders Marketing Team.

Bugsy2, I hate that advert too and have thought exactly the same as you, why show the fruit in terror and then getting stretched to death?! I know I have become much more sensitive to these types of things since having a child and maybe need to relax but that advert particularly really annoys me.

What about the model pigs dressed up in butchers aprons I see in butcher shop windows, happily posing with meat cleavers poised over one of their relatives?!! Also saw a lorry the other day with pork scratchings advert on side, again with pig smiling on the packet!!

Bugsy - I agree with you completely, but then I always think Kellogs ads are pretty poor. I don't even like the one for Carphone warehouse with the poor little phone getting a cup over its head and falling off the table as several nasty people laugh at it. I'll only go to Carphone Warehouse if they do a sequel with a happy ending!!

Yep, I'm with you on that rara! And all the adverts/packaging which portrays animals as being happy to give up their meat/dairy produce, etc

Back to the parent and child parking, yesterday in the shopping centre a car drove the wrong way round the one way car park to park in the parent and child spaces....no children.

Also at our shopping centre there are 2 lifts. Plenty of stairs, but the amount of young, healthy, able-bodied people who use the lifts, so that we with buggies have to stand and wait while the lifts go on past too full....DESPITE an announcement in the lift stating that it is prioritised for parents and disabled....GRRRRR

The ICELAND adverts irritate the hell out of me

And people who leave greasy water in the sink after doing the washing up....

my rant for today - unsympathetic bosses. Asked for this afternoon off to take dd to hospital and then maybe the next 2 days, and got a c**P e-mail back saying lots of people are on holiday but if needs be then needs be....if my dd has to stay in hospital he can stuff his job.

Actually didn't need to stay, have to go back next week to see if arm healing ok.

Janus -Dog Poo arggghhhhh
I plucked up the courage to speak to a guy locally who I had seen, on many occasions, 'ignoring' the pile left by his dog - often in gateways. He was very abusive to me. I then caught him literally dragging his dog - mid poo poor thing - 6 feet down the pavement so that the offending article would be left in MY gateway. I calmly went outside, armed with a plastic bag, collected the pile and followed the guy back to his house where I dumped out the contents of the bag on his doorstep.

Go Snugs! I did the same thing with our neighbor's cat poo! All our neighbors with cats have concrete "gardens" so their cats all come to do their business in my lovely planted dirt garden. Apart from ripping my flower's to shreds, it also means that I can't safely let my son (18 months) play in the garden and being pregnant I'm not supposed to go near cat poo so I can't even garden. And these neighbors are constantly complaining about everyone's dogs pooing in the street. Why is it ok for cat's to poo everywhere, but not dogs.

Gosh, I wish I could claim to be a paragon of virtue like you, Jenny2998, and be able to say I never once rode a lift before I had children!

And those snap judgments are rearing their heads again. How can you tell, merely by looking, that everyone is fit and healthy? Maybe they have a heart murmur, or need a joint replacing or are coming up to needing their monthly medication for pernicious anaemia.

Have to say that I am with Jenny2998 on this one. I have given up going to the Tate Modern at weekends (which our son used to love) because the lifts are always so full that it takes an absolute age to get around with the puschair. Same goes for a number of department stores. I concede that many of the people using the lift have a valid reason for doing so but surely not all. The whole thing is a mystery to me as if I was unencumbered by a puschair, I would far rather jump on and off an escalator than wait for a crowded lift.

Snugs, fantastic! Did he realise what you had done? I am going to start ranting at anyone dog owner I see now after having to clean my hall carpet twice this week.
Well, today after my pleasant trip to Sainsbury's (NOT) on my way back I saw two women park in the childrens parking get out and stroll away NO CHILD. I went up to them and said 'this is for people with children' as yet again I couldn't get anywhere near. One woman said 'she has a bad back and we couldn't get in the disabled parking' and I sort of felt bad so let it go and then I saw them walking off in the complete opposite direction of Sainsbury's towards the highstreet to obvious go on a nice shopping jaunt. I nearly ran after them about to shout 'not so bloody bad that you can't have a good browse around the shops I see' but decided I should perhaps let it go. So, I told the miserable old bag in the parking hut and she just shrugged and said the patrol man isn't in yet. I could have pointed out the bloody car, she just wasn't interested. Why am I so worked up??!!!

Janus, I think you just need to accept that some people are just plain rude and heartless.
I wound up some old age people a while ago by parking in a disabled slot. My two were both under 2 and their were no spaces in the mother and toddler parking but loads in the disabled.
Their was no way I was walking 1/2 a mile with the two of them so I felt at the time I had no choice.
The next thing a car pulled up next to me and two OAPs got out (one in wheel chair). They both started ranting and raving at me and I just said 'I'm not walking with these two to find a trolley'. The next thing they were complaining to a car park attendant and pointing to me.
He did nothing about it I don't think I was being unreasonable, do you? I was so wound up that I wrote a note telling them exactly what I thought and left it under their windscreen wipers!

The trouble with cats is that they are not biddable like dogs and can't be controlled. But you can get stuff to keep cats out of gardens, Lion Dung!! Not sure where you get it - garden centres, maybe? Also you can put down some special plastic netting type material which cats don't like to walk on, and it's harmless.

At least we don't have bears in the UK. Our American friends had an enormous bear do-do on their porch one morning - it was about the size of a small volcano, apparently!!

hi i am so mad i was in bromley about five weeks ago and gap had a sale on so i phones my sister she loves gap clothes well she said get about fifty pounds in clothes and she would send me a cheque well i did it and guess what has she sent me the cheque has she hell i am so cross i realy resent asking for the money well i dropped a few hints like has the cheque got lost in the post no and on saturday i recived my credit card statment and i still have no cheque so i phones her and askes her out straight well that was six days ago and still no money i am so mad i would not dream of asking to get something and then not paying for it

OK, going to add my pet hate here: lorry and van drivers (and others, but they are the main offenders) who indicate as they are pulling out to change lane on the motorway (not before). I feel like a mind reader half the time: "now, he's a bit close to the artic in front, so he's probably going to pull out about....oh yes, NOW, lucky that I checked my mirror a nano second ago and am ready to pull into the fast lane to let him out so I don't kill us all.." Do they all go to the same school of crap driving?

Can I add my current pet hate? It's cyclists who ride on the pavements!! I was sent flying by an idiot riding a bike in a railway staion recently and I ended up with cuts and bruises everywhere, including inside my mouth. My dd had hysterics because she had such a fright and of course, it was all so bl%dy embarrassing! I'm now really jumpy when I see a cyclist anywhere and am thinking of carrying a stick with me to shove into their spokes if they get too close!

Wickwaterwitch, my husband is one of those van drivers, except he does it in his golf as well. It drives me bonkers. He has some theory about how you are not supposed to indicate before there is a break in traffic. Which to me sounds totally stupid...you should indicate to let people know what you want to do so they will create the break. He claims that that I am wrong because I am american and don't understand the english driving rules! That's what I get for marrying a builder!. At least when he puts up shelves, they stay up which is more than I can say for my first husband.

Actually sue, since we're on the subject of poo, i am beginning to think it's following me around. I have a problem with 2 wild ducks pooing all over the pool area in my house in los angeles. I have suggested to my tenants that if it bothers them too much roast duck is delicious.

Janus - Guilty guy last spotted dragging dog into gutter for poo (but still doesn't remove offending item afterwards) so a slight improvement from the pavement. And I've noticed he practically sprints past my house now

SofiaAmes - I know when I learned to drive, my instructor drummed in to me that signalling is about INDICATING what you are intending to do - so that even if there isn't a space, you should indicate your intention. If you think of it, even the words, to "signal" or an "indicator" suggest that you should use them to illustrate what you are GOING to be doing. There is no point "signalling" or "indicating" if you are already doing it, because then everyone can SEE what you are doing!

So I'd tell your dh he's talking out of a hole in his backside! (to keep the tone of this thread suitably low!)

Well, I know in theory you should indicate your intention but where I live you can go "blinky, blinky" for as long as you like and no bugger makes a gap for you to move lanes - in fact they speed up so you can't get in front of them as though it's a race. Another blood boiler is "give way to the right" - why is it that if you have a big merc or jeep this doesn't apply? Please let me have the page of the Highway Code to read up on this as my knowledge is a little rusty! Also my DH mate gets right up my expletive deletive but that's another rant!!

The best thing just happened to me!! Was driving home, up a hill in a residential 30mph area when a lorry roared up behind me so close I could practically see up the driver's nose. I checked my speed and was actually doing nearer 40, so I slowed down to 30, really annoying this guy who started to wave wildly through the window and continued driving right up my backside. anyway, eventually he couldn't contain himself and overtook, tore past me - straight into a police speed trap!! I drove calmly past him as he was being flagged down. There is a God!

Enid, that's the sort of thing you dream of!!
I've just had another 'encounter' at Sainsbury's today (have my parents coming up for the weekend so have been twice in the last 2 days as keep forgetting things to get!).
Literally had to park in the next but last carspace away from the supermarket as all the childrens spaces taken. Dragged daughter out and along to supermarket to find a woman pulling out of her childrens space with 2 car seats in her car, was about to walk on by and then glanced in to see both were empty. I lost it! She had her window down anyway to give her ticket to the booth and I said 'don't you feel guilty parking in that spot so that I have to walk the complete length of the carpark' and her whole attitutude was 'well I have to every time I come here'. SO YOU OF ALL PEOPLE SHOULD KNOW HOW I FEEL THEN. No, apparently not. She just wouldn't get my point of view, thought everyone else parked in the spaces were businessmen and so if she saw a space she should grab it. I give up, with attitudes like this we don't stand a chance. Complained to the manager inside who said the carpark was 'hired out' to an outside firm to monitor so not his problem either.
I do internet shop whenever I can and now see how much it has managed to keep me sane!