I’m normally a pretty cheerful and patient person (being a mother I find I have to be). I look on the bright side of life most days, and try to find the positive in every situation (it’s not always easy, but I give it the good old College-try) You’d think with Christmas around the corner I’d have a more joyful topic to write, but time and time again it seems that my patience is tried…
Line-ups – My #1 Pet Peeve - if there are more than 10 people in line I will walk away and put my potential purchases back. I will definitely NOT suffer for coffee. No matter what kind of coffee it is. Life is too short to wait in line. The only caveat to this is when I am at the grocery store and have a full cart. I will grit my teeth as the line crawls to the checkout. This is when I catch up on the latest celebrity gossip. (Must make sure I put the magazine back before proceeding through the checkout.) Christmas shopping and crowded line-ups in stores drive me batty.
Driving in Traffic – I am very fortunate that I am able to walk to work most days. On those days that I am forced to bring my car I feel my blood pressure begin to rise when traffic starts to back-up. I don’t like the feeling of being trapped between a line of cars and a curb. I’m not claustrophobic or agoraphobic – I just don’t like not moving…If I could abandon my car and get out and walk, there are many days I dream I could do just that. To get me through traffic I lose myself in the radio. I channel surf until I find something that interests me and if it’s a great song then I will sing along, if it’s a talk show then I will absorb myself in the topic.
Impatient motorists/bus drivers – If you can’t get through the intersection on the green then don’t try to sneak through on the yellow and then end up blocking both traffic and pedestrians trying to cross the other way. (On more than one occasion I have had to snake my way between cars to cross a street all the while wondering if the motorist even sees me.) No one can be in that much of a rush, can they? I make eye contact ALL the time to make sure they know I am there. There are also times when I just have to wait for another light cycle and hope for the best. Case in point: yesterday I was walking home and had approached a crossing with the pedestrian walk signal still lit up. I was one lane across the street when the signal changed to the “hand”. A bus turning right on the red started into the intersection and came within a couple feet of me. I stopped walking to make sure the driver saw me. He made eye contact with me, and then to my surprise continued turning. If I had remained where I was standing he would have hit me. I had to back up to the sidewalk to avoid being killed. It was as if he didn’t care.
Oblivious Pedestrians - People who walk two-three-four abreast on the sidewalk (and even worse, those who walk in the center) unaware of people behind them who are walking faster and would like to get by and then grudgingly move when you ask politely if you can get by, as if you are invading their sidewalk. Ditto for dog walkers who walk their dogs a long leash that spans the sidewalk and you have to either go around the dog or hop the leash. All I can do is say, “On your left” and hope for the best. Sometimes people move and sometimes they don’t.
Loud chewers - Please close your mouth when you are chewing. There is really no polite way to tell someone they eat loud without hurting their feelings. (If anyone has suggestions for this I would love to hear them)
Telemarketers – nuff said! (I know they have a job to do and I don’t fault them for that but I don’t have to like it and I don’t have to listen to them)
Malls in December - As I get older I get more and more irritated with crowds in malls. So…I refuse to step into a shopping mall after December 1st. If I have any Christmas shopping to do I will do it early in the season, or online or in stand-alone specialty shops. (*sigh…I failed with this this year…I had to step inside last weekend, but I went early and left before noon – it was the best I could do).
I am very good at calming myself down and deep breathing to get myself through these patience testers. Avoidance works best, but is not always the most practical. A gin&tonic or a glass of wine at the end of the day is also a lovely remedy.
Tuesday 21 December 2010
Wednesday 15 December 2010
Traditions Reconditioned
The author of a blog I follow recently asked readers to share their favourite Christmas tradition. This is a blog that I comment on quite regularly and I was looking forward to sharing my Christmas traditions. So I sat down and started to write, and realized that I really didn’t have one “Christmas Tradition”. As a child I fondly remember Christmas morning with my family when it was just my mother, father and brother for Christmas. As soon as we were old enough to figure out that we didn’t have to stay in bed until morning my brother and I would sneak out of our bedrooms and steal to the living room where the Christmas tree was. We would first check to see if Santa had come, and then seeing the plump stockings we would race to them and thrust our hands inside to retrieve the flashlight that was always included within. Santa was always faultlessly fair to both of us right down to the number of chocolate balls we received.
The stockings are the only constant for me. They are my favourite part of Christmas and I love searching out that perfect little thing to put in the stockings that are laid out each Christmas Eve.
There were some other traditions we begrudgingly followed. My father had been sent to Finland for work when I was in grade school. He came back with a couple of traditional Laplander hats worn by the children in Finland. As we went off to Christmas dinner at friends’ each year, my mother would pull out the hats and hand them to us so we could wear them into the house. My brother and I would complain incessantly about these hats
(they were actually quite cute) but we would put them on for the 15 or so steps to the front door and tear them off as soon as our hosts had seen us wearing them. I look back and wonder why on earth we put up such a fuss.
The early days were the most consistent but things began to change when we went away to school. After an intense school term all we seemed to want to do was to sleep, and instead of waking up early on Christmas morning, our parents would have to come and rouse us from sleep in order to get the day on its way. This continued until our early 30’s when we started settling down.
A devastating house fire when I was 25 resulted in the creation of a temporary new tradition for my family. Because we lost everything – including the Christmas decorations – we began to buy each other ornaments for the host Christmas tree each year. With just my family this meant 12 new ornaments each Christmas. When my brother and I both got married, the ornament count went up to 30 for a couple of Christmas seasons. We had to cease that as there was soon going to be no room for all the decorations either on the tree or in storage. The trees in our family are beautiful these days, adorned with eclectic mixes of fish and boats and trains and kitchen related decorations.
The married-pre-kids days were probably the most relaxed of all Christmas mornings that I remember. We would get up and brew a pot of coffee, pouring ourselves a cup with a healthy dose of Bailey’s Irish Cream, before making our way to the tree where we spent time laughing and leisurely opening gifts that had been carefully chosen for each recipient.
Once children entered our lives the Christmas morning routine went back to hectic activity. Children waking early to open gifts and a house full of discarded paper and boxes and new toys to try.
Since I’ve been divorced things have changed once more. For a few short Christmases we would buy ourselves a gift worth around $25 and wrap it in newspaper and place it under the tree for the annual exchange. Everyone would choose a gift they didn’t purchase, open it and try to figure out who had purchased the gift for themselves. (My brother was especially good at throwing people off his scent.) Then for some reason this short-lived hilarious activity was terminated and now we don’t even exchange gifts anymore. I have to admit that I miss the family get-togethers that just don’t seem to happen as much or as often anymore. I guess, as with everything, the only thing constant anymore seems to be change.
The stockings are the only constant for me. They are my favourite part of Christmas and I love searching out that perfect little thing to put in the stockings that are laid out each Christmas Eve.
There were some other traditions we begrudgingly followed. My father had been sent to Finland for work when I was in grade school. He came back with a couple of traditional Laplander hats worn by the children in Finland. As we went off to Christmas dinner at friends’ each year, my mother would pull out the hats and hand them to us so we could wear them into the house. My brother and I would complain incessantly about these hats
(they were actually quite cute) but we would put them on for the 15 or so steps to the front door and tear them off as soon as our hosts had seen us wearing them. I look back and wonder why on earth we put up such a fuss.
The early days were the most consistent but things began to change when we went away to school. After an intense school term all we seemed to want to do was to sleep, and instead of waking up early on Christmas morning, our parents would have to come and rouse us from sleep in order to get the day on its way. This continued until our early 30’s when we started settling down.
A devastating house fire when I was 25 resulted in the creation of a temporary new tradition for my family. Because we lost everything – including the Christmas decorations – we began to buy each other ornaments for the host Christmas tree each year. With just my family this meant 12 new ornaments each Christmas. When my brother and I both got married, the ornament count went up to 30 for a couple of Christmas seasons. We had to cease that as there was soon going to be no room for all the decorations either on the tree or in storage. The trees in our family are beautiful these days, adorned with eclectic mixes of fish and boats and trains and kitchen related decorations.
The married-pre-kids days were probably the most relaxed of all Christmas mornings that I remember. We would get up and brew a pot of coffee, pouring ourselves a cup with a healthy dose of Bailey’s Irish Cream, before making our way to the tree where we spent time laughing and leisurely opening gifts that had been carefully chosen for each recipient.
Once children entered our lives the Christmas morning routine went back to hectic activity. Children waking early to open gifts and a house full of discarded paper and boxes and new toys to try.
Since I’ve been divorced things have changed once more. For a few short Christmases we would buy ourselves a gift worth around $25 and wrap it in newspaper and place it under the tree for the annual exchange. Everyone would choose a gift they didn’t purchase, open it and try to figure out who had purchased the gift for themselves. (My brother was especially good at throwing people off his scent.) Then for some reason this short-lived hilarious activity was terminated and now we don’t even exchange gifts anymore. I have to admit that I miss the family get-togethers that just don’t seem to happen as much or as often anymore. I guess, as with everything, the only thing constant anymore seems to be change.
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