Day 9 or Things that annoy and delight me

I know that positivity is a goal of my highest and best self but some things just piss me off.  Royally.  Like the forthcoming Royal Wedding.  I know that I am supposed to be delighted, because I possess ovaries and came of age for the "first" Royal Wedding of Charles and Diana and because every girl wants to marry a prince.   But I cannot seem to get it up for this occasion, despite a five-page spread taking up valuable real estate in this month's Glamour magazine that could have been better used for helping one find her perfect swimsuit or extolling the virtues of the return of preppiness and espadrilles. 

Next, I am forced to stare at a scale as I wait to see the doctor, who is the kind of doctor who will only be writing me a prescription and should really be described as a mixologist who went to medical school with a minor in how to avoid civil lliability.  Dreading seeing the doctor and admitting that on some days I am sort of falling apart, because comparatively really what do I have to fall apart about, and dreading getting weighed (hello perfect dark chocolate layer cake with dark chocolate icing, made from scratch, so moist and rich and well, you get the picture).  Is it any wonder that my blood pressure is higher than my usually excellent blood pressure?  Perhaps, you should take my blood pressure after I see the mixologist, er, doctor, Nurse Ratched(no really more like Nurse Grunt at least Nurse Ratched had some fire and personality).*

Next, drivers need to understand certain fundamental principles.  Merging.   One does not enter an entrance ramp to the expressway and come to a sudden stop when one arrives at the top of the ramp of the expressway.  Think about it; it sort of defeats the purpose of the really long lane that allows you to build up speed.  So your entrance on the expressway at a faster speed than one was traveling on a the surface street is seamless.   Why is this concept so difficult to grasp? 

Also, we are entering Construction season in our fair state. No cuts!  It was true in kindergarten, it's true in your mid-life, in your twilight years.     Invariably, lanes will be closed.  Lane closures are designated by signs that warn drivers to get over into a non-closed lane; these warning occur at least a mile before the lane closes.   This means that you are supposed to merge into the open lane.  It does NOT mean pass all the other drivers, who have correctly followed the sign's dictates to get the fuck over, and race up to the blockade that closes the lane.  Taking cuts is frowned up on elementary school, at amusement parks, at the ball park in the pizza line, and everywhere, including the expressway.   Why, drivers who refuse to merge, endanger law-abiding drivers, and lengthen the experience for everyone else, the fuck do you think your time is more important than EVERYONE?  Are you a brain surgeon rushing to perform life-saving surgery?  If so, please disregard this section.   Do you have a true emergency?  Being an impatient prick with no respect for others does NOT constitute an emergency.  Otherwise, stop fucking taking cuts!!!

Things that delight.  Bright sunshine in an impossibly perfect blue sky.  Friends who encourage and inspire with their courage, positivity, wicked humor, and tenderness.  Friends who make life better by the virtue of their very existence.  Friends that make you feel like you are not alone, that you have a place in this world even if you are not quite sure just where yet.   Friends that make you believe in the existence of a higher power, that make you feel like you part of something and not merely a spoke in the wheel, a cog in the machinery but part of a family, part of a fabric, part of some greater, breathing, living good.  Rose-coloured sunglasses that leads to rose-coloured thinking-- if I look at the world through rose-coloured glasses, things will look rosier or brighter or something like that?   A day baseball game on a Tuesday where your team comes from behind and wins it in the ninth inning and you, without thinking about appearing lame or silly or weird, let out a whoop of  pure joy and pump your fist triumphantly in the air, not caring if the people scattered about you think that you are lame, silly, or weird or that's only April and that there is a lot of baseball yet to play.

*I can never ever think of Nurse Ratched without thinking of a good friend from the olden days.  We were watching One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest in our high school psychology class.  My good friend, who I reconnected with on Facebook in the last year or so, became so enraged by Nurse Ratched's evil, twistedness, that when she was being choked that my friend began pounding the table and yelling "die, bitch, die."  In the middle of our class, in the middle of the movie.  Generally, mid-movie disturbances would be filed under things that annoy but in this case it was a delight that still makes me laugh out loud some 20 years later.  By day, my friend was a mild-mannered member of the good-girls club but to those of who knew, she was a wicked, funny woman warrior and a cherished member of our twisted lunchtime circle.  Cheers to you, my friend!