Let's have a look at more of the fun, foibles and frustrations of our daily lives. Little things go wrong every day. Things that make you want to laugh one moment and scream the next, for example:
• You finally finish your basement with new carpet and furniture. Within two weeks, the rainfall of the century occurs and a foot of water will leak into your newly-completed rec room.
• Buying a new car is very exciting. It’s a wonderful feeling to be the proud owner of a brand new vehicle with its clean, shiny paint job. The thing that drives you crazy is that first stone chip or ding. And it happens so soon. Usually, all you get is about a month that’s ding free. It seems like you just get it in the driveway and suddenly there’s a mark on the paint job.
• You go to take a drink from one of those “sport” water bottles with the little spout on the top. You squeeze the bottle and it squirts all over your face or dribbles down your chin and then all over your clothing.
• The adhesive backing on paper labels can be infuriating. You try to find the corner to start peeling off the backing, but you can’t get it started.
It’s impossible! Then someone else tries and it peels immediately.
You can’t win.
• What’s the deal with all these bedspreads, pillows and comforters? Most of them serve no practical purpose. They’re just there for show. Every time you make the bed, you have to pile them on just so and arrange them carefully so that visitors will be duly impressed.
“Hi. Come on in. Let’s go right to the bedroom so you can admire our accessories. No, we don’t actually sleep in this bed. It’s just here for display.”
• Toilet paper always runs out when you’re on the toilet. In our house, there’s a little fabric mouse sitting on the back of the toilet with a spare roll stuffed cleverly inside.
Very handy, except that I always forget that it’s there!
• How can a squirrel run across a narrow little power line 30 feet above the ground without falling off, yet I feel queasy crossing the swinging bridge at Souris?
• You run into someone you know in a store, but you can’t for the life of you remember their name or where you know them from. It’s a terrible feeling. You start into a conversation hoping that it will come to you. It doesn’t.
A variation on this is when you’re with someone else and the two of you run into someone you know/don’t remember and then you have to try and make introductions. Groan!
• When you check into a hotel in the late afternoon, often the room will not be made up. But while you’re staying there, they always seem to come around to clean the room at 8 a.m.
• You come out of the mall loaded with parcels and can’t remember where your car is parked. Was it in the donkey section or the elephant? You start wandering aimlessly through the aisles feeling very dumb and very conspicuous. It’s part of the joy of shopping.
• You take the wrong pair of rubber boots from the cloakroom.
• It’s been awhile since you went to your favourite restaurant. You drive into the parking lot to discover that it has closed and there’s a “for lease” sign on the door.
• As a dutiful husband, you want to be with your wife in the delivery room for the birth of your child. When the big moment comes, you faint.
• On a road trip, you are sure you have enough gas to get to the next town. As it turns out, you’re right. But the next town doesn’t have a gas station. You figure you still have enough gas until the next town. Wrong.
• You send your seven-year-old son out onto the hockey ice with his skate-guards on. The other fathers are very amused.
• That annoying sound the stove buzzer makes drives you crazy.
• The thing you’re looking for in the fridge is always way at the back and you knock over three things to get to it. Two of them are always liquid with no lids.
• After a raise in salary, you find that your actual take-home pay is less than it was before the increase. Aren’t “deductions” wonderful?
• Kids always come down with mumps, chicken pox or some other communicable disease on the day before the family is leaving on vacation.
• While you’re watering the house plants, you will pour more water on the furniture and carpet than into the plant containers.