What follows is the third installment in my "Thin Line" series about things I hate and love. You can catch up on the previous two entries by going to "It's a Thin Line..." and "It's a Thin Line, Part 2." As I’ve said before, I’m aiming here for the particulars in life that irritate and energize
us all. Enjoy.
I HATE…
- When a significantly older woman running, in biking gear, passes me on the Cynwyd Trail
- Tailgaters – and I don’t mean the parked, drinking kind
- Wondering if there’s a Groupon for Botox
- How long it’s taking the township to complete infrastructure repairs on Montgomery Avenue
- Seeing pictures on Facebook of what other people made for dinner
- Crowds
- Feeding my kids breakfast they don’t eat and hearing 17 minutes later that they’re hungry
- The fact that I’ve even been sucked into watching “The Real Housewives of Miami”
- That I not only get to change my 2-year-old’s diapers but also get to pick up my dog’s poop and sometimes wipe his butt, too
- Victoria’s Secret models
- Buying $197.23-worth of groceries and forgetting the toothpaste
- Calling one of my daughter’s new kindergarten classmates by the wrong name
- That I asked my podiatrist’s nurse when she was due and she wasn’t expecting
- “The New Yorker” cartoons I don’t understand
- When my 79-year-old neighbor gives my son a 40-year-old periscope that none of us know how to set up or use
- The fact that my husband thinks he can seal coat our driveway
- The number of robo calls we get telling us we can save on our electric bill
- When my kids don't turn off the water after brushing their teeth
- Sifting through the paperwork that comes home in my kids’ backpacks
- Seeing the dust caked on our overhead fan blades
- When my 5-year-olds give me driving tips during a rainstorm
- That the only way I can remember to do anything is to write it on my hand
- Removing interior seals from squeezy ketchup bottles
- Wondering whether the symptoms I’m experiencing are Lyme disease or menopause related
- Catching a glimpse of the filthy bottoms of my feet as I slip into bed
- People who loudly crunch through jumbo popcorn at movies
- How my kids and husband leave their socks all over the house
- Cleaning up Ritz cracker bits from my kitchen floor
- That my husband once lived in a place called “Club Dong”
I LOVE…
- Catching that significantly older woman in biking gear on the 2-mile ascent
- Tailgating – the parked, drinking variety
- The balmy late summer weather we’ve been having
- Spotting an “Andean Cock-of-the-Rock” at the Academy of Natural Sciences
- When my husband lets me sleep in
- Trying to explain what a "melon baller" is -- and why I'm using one -- to my kids
- Making fun of Scientology
- That our neighbors’ roofers rang the bell to ask if they could clean up debris from our yard
- John Hughes’s movies
- That my son gave his twin sister a kiss after watching her first ballet class
- Imagining how the teenager who just passed me got the vanity plate, “DUBE”
- Rilo Kiley’s “Silver Lining”
- Seeing my twins trying to walk with large, plastic, bouncy balls between their knees
- Hand sanitizer
- Bustin’ a move to Young MC with my 2-year-old at 9:07 a.m. on the way to Trader Joe’s
- How my kids confuse the past tense: “I runned…” or “I holded it…” or “She hurted me…”
- Anything by Atul Gawande
- When my 5-year-old daughter tells me that “it’s not the end of the world”
- Thinking of things I hate and love
- How my twins can now, mostly, open their own snacks
- Idris Elba and “Luther” – when is the next season, anyone?
- When my dog licks sweat off my neck while I’m stretching after a run
- That my twins are finally attending the neighborhood school we’ve been driving past for six years
- Finding free parking
- When my 2-year-old asks, “Where’s parrot?” out of nowhere
- When something’s finally taken care of
- How my fast my twins talk when they’re excited
- Bubblegum cigarettes, though they are hard to find
- How my husband once lived in a place called “Club Dong”
