Things that confuzzle me

You know, it's been a while since my last good rant. Not that this is good but I can't shake loose anything else in my head. Onward Ferb!

Self checkout at the grocery store. It's not rocket science: You pick up the item. You scan the item. You place the item on the belt. Repeat. Pay for the items. Pack the items. Leave. And yet I always seem to choose the line where the person at the front has a full cart and 5 items in manages to lock the system at a time where no help is around but you're committed to the line as the others are so much longer so you don't move but now the customers rocket like juggernauts through the flanking lines until finally, 15 minutes later, you finally scan your 3 items and go, half of your break time gone. *Poof* People, this is not the time to be brave. If it scares you, don't do it.

The Coworker's Wife. One of my coworkers received a new iPhone for Christmas from his wife in response to his son wanting one so she got them all one to use on a family plan because of course. Now his wife calls every day to...check in on him? Ask him to pick up the dry cleaning? Tell him they're out of meth? I'm not sure. At any rate, she always sounds pissed off. How do I know this? Because even after getting everyone and the dog an iPhone, she still calls the lab phone. Or the sensory phone. Sometimes both searching for him but never, EVER, the cell phone. In his pocket. That she gave him.

The local school system. Like pretty much everywhere else in the country, we got a crap-ton of snow this past winter. So much so that Noelle's school system used all 7 of their allotted snow days plus 2 more. (That's 9 for those playing along at home.) They made up one day by converting a professional/teacher development day into a regular instruction day. (8) The scheduled last day of school is June 17; this has been on the calendar since the beginning of the school year. Our district applied for - and received - a waiver for FOUR DAYS and an adjusted end of school year date of June 16. So: the total days allotted was 7. They went one over (see above advanced math). So obviously, you need to waive 4 extra days to end school one day early as clearly the kids need more time off.

The house. We are the second owners of our townhouse. A townhouse, by definition, is a small house attached to other small houses by common exterior walls. Our set was built at the same time (see: shared exterior walls) so it's quite befuddling the number of issues that we and we alone seem to have. It's almost like the builder played 'Eeny Meeny Miny Moe' to decide which unit would be the problem child. Woo Hoo! Lucky Sevens here. From the front door frame fairly rotting away to the the decorative door framing pulling away from the house to the shutters falling off the upstairs windows, this has been a long 10 years. (Then our tree just up and died last spring; don't even get me started on that.) But moving is not an option as that would require fixing these things which we can't do because, you know, money 'n shit, so we have to wait to fix these things all the while getting really nice notes from the HOA because PROPERTY VALUES (psst. It's a townhouse) so basically we're going to die in here unless I can figure out a way to steal my sister's house.

The cat. I love Jinx. Really, I do. What I don't love is getting the kids off to school late as it's the day coming back from Spring Break and finding not one, not two, but FOUR piles of cat puke on the 'new' carpet when we're already running late  to lose another 15 minutes to blotting and spritzing and scrubbing to return home and find that the pet cleaner did absolute jack shit and now we have four puke pink areas on the carpet that I have treat AGAIN. On the bright side though, at least they match the walls.

Next time on 'Things that confuzzle me': Kids and plates - why they have such an antagonistic relationship.