My mom is famous for slamming cabinet doors. And the few times I decided to yell at her about it she denied it.
She would also blow dry her hair in the kitchen while listening to the radio and reading the paper at the same time, which meant she was blow drying in 10 second intervals. I’d be laying in bed at 5:45 a.m. and wake up to ((WRREEEEEEEEE))) pause ((WRREEEEEEEEE))) pause ((WRREEEEEEEEE))) pause ((WRREEEEEEEEE))) pause over the course of about 30 minutes. I’d finally get out of bed in disgust because I couldn’t stand trying to block that noise out of my head.
When she’s said all she needs to say on the phone, she doesn’t just end the conversation and say something like “okay, well then we’ll just talk to you later”. She’ll say “other than that… <yawn>” over and over.
My dad used to take his morning constitutional about 5 minutes before I woke up, which meant I had to lay in bed holding my full bladder for however long he decided to stay in there (we only had 1 bathroom). And as soon as he was done my mom would rush in there and take care of any of her business immediately.
My dad would also clip his toenails in the living room while we would all be watching tv together. UGH that noise just raises my blood pressure and then thinking about smelly toenail clippings in the couch just makes it worse.
My mom also gives me issues about her birthday every year. About 2 weeks before her birthday I start telling her “we’d like to treat you out to dinner for your birthday, Mom, so tell me where you’d like to go and let’s pick a night”. She always says “I’ll let you know” and I’ll continue to bug her up until the day before, when she’ll say “I don’t know where I want to go or when I want to go”. THEN if we just go ahead and set a night to do it, she’ll sulk that she didn’t get to decide what she wanted to do on her own birthday and say not to worry about it we don’t have to take her anywhere. One year we bought tickets to see the Norman Rockwell exhibition at the Corcorcan – her FAVORITE artist – and she was insulted because we were TELLING her what day we would be doing something for her birthday and then had the nerve to say we’d treat her to dinner afterwards. Ugh, it’s a giant ball of stress every year, and I’ll start dreading the game about a month before her birthday. I fear if we just don’t say anything about going out and see if she’ll bring it up we’ll get in trouble for not offering to do anything for her birthday we do something for me, my dad, and my husband’s birthday without fail. It’s because we’re happy to jump at the chance for a dinner out on our birthday!
Oh yeah! The toe/fingernail clipping!
How could I forget that?
Of course, when the family came to my place for a long visit one time the parents wondered why I went in the backyard to clip my nails.
“Why leave fingernail parings all over the room?” was my response. No answer, naturally. >:/
MY FAMILY YELLS EVERYTHING. Very hard trait to lose when you get older. Apparently, I shout everything myself, but I don’t realize it. At least I try to stop.
We all salt everything to death. Love that one though.
My dad doesn’t believe in owning movies. He’d rather wait for Indiana Jones to come on USA or TNT than own the DVD set. Weirdo. And he positively throws a fit thinking about our 300 DVD collection.
My dear, darling, loving husband hacks up a horrible loogie most mornings on the way to work, and spits it out the car window. I swear one day I’m going to strangle him for that. Ick.
My wife isn’t going to write about this, and neither is her mother, but my father-in-law, despite being a very nice man in all kinds of ways, has some astoundingly annoying personality traits that he has no compunction about foisting on everyone.
One, there is no such thing as a conversation with him. You must listen to a monologue that can last more than 15 minutes, in which he expounds, s-l-o-w-l-y and with many twists, turns and tangents, upon every thought in his head, some not having even remotely to do with the subject at hand. I have heard him go on so long without any break for input that he has forgotten what he was talking about. Then he’ll remember it and keep going, at which point everyone in the room dies another thousand deaths inside.
You know the internal editor that most people have? The one that allows you to summarize? We don’t think he has one. We don’t know why his wife hasn’t strangled him yet.
Something else that drives his wife around the bend is, now that he’s retired, he stays up all night watching TV at deafening volume. If some blues or cowboy music comes on, he’ll turn the TV up to maximum, so loud that the vibrations of the cabinet obscure the blaring. And he’ll do this at 5 AM when his wife has to get up and go to work, like he did last week.
We don’t know how he can be so sweet and generous and kind in some areas, and at the same time have so little regard for anyone or anything else that it doesn’t occur to him that he’s being bothersome and inconsiderate. I guess we thank our lucky stars that he does not drink and does not have an anger management problem…