I suck at making appointments. I don’t know what it is, but I’ll do anything to procrastinate before picking up the phone to set up an appointment. Doesn’t matter who the appointment is with or what it’s for: doctor, dentist, hairdresser . . .
I’ve needed a haircut for weeks. I was going to make an appointment for the week before school starts. But I didn’t. Then I thought I’d do it the first week of classes. But of course, oh, my goodness, I was far too busy then to make a forty-five second phone call. So, now, in the third week of the semester, I finally got my haircut this morning.
If I was going to get a million dollars, but I had to make an appointment with the person who was going to give it for me, I’d probably put off calling them for at least a week.
The whole time I’m putting it off, I, keep thinking, “Ack, I need to make that appointment!” but either I cleverly contrive to think of this when I’m nowhere near a phone, or I find something else I need to do even more urgently. Once I actually pick up the phone, it’s fine. I can talk to the person on the other end, make the appointment, keep the appointment. We’re golden. But getting my butt to the phone . . .
So, what seemingly simple task do you despise and unnecessarily make into an ordeal?
Laundry. I hate laundry. It isn’t hard to do or anything. Scrounging up enough quarters to do it is annoying, but not horribly difficult. I just hate doing it.
As a result, I own more underwear than anyone I know (I haven’t actually asked, I’m just making the assumption that most people don’t have a month-and-a-half’s worth of undies) just to avoid doing laundry.
I’m also a big fan of thrift store t-shirts. They’re cheap and kind of cool looking. My outfits usually consist of blue jeans, a t-shirt, and a sweater if it’s chilly out. I figure the jeans and the sweater can be worn a couple of times before being laundered and so I can usually go almost a month before I really need to do laundry. Unfortunately, at the end of my laundry cycle, it’s scary to open my closet because it’s become a mountain of dirty clothes.
Doing things to The Car. I just hate it. Checking the tires and the fluids and washing it and vacuuming it. I do it, because I have to, but I just have no interest in it and it’s haaaard.
I wish I lived in NYC so I wouldn’t have to own a car.
I hate paying bills. I mean I pay most of them online and I have the money, put I always put them off until the last minute, and sometimes even after the last minute.
I hate returning phone calls. When a friend leaves me a message it usually takes me a day or two to call back.
I hate cleaning. I’m trying to do my best but I generally put it off until a friend calls (and I answer) and he or she announces that they are on the way over, so I clean as fast as I can in 15 minutes.
I hate putting gas in my car. I always wait until the needle is well below the empty line before I go to a gas station, and even then i only put about $5 worth of gas in it at a time since I hate waiting for the gas pump to fill my gas tank.
I hate fixing things too. Once I broke the frame fo my bed so that the mattress was almost at a 45 degree angle. I actually slept at a 45 degree angle for a couple of days before I decided to fix it (even though it only took a few minutes to repair).
Cleaning of any kind, but especially pots/pans/dishes (I’m a good cook but I almost never cook for myself because I hate cleaning the dishes and the kitchen).
Bathing my dog (though he hates it more than I do).
I hate standing in line. This makes places like the airport, the post office, the DMV, the bank, and the passport office places I wish to avoid at all costs. If I had been born into Soviet Russia, I probably would have killed myself before I turned 20.
Waiting at red lights drives me nuts, especially when the light changes just before I get to the intersection and have to wait out a full cycle. It’s completely wasted time to me. Unless I have any quick tasks to do while waiting, such as writing out a check to pay a bill (something I don’t do much now since most of my bill paying is online), there’s really nothing to do but sit there and hope there’s a good song on the radio or in the CD player. I can’t help but think about how much farther down the road I could be if the damn light had only stayed green just one second longer!
Washing dishes by hand is another mundane pet peeve of mine. I have no choice since I have no dishwasher. I can never get the dishes sparkling clean no matter how hard I try, so I feel that doing this is a wasted effort.
I hate hate hate getting all my medicines ready to take. Oh, I’ll swallow them, that’s not the problem. It’s the chore of going throuch my medicine basket, taking out two pills here, one capsule there to form a small handful. I bought one of those nifty pill organizers you fill up for the week & it works out great… when I can bring myself to filling up the damned thing. It just drives me nuts.
The paying bills thing- check.
The Car thing- check. Including filling the gas tank. So tedious.
I could mention my hatred of driving on the highway, but that’s getting more into anxiety stuff, not irrational hatred.
I HATE it when my kids have their coats on during class. Talk about irrational. It just makes me feel nervous, as if any minute now they’re going to jump up and sprint out the door, never to return.
I hate doing the dishes and they will stack up until I am out of plates or silverware before I break down and load the dishwasher. This is COMPLETELY rational of course, but I procrastinate just the same.
I don’t know how irrational this is, but I hate asking people for favors when I have never done anything useful for them. If I had done something worth while then I might ask, but only if I have done something recently.
I could probably pick something for each letter of the alphabet. Abuse of apostrophes, bad grammar, cell phones ringing… very high on the list, though late in the alphabet, is unflushed toilets. I see this at work more often than I should, and it makes me grossed out and furious.
This isn’t totally irrational, but I hate, hate, HATE it when I do something that my computer doesn’t like and it starts making those sounds (you know, those sounds) and chugging along soooooo slowly and when you click on something it loads soooooo slooooowly and you never know how long it’s going to take to resolve and AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH. This drives me off the fucking wall. I actually get physically agitated.
I hate ruling straight lines. I don’t know why, it just annoys me terribly, lining up the ruler parallel to the edge of the page and holding it steady and oh look! I bumped the pen into my finger so my straight line has a little arc in it now. Few things annoy me as much as having to rule straight lines for extended periods of time, like when I’m mounting porfolio pieces.
When doing dishes: I’ll wash mountains of dirty dishes and pile them in the other side of the sink. The part that really bugs me is rinsing them and putting them in the rack! I’ll keep washing and stacking them higher and higher, getting ever more frustrated until finally, I have to *stop what I’m doing * and rinse the dishes to get them out of my way. Arrgh!
I hate when my husband uses a spoon to scoop out peanut butter for a sandwich, instead of a knife. It’s just wrong. You only use a spoon if you’re going to eat the peanut butter straight out of the jar; you use a knife for a sandwich because that way you can wipe the knife clean on the bread, every civilized person on God’s green earth knows this, and I’ve told him a million times that he makes the baby Skippy cry every time he makes a peanut butter sandwich with a spoon, but he doesn’t listen!
He does it with mayo, too. Just to hurt me.
I’m with y’all on the bill-paying and appointment making, too.
I will wash dishes and I will wash and even dry clothes. But I will never put them away. What is the friggn point? I live alone. You guessed, right?
I also never ever EVER use the telephone if it’s at all practical to e-mail or stop by in person. The phone is a blunt instrument. I can’t pick up on every nuance and nonverbal cue that goes along with realtime speech (I miss enough in person), so I feel blindfolded. Written language is different, though.