2006-11-04 - 12:51 p.m.

I'm sitting here eating cold pizza, drinking flat diet coke and feeling a bit bloated and sick.

...which, let's face it, might be due to my breakfast.

Today I want to talk about irrational irritants and insane hatreds. I don't come out of the discussion very well but let's face it, most of my regular readers know that I'm no fairy tale princess who attracts all the little woodland creatures, handsome princes and, through sheer virtue of my sweetness, makes murderous woodcutters have a change of heart and spare me.

Quite the opposite in fact, but I don't want to discuss any of my ex's today.

Shall I tell you about the things which are turning my hand into a claw then?

...remember, these are IRRATIONAL irritants we're talking about here:

1) Wazza (this is Warren, Phoe's Dad. I call him Wazza and he now signs birthday cards the same way!) - Waz very kindly buys us household stuff and dog food from time to time. I have a deep seated and enormous problem with the man but we tolerate each other and this is a very kind and welcome gesture. The problem is, the 'washing up' liquid he sometimes buys us.

"What, the brand of washing up liquid an elderly man buys for you as a helpful gesture makes your hand go into a claw Sket?"

Yes Conscience, it does.

Phoe and I were in the supermarket and I mentioned that we needed washing up liquid. "Oh that's ok, Dad's got us some". Well, I could feel the blood rush to my head in such a way I couldn't hear any more for a second and the earth kinda shook under my feet. Call me trivial (heck Sket, you're trivial. There are people in the world dying of starvation and you are about to have an embolism over WASHING UP LIQUID!). Yup, nothing else in my life other than my mild irritants which my mind has blown up out of all proportion. I had to know. I had to get home quickly to see if he had done it again.

HE HAD
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Fucking GREEN washing up liquid! GREEN WASHING UP LIQUID. You wanna know why this irritates the shit out of me? It's because the man has no fucking imagination. He will not EAT anything that isn't traditional 1950's food. He has never eaten coleslaw, pizza, pasta, CORN ON THE COB, garlic, broccoli, bread that has any hint of seed in/on it, the list goes on and on. Whenever we take him out to a restaurant he ALWAYS has fucking cod and chips and he ALWAYS leaves whatever vegetable comes with it. It wouldn't surprise me if the man only had one giant backed up, arsehole tearing turd a week with the state of his diet. GREEN washing up liquid imposes his long standing lack of imagination, 'it's what we've always had and I'm not trying any of this new muck' attitude on us. I FUCKING HATE GREEN WASHING UP LIQUID, it's the colour of 'Fairy' from the 70's and every other damn washing up liquid of history and I can't stand it and I wanted to throw it out into the road and drive over the fucking thing.

Of course, I didn't. I am using it with a grimace as we speak. I ran out of my lovely red berry stuff a couple of days ago.....

2) FUCKING SUITCASES WITH LONG HANDLES - you know the type, you are in a crowded situation getting onto a train, a ferry, a whatever and you see a space, try to move into it to avoid being crushed and you end up falling over a fucking suitcase being dragged behind some oblivious arsehole who keeps slowing down as they walk exacerbating the problem. This happened to me for the millionth time yesterday (she exaggerated). The owner of said suitcase didn't keep in pace with the crowd which meant that when they slowed down and the case stopped I would have to do a stupid kind of giant step to bypass the corner of the bloody thing. They would then start walking again, thus catching the inside of my leg. Well, I kicked the fucking thing. I FUCKING HATE THEM and I could feel an irrational anger come over me when I saw that the owner was SMILING goddamit! How dare they be happy when the vein in my temple is about to burst! I visualised myself ripping the handle out of the smiling moron's hand, picking up the suitcase and hurling it with all my might over the edge of the pier and then laughing hysterically in the shocked faces of the witnesses.

Of course I didn't, I just got into Phoe's car and calmed right down.

...until next time.

3) 'Look at me, look at me' type girls who will say ANYTHING to ensure all eyes of the room are on them. There is a particular girl in my training group at the moment and she is very slim, pretty and 'pleasant'. I fucking hate her and from what I understand, most of the other trainees are starting to feel the same. I've thought long and hard about this one and whether I'm being a bitch but believe me, it's got nothing to do with her appearance at all. I think, deep down that the girl is very insecure and so she has to fuel her ego every minute of the goddam day! Yeah it's probably a shame but for fucksake! Every opportunity for questions she has to attempt to show everyone how much she knows in order to make herself feel superior, every time there ISN'T an opportunity for questions she has to speak, every time someone is trying to tell us something she has to talk to the person beside/to the front of her, she has to smile broadly at anyone who catches her eye, she has to giggle more loudly and for longer than anyone else at something that isn't really funny but when you are at work you laugh out of politeness, she has to tell everyone anything about herself which she thinks makes her sound kinda exotic or funky and she has to say hello to anyone she vaguely knows in a really over the top way, as if they've just come off a dangerous expedition to the far reaches of the earth. She ensures that anyone who isn't listening to her gets their eyes drawn to her by clever use of a snaking hand gesture as she speaks and well, there is so much more and now I can't even stop looking at her. It's one of those situations where someone irritates you so much you just can't pull your eyes away from them as you have to sort of feed your irritation. I doubt she is able to use this as an ego boost as I have a naturally miserable, dead-eyed look about me at work and she does actually try to avoid me now I think about it....

Anyhoo, yesterday we had some IT training for an assessment tool we will need to use a lot at work. We were given a worksheet to complete but had to break for lunch part way through. As I waited for one of my colleagues I caught myself staring at the back of my tormentor's head. God how I wanted to slam it down onto the keyboard. My colleague finished up and as we went to leave, the guy instructing us said to the tormentor "Aren't you going to lunch then?" She started with her giant 'oh aren't I serious and great' expression, opened her mouth to speak when I head someone say loudly and in a flat tone

"No, she wants to finish hers before everyone else so she can prove she's so much better than the rest of us!"

As she looked dumbstruck for the first time in 5 weeks I looked around to see who had spoken. There was no one there other than, erm.....me. Shit!

Later on she decided to dramatically eat a pot of olives in the staff room. If she mentioned olives once she must have mentioned them with every breath she took. Anyone who came into the room, even if she didn't know them had to be asked if they'd like to try her olives. I tried to breath deeply and slowly. I tried to remember my yoga breathing, I closed my eyes and tried to tell myself to calm down. I think she thought, because a pot of olives for lunch wasn't typical everyone would smile and comment on how different she was and how cool. I tried to take my mind of the itch in my fingers as the evil side of my psyche told my good side just how easy it would be to smash the plastic pot into her face. All I would have to do is quickly slam it upwards and the plastic sides would break and she'd just have oil, basil (for this is what she kept telling us was also in the friggin pot), and olives all down her. I could always say I slipped in the subsequent disciplinary........

I'm going to stop here. I'm aware that I sound like a mad person on the edge. Thank God I've been born with a giant heap of rationality and in-built mechanisms that stops me from doing all this stuff 'cause let's face it. There are LOADS of people who don't have these inhibitors and they are going to be the people I'm about to start managing in the community.

Shit, we're all doomed.....

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