Allow me to share with you something that annoys me

I know I only write when something bugs me. I'm sorry about that. Some day I'll write about sunshine and happiness and birds chirping and flowers blooming. I promise. But today I have to get something off my chest.

It is a well-known fact among my various friends (and maybe some enemies) that I have a signifant dose of road rage. I'm not proud of that. I'm just being honest about it. Other people and their driving skills (or lack thereof) really get to me.

You'll notice that this is thematically similar to my rants on people who put shopping carts away vs. people who don't and those who slam their seatbacks out of the full upright and locked position and into my knees on a plane. It's similar in that driving well requires that one think of someone else other than oneself for a few seconds of every day. I understand that it's hard for many of us to do this, but I don't feel that we should be getting in a car and driving if we can't turn our own concerns and cell phones and various attention grabbing devices off and pay attention to not killing the people around us. Riiiiight? Why is that hard?

And part of it, the sad part, seems to be that a lot of people just don't know the rules. Who has the right of way in certain situation, what the color yellow means on a stop light, what a green arrow means and how to make sure you don't fall down on the job when you are first in the turning lane, what to do at a four way stop sign (or intersection, as this is Nebraska and often there aren't stop signs). All of these things seem just out of the grasp of most people.

I should disclaimer this by saying that I understand we can't all be perfect all of the time. I'm sure I do jerky stuff here or there while driving. But for the most part, I keep my eyes on the road, don't talk on electronic devices, pay attention to the drivers around me so no one hits me and I don't hit anyone else.

This is why I'm mad. I don't ride bumpers and hope everyone will go 20 miles an hour above the speed limit. I don't chase people down who cut me off and pull a weapon on them at a stop sign. I don't have that kind of road rage. I feel like I have road disbelief. Or road complete shock. My rage comes from being completely dumbfounded at how self-absorbed and completely unaware of everyone else most people seem to be. My rage is more in the form of amazement that there are people who seem to truly believe that the pressing business they have to attend to is more pressing than whatever the person driving near them has, so they'll do what they please---cut someone off, be the 5th person to turn left on a red light, thereby cutting into the other directional green arrow and those patient drivers' chance of getting through the intersection on that cycle of lights. Ahhhh. That's where the expletives come from.

And I apologize to those who've had to ride in my car and have been scared by my sudden outbursts. But I'm here today to suggest that I'm not just mad as a driver, but as a citizen sick of selfish people and their ignorant ways. Driving just highlights the extra selfish and extra ignorant amongst us.

I don't want to be a part of the village

So, they tell me that it takes a village to raise a child. And yeah, I see their point. Kids need strong leadership from multiple adult role models to turn out well-rounded and well-behaved. But shouldn't the rest of us get to choose whether or not we want to be a part of the village that raises that kid?

The neighborhood I live in is desperate for me to be a part of the village. They seem determined to make me parent the kids that skate board on my driveway (And not just once in awhile turning around on my driveway, but actually assembling on my driveway to use my walkway and driveway as their personal, 12 year old X Games), or the kids that climb over my six foot fence into my backyard while they're playing hide and seek, or the kids that were climbing on the roof of my garage a few Saturday nights ago.

And that doesn't even cover the kids who, without a helmet or any other sort of protective gear, ride around on their bikes and scooters in the middle of our fairly narrow street, oftentimes past sunset and even past dusk, darting out behind parked cars, willfully displaying a wanton disregard for their own safety.

I do realize that as a single adult, without children of my own, to me kids are just more annoying. I don't find them charming the way their parents do. I don't think it's funny when they say the same thing over and over and over and over again. I don't like to aww shucks the kicking of my seat or the poking of my head on an air plane.

Some of that is just my lack of experience in dealing with children.

But some of it seems like a lack of respect on the part of the parents of these kids. After all, you can hardly blame a kid for rude or annoying behavior if the parents in their lives aren't monitoring them. I often wonder where the parents of the After Dusk Bike Riders are as their children are nearly run over by people trying to navigate their way down their street. Do they not see that the kid isn't inside? Do they not wonder where they are? Do they not worry that something bad might happen to them? I wonder what the parents think when they look out their windows and see their kid riding their skateboards up and down the driveways of other neighbors, or climbing on the roof of their garage. Do they not realize, "Hey, maybe I should teach Bobby that there is such a thing as personal space and property ownership and that we don't play in the yards or ride bikes on the property of others"? Aren't they embarrassed when their kids act without manners or without concern for the world around them?

When I was little, we got yelled at when we walked on someone else's lawn. We weren't allowed to ride our bikes on other people's property. We wouldn't have considered climbing into the yard of someone we didn't know to hide during a game of hide and seek. We wouldn't have played baseball toward the yard of a neighbor, tempting fate and the possibility of a baseball through a window. And there were consequences if we disobeyed those rules. We knew we would get in trouble. That we'd get a timeout. That we wouldn't play outside that day. Whatever. There were limits placed by our parents, we knew what they were and what would happen if we disregarded those limits.

Does that not happen anymore? Is that why it takes an entire village to raise kids these days? Parents hope other people will "raise" their kids? They hope one of the neighbors will teach the hard lessons about respect that they seem too scared to instill in their own children? I don't know. Maybe parents now days are overworked or underappreciated. Maybe kids really are nastier or meaner or more horrible. Maybe I'm just really intolerant and easily annoyed.

But this isn't just about my front yard or my driveway or the roof of my garage. This is about the movie theaters and restaurants and public spaces we all have to share. This is about parents actually standing up to their tantrum-having kids and telling them "no" and not shyly apologizing and asking the rest of us to indulge the whim of their four year old. This is about what the world will be like in about 12-20 years when a lot of these kids begin "real" jobs and make their way in the world, believing they are entitled to everything they want, other people be damned! This is about learning early that you aren't the center of the known universe, that other people matter and that grownups' opinions usually matter more. And they've earned that.

The older I get, the less patience I have for misbehaving kids. But the older I get, the angrier I get with those misbehaving kids' parents. This isn't about the kids. Just as I bear the responsibility for my dogs' poor manners---the jumping on people, the errant licking, the annoying barking---so do parents bear the responsibility for their kids. (And kids aren't dogs, I know.) But if I can carry a bag around and clean up my dogs' poop from a neighbor's lawn, surely they can keep their kids off my driveway. Or at least, for pity's sake, my roof.

Otherwise, I'm starting my own village.

So you think you can dance?

No. I don't. And I don't want to watch other people try to do it either. I barely tolerate American Idol. I accept, albeit somewhat grudgingly, its place in the pantheon of pop culture. But I don't want to watch all of its B or C-level spin offs. I don't want to watch American Inventor. I don't want to watch Rock Star. The many varied talent show competitions onstage. It's all so filled with the networks' summer desperation. ("How can we fill time so we can still charge advertisers money? What are people just dumb enough to watch?")

I'm not a TV snob. Really. I watch about eleventy million things every week on TV. But the explosion of reality TV (especially stupid talent based reality TV) in the summer just makes me sad for all the shows we no longer see for four months. It makes me miss the sass and wit of Veronica Mars. It makes me miss the anorexic whining of Meredith on Grey's Anatomy. It makes me pine for The Office and How I Met Your Mother. It makes me dream about Lost and wonder about Gilmore Girls. I just miss good TV. And watching the crap on right now is like dating a loser after you date a really nice, respectful, handsome guy you can take home to meet you parents. You just notice the loser-y-ness all the more. You notice the flaws. They are glaring and gaping and obvious.

I don't think I can dance. I don't want to. I'm white and an Adventist and those things and break dancing and a sense of rhythm just don't go together. And it embarrasses me to watch other people think they can.

So maybe, just maybe, (and don't faint when I say this) I will turn off my TV for awhile and explore this thing people are calling "the outdoors." I hear it's especially interesting this time of year.

Two Kinds of People: the traveling cross country edition

Awhile back I suggested there are two types of people in the world and that shopping carts and their proper use say a lot about people. This time I'd like to extend that to traveling on an airplane.

I just got back from a lovely weekend trip to Sacramento, California (a highly underrated city, in my opinion). The journey required two flight legs -- Omaha to Denver and Denver to Sacramento. On the way out I splurged for Economy Plus (plus what? extra leg room, that's what). Sitting in Economy Plus also allows one to be closer to the front. (A double edged sword as this also means that you can see the white linen napkin service of first class and really smell the real food being warmed up as you snack on your bag of 6 pretzels.)

On the way back, however, there were no aisle seats in EP, and so I decided I'd suffer through the two legs of my trip in seats 20D and 21D, respectively. I'm made of pretty tough stuff, so I figured I could take it.

Do you know me? I'm a tall girl. Not as tall as my 6'1" sister, but 5'10" without shoes on is apparently taller than the airlines want you to be in the "huddled masses" section of the airplane. I was sitting with my butt firmly planted in the back of the seat (no slouching) and my knees were completely pressed into the seat in front of me. And as both of those flights were full, there was someone in the middle seat, thereby forcing my legs forward instead of out to the sides.

Okay. That was all a lot of verbage to say what I want to say: it takes a special kind of asshole (just my opinion now) to recline the seat away from it's "full, upright and locked position" (to quote the friendly flight attendants) and further into my knees. By the time the guy in front of me was done, my knees were jammed so far into his seat I wasn't sure how it was possibly comfortable for him. He'd seen me walk in. He saw I was tall. He must've felt my knees. And yet he did it anyway. I'll admit that I squirmed around a little bit, making sure he felt how little room his extra 2 inches of recline gave me. And yes, some could argue that is rude as well. But seriously. (To quote Grey's Anatomy) Seriously? Seriously.

How hard is it to think about the person sitting behind you? The person who has to endure your seat becoming intimately close to their lap. The person who can smell whether or not you've washed your hair as it comes dangerously close to their nostrils. It's not hard. It's decent and respectful. And maybe he was thinking, "Well, I'm tall too. I need that extra room." In this case he wasn't tall. And I suppose I could've thought the same thing and pushed my chair back bothering the person behind me. But I just don't have it in me. We are afforded so little space to ourselves on those stupid planes, I'm not going to rob the person directly behind me of what little comfort they might have left.

So, if you're reading this and you're a seat recliner, all I ask is that you think about it before you do it next time. I ask that you take into consideration whether or not the person behind you is tall and has long legs. If you think they can spare the room, then fine. What about a nice, "Would you mind if I recline my seat a bit?" That goes a long way, I gotta say. Because you aren't the center of the known universe. You are another person in the midst of a throng of people, all of whom are barely holding onto the last shreds of both their sanity and their humanity as they are shoved into a tiny, claustrophobic space and expected to share pencil thin armrests with sweaty strangers and make small talk with people who don't bring reading material onto planes (Seriously!?!?). You are one of many. You are a citizen of the world. Stop acting like you own the damn place and return your seat to its full, upright and locked position. Oh, and enjoy your flight. Thanks for flying the friendly skies.

A Grey's Gripe

Grey's Anatomy has become my favorite show on television. And that's saying something, given the sheer volume my DVR records everday. It is smart, the storylines are layered and the characters have dimension.

Almost every major character on the show has an obvious, visible flaw. And the show is written in a way that lets the viewer decide how to feel about the characters. For example, Meredith, the supposed center of the show, is deeply flawed, whiney and self-involved. And yet, she isn't pushed down the viewer's throats. She makes mistakes, she pays for them, we move on.

BUT. Lately, with the addition of Denny the heart patient, Grey's and their normally superior writing team have really dropped the ball. I haven't talked to one single Grey's viewer who likes his addition to the show. He appears obviously as a plot device to break up Izzy and Alex. That type of writing is par for the course on 85% of the shows on TV, but Grey's usually manages not to resort to that type of laziness.

Even when McDreamy's wife, Addison, showed up as a cliff hanger last season, in season two her character quickly became as layered and complex as the rest of the cast. Love or hate her, you understood all sides of the story. And the writers pretty much let the viewers decide how to feel about her. To form their own opinions.

With Denny, however, he's written in a manipulative, isn't-he-charming sort of way that only serves to prove he's not. We've never seen anything other than pity from Izzy to Denny. The writers have given no reason for her character to jump beyond basic compassion and into the murky waters of romantic love. It feels cloying and contrived to have Izzy suddenly feel like she's in a relationship with a patient she barely knows. It disrespects the viewer's investment in the character of Izzy and in the progression of her "relationship" with Alex.

For the first time in my Grey's viewership my impatient fast forward finger has been activated in Denny and Izzy scenes. I actually rooted for his death in the last episode (3/19/06). And the horrible things the writers forced Izzy to say to Alex upon their break up were terribly out of character. My friend Jacque made a good point that viewers won't soon forget the things Izzy said to Alex (just as viewers didn't forget when Alex cheated on Izzy, a much more "in character" move, by the way).

I'm not campaigning for an Izzy/Alex true love always relationship. But I am campaigning for the Grey's writers to continue their successful tendency to treat viewers with respect and give them credit for being faithful to the show.

I am rebellious by nature and don't like to be told how to feel or what to think. And right now the Grey's writers want me to love Denny and hate Alex and I resent that manipulation.

Thoughts of Paint and Ghandi

I'm going to paint my upstairs guest bedroom. It's a room that currently collects silence and dust bunnies in equal measure. I can't say that I really need to paint the room. Whole weeks can go by without me going upstairs. I forget it's there sometimes. And yet, the fact that the walls are currently a 1980s shade of seafoam green stirs within me an urge to put my mark on that otherwise unused space.

I've settled on red. Or at least, red on a wall or two and the rest a pleasant beige. I've started looking through magazines and catalogues for inspiration. Complementary colors, themes, ideas. A room I never use is suddenly the most important room in my house. The focus of my thoughts.

Now that I've decided I am going to transform that space, I've starting thinking of people I can invite to come and stay with me. I've begun hoping for out of town guests. My father's annual spring 10 day visit is suddenly all the more thrilling knowing he will stay in my newly stylish room.

It got me thinking about the movie Field of Dreams and the whole "if you build it they will come" creepy, whispering admonishment Kevin Costner hears over and over. Do we react to life or does life react to us?

Do we have to change ourselves, our world, our existence before other people react positvely to us, or do we change in reaction to the positive or negative feedback given to us by others?

As the daughter of a psychologist, I know the difference between being proactive and reactive. And therapists love proactive people. And proactive people paint rooms red without worrying about whether or not anyone will ever see it. Reactive people wait to paint the room red until they know someone needs a place to stay. A proactive person is happy without the input of others, a reactive person needs a road map to find happiness.

The question, then, is an individual one. And maybe is should we react to life or should life react to us? I would propose the latter. A thinker far less cheesy than Kevin Costner said, "Be the change you wish to see in the world." And I wish my world red. This weekend it will be so.

Taste accounting

I think the cliche goes something like "there is no accounting for taste", which I have taken to mean that one person's junk is another person's treasure. But the more I think about that, the more I'd like a little taste accounting.

There are things in this world I just don't enjoy. The taste of meat, soy milk, grapefruit. Bill O'Reilly. But I understand that other people do. Just because I think meat tastes like sweat, soy milk tastes like the sole of a shoe and grapefruit tastes like battery acid, doesn't mean everyone does. I have tried to like green olives for the past 22 years of my life. My sister and my dad go nuts over these certain olives from Southern California (Graber Olives) that my grandma sends each year at Christmas. Watching them enjoy the olives makes me wish I liked them too. But I don't. And it's not for lack of trying.

But other things, especially music, movies, TV, certain design sesibilities, just don't make sense to me. And not only do they not make sense to me, I don't understand how they make sense to other people. Someone out there thinks Carrot Top is funny, otherwise, why is he famous? Why does he get to do commercials? Someone at some point thought Gallagher's watermelon smashing was hysterical. Someone must watch According to Jim. Somebody likes Star Jones. Somebody appreciates really strong perfume. Somebody likes that dreadful Nickelback song about the photograph. Somebody still likes flowery wallpaper.

Who are these people? Because we aren't just talking about the oddly sour taste of a green olive. We are talking about shows people choose to spend time watching. Movies people pay money to see. Comedians people laugh at. Clothes people choose to put on their bodies. Ways people choose to decorate their houses.

So I want some taste accounting! How is it that According to Jim, Still Standing, Skating with Celebrities, and dare I say, even Will and Grace are all still on the air and Arrested Development, one of the truly funny shows of our time, has been virtually cancelled? It makes me wonder if I'm the one with the problem. Am I missing something subtle and wonderful in one of the aformentioned shows? Is it because I don't eat meat?

I guess I'll try to be more open minded. But I can't say that's helped me with grapefruit and green olives.