What pisses me off: Everything!

Christine has been a beloved contributor of What Pisses Me Off this year, and this was her most-read article.

1. As most of you know I am at the pool a lot, not always the same pool but sadly the same problems appear to exist at them all – delusional old men in budgie smugglers gather at these places. Old men in various shapes and sizes, for some reason that is totally beyond me, think they look good in them. When you get to an age when you look like your skin needs ironing, you need to be wearing board shorts. One rather large man dropped his sunscreen and bent over to pick it up, unfortunately he was in my direct line of vision, and holy moly, my retinas immediately felt like they were going to ignite. I realise these men have probably owned their budgie smugglers since they were in their prime, but just like a bucket of prawns left in the hot sun, their prime has passed.

Tony Abbott is another tragic fan of the budgie smugglers; he has even allowed the media to speak to him while wearing them. Don’t get me wrong, I admire the man’s fitness, but I will never understand why he wears those things in public. I find it very difficult to take him seriously when the image of him on the beach in the red smugglers is burnt into my brain. Why speak to the media when only a thin layer of nylon is separating the nation from Little Tony? Budgie smugglers piss me off!

2. Today I flew into the shops to pick up a couple of things. I saw they had a display of hot cross buns right next to a display of lamingtons and pavlovas for Australia Day, then the newsagent had an array of Australia Day merchandise, next to a stand of Valentine’s cards which were opposite a display of Easter cards. Everybody needs to calm down. How about you let us deal with one expense before you start shoving the next down our throats? After all, time goes fast enough – no need to be pushing Easter when Christmas trees are still standing in most houses. I suppose they want to get it all out of the way so they can start pushing for Christmas in July, then all the Halloween rubbish, then Christmas again, then we are all another year closer to death. Seriously: everybody is in a rush and it pisses me off!

Anyway, when unpacking at home I realised I was short quite a few things. Apparently I left a bag at the checkout; my 4 punnets of blueberries were in that bag. I have a punnet of blueberries with yoghurt for breakfast every morning. Before you all start with the “Well if you can afford blueberries….”, I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t gamble, I try to stay healthy, and I prefer to do it naturally.

3. I thought Mum was on the phone earlier, instead she was abusing my iPad; she had it on Luminosity. “I don’t play this rubbish”, she said. “Yes you do Mum”. I thought she was trying to continue on from a previous game but she was getting a tad irate and started abusing technology as a whole. She could not remember the name of the game she wanted.

“This isn’t the game I play, how come when I press this button, strange looking dogs start running across the screen? If I wanted to play with dogs, I would go to the freakin’ RSPCA and play with a real one! I want the game with all the pictures on it”

“Well Mum, what are the pictures about?”

“Well Christine, I remember it was a crime scene and if you keep pissing me off, you could be in one”!

4. It’s raining. It has been raining non-stop for 24 hours; the yard is flooded. I think Mother Nature must in fact be a man, because if Mother Nature was a woman, the rain would be falling in all the places that needed it, not here where the bulk of it is wasted. The cane toads love it, they think it is party time.

I was sloshing around in shin deep water while trying to set up our very innovative, yet very bogan-style pump to shoot the water back out on the road, when I felt something slap my leg. Luckily it was just Tinkerbell the Water Dragon hanging ten on a seed pod. Lucky he didn’t get sucked up in the pump! Thankfully all was successful and I managed not to electrocute myself and I was able to stop the water from knocking on the front door.

I am now in bed and the rain is coming down hard again, I know I should go out and get the pump running. I know a decision has to be made so I decided to put my dilemma to a vote and the three of us, me, myself and I, made an executive decision to stay in bed. And If we wake up in a water bed eyeballing cane toads, it will indeed piss the three of us off, but it is a chance we are willing to take!

5. Yesterday Mum was picked up by the Ambulance at 7am. She was dropped back home at 11.15am. When the Ambulance pulled up, the rain was coming down in bucketloads and he asked Mum to wait for the rain to stop as he did not want her to get wet. Patience has never been a strong quality with Mum so she quickly tired of waiting and opened the door and got out. A 90-year-old crossing the road in a torrential downpour was not a smart thing for her to do and she certainly was not about to break the speed records. I opened the front door to a drowned rat. I tried to encourage her to have a hot shower and rest but she said “Bugger that, I will rest enough when I am dead”. She towelled her head dry, changed her clothes and 20 minutes later we dropped her at her Club. She said, “Playing the pokies relaxes me enough to forget about everything for a while because the cancer treatments really piss me off!

What pisses you off? Tell us below!

Originally published here