Eight for the April Complainers

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: It’s been a few turns since I’ve vented my spleen shared by little annoyances with you, dear readers. I’m not in my usual gay and cheerful springtime mood, probably because I had twelve inches of heavy, wet snow followed by icy rain this past Thursday and Friday. Oh, and did I mention my power, internet and cell service going out for three days? Ha ha! What a lark. If TS Eliot had lived in Maine, his fingers would have been too frozen to write “April is the cruelest month.”

Thrown into a peevish frame of mind, I tend to dwell on other irritants, insults and injuries. Which means you, dear readers, get to hear about them in convenient list form.

 

Unrecyclable pill bottles. Okay, I acknowledge this is petty ante. On an individual level. But they add up – boy, do they add up. I have two prescriptions I fill every thirty days. Twenty-four of the little orange plastic bottles and their tops a year. Almost one hundred over the past four years. Two hundred in eight years, etc., etc. And there’s NOTHING you can do with all those bottles! I’ve used a couple to store coins in foreign currency. A couple more to hold Tylenol and ibuprofen in my purses. After that, I’m stumped. Too small for almost any other use, the pharmacy won’t take them back, and it’s not the right kind og plastic for my town’s transfer station.

I’ve gotten to the point where every time I take my amlopedine, I picture a giant raft of pill bottle floating in the Pacific Ocean. Which is not doing much for my blood pressure, I assure you.

 

Grocery stores with no one available to ask questions.  I have to say, I hadn’t noticed this as much until I went to the second Market Basket to open in Maine. (There are two.) It was wonderful! So. Many. Employees. Someone to help me find the grapefruit. Someone to check if the sales price was still good. Someone whisking the abandoned cart in the parking space away before I even had the chance to grab it!

It was an eye-opening contrast to my usual store, where I wander lonely as a cloud if I have a question. They used to have a customer service counter/check out, but that’s gone now. I guess it was a warning.

 

“Dollar stores” whose prices have gone from a dollar to $1.25 and now as high as $7!  I think we can all agree this is basically a crime against humanity. Allegedly, the C suites at these companies have noticed “people with money” shop there, and therefore process can go up. How do they know that? I, personally, have never had to show my most recent tax filing to the clerk ringing up my bleach, birthday cards and movie candy.

 

The eternally changing recommendations for healthy eating.  My last doctor told me to stop eating an egg daily, it was contributing to my high blood pressure. The current doctor told me eggs are fine. We were supposed to not diet, and listen to our natural hunger signs. No, now that’s wrong (admittedly, my natural hunger signs are for M&Ms and Oreos.) Protein is good. Too much protein is bad. Avoid carbohydrates. You need carbohydrates.

I’m considering adopting my grandmother Greuling’s eating plan: bread with every dinner, lots of canned, salty vegetables, 4-5 Pall Malls a day and one glass of port in the evening while knitting and watching TV. She lived until a week before her 89^th birthday, and never needed any care other than some help with the housework in the last few years.

 

Ads on subscription services I already pay for.  Amazon Prime, I’m looking at you: not only am I paying with both my wallet and my eyeballs, but I’m increasingly presented with a menu of viewing options consisting of two or three great shows I want to stream and eight thousand warmed-over two-star duds. P.S., I immediately mute the ads and scroll on my phone until they’re done.

 

Restaurants that present the “bill” on an ipad.  First off, I have spent too many years nagging my kids to put their electronic devices down in restaurants to bend the line for the restaurant itself. Second, I don’t want a “convenient email receipt.” I’m not an idiot; I know this means I’ll be getting emails from The French Farmers Table, and anyone it sells my info to, for the rest of my life. Third, I tip well. Twenty percent on the whole, tax included, and I round up. I find myself getting viscerally offended when I see those handy pre-loaded tip amounts, which lately start at 25% and go up. Also, I’m sus, as the kids say, about just who gets all that tip when it’s totally electronic.

 

Interesting new recipes I can make almost entirely from what I have in my pantry EXCEPT for one have-to-have-it spice/curry/sauce that’s only available via mail-order from a specialty store in NY or DC. (Yes, I get these recipes from the NY Times and the Washington Post, which is undoubtedly part of the problem.) Please, recipe section editors, take pity on those of us in flyover country. Yes rural Maine is definitely fly-over country.

 

Dear readers, what little irritants are getting up your nose this week?

Photo credits from top to bottom: Macwagon (Flickr), Advantus Media, Amazon, Imanoj Menon (Flickr)