Simply Ten Not-So Good Things

OK.  So, a few times over the last few weeks, I've been all chipper and smiley face about the 10 good things in my life.

Well, I've got a list of ten not-so-good things to share with you as well.  When you're done reading the list, you'll be glad I don't have photo representations for all the items on the list.

Simply Ten No-So-Good Things

1.  Dog poop.  WHY, tell me, do the girls have to poop ALL over the yard?  Why can't they choose one prime grassy area and go there all the time?  I pick it up every day-- in fact, I was out there picking it up three days after my surgery! -- so it isn't like any one area gets so messed up.  So, why can't they choose one place and go there all the time so cleaning up after them wouldn't be such a hunting expedition?  (I KNOW I could have trained them to go in one place, I want to know why THEY can't train themselves!) 

2.  Pant leg sniffing. Darby sniffs the legs of my pants when I first put them on in the morning, when I change into a different pair, when I come home at the end of the day, when she comes in after having been outside for awhile, etc., etc.  I swear this sniffing gives her a clue about what might come next:  maybe the pants that routinely go to work on me smell differently than the pants I wear on Saturday morning to go for a walk with friends?  Unfortunately, she isn't content to just get a whiff -- she has to actually touch her nose to the fabric which often leaves dog-snot marks. 

3.  When the mail delivery person changes her route.  Does anyone else hate walking out to get the mail at 11:00 -- the time at which the mail has been dutifully sitting waiting in the mailbox most of the last 30 days -- only to find an empty mail box? 

4.  Dirty windows.  Windows, especially those on the upper stories of houses should come equipped with automatic washers.

5.  The way strips of postage stamps are rolled into rolls.  Has anyone else noticed that when you put a roll of postage stamps into a cute little stamp dispenser, if you hold the dispenser in your left hand, and pull the stamps off with your right hand (as I would guess that nearly all of the nearly 90% of us who are right handed would do) the stamps come off the roll upside down.  (At least they do for me no matter how many times I switch the way I put the roll in the dispenser. Maybe my cute little handcrafted wood dispenser is to blame?) I'm forced  to choose between putting the stamp on upside-down, or twisting my arm around, or doing that sticky finger transfer thing so I can put it on right side up.   Now who cares you might ask?   Someone well versed in the language of stamp placement would care:
          Q. Is there significance to a stamp being placed upside down on an envelope?

Maybe. One reason for the requirement of prepaying postage was that many individuals developed elaborate codes to convey messages that could be transmitted by seeing the outside of the envelope and thus not requiring payment for the receipt of the letter. According to The American Philatelist, February 1985, p. 154 the following codes were used (assuming the person was not just in a hurry and was not in need of glasses):

• Stamp upside down in the left corner - I love you
• Stamp crosswise in the left corner - My heart is another's
• Stamp straight up and down in the left corner - Goodbye sweetheart
• Stamp upside down in the right corner - Write no more!
• Stamp in the middle at the top - Yes!
• Stamp in the middle at the bottom - No!
• Stamp diagonally across the right-hand corner - Do you love me?
• Stamp diagonally across the left-hand corner - I hate you
• Stamp in the top corner at the right - I wish your friendship

6.  The little plastic pieces that fall off plastic grocery bags (which I know I shouldn't use but sometimes do when I forget my reusable cloth bags) that are nearly impossible to pick up off a tile floor.  

7.  Dog drool.  So, this is a really bad picture taken with the zoom feature of my iPhone, but get a load of this Pumpkin drool:

Is that a great, er, I mean terrible drool, or what?  The fact that it hung there for long enough for me to zoom the camera tells you something of the viscosity of the drool.

8.  When a dog who has JUST eaten looks at me like this:

9.  Not seeing the web before seeing the spider.

10.  Running out of blog fodder.  So far, I have never actually run out, but I've been scrapin' the bottom of the barrel lots of times.   As this posting proves!