Friday Tirade: Fevers and Gnats and Hammers

Have you ever experienced the feeling that you had a fever but you actually did NOT?

Somehow, as careful as I am, I got sick. It started with heavy congestion and a headache along with a low grade fever, then it spiked to 101.5 as all the other aches and pains descended upon my body.

After a couple of days of not getting any worse, I decided that I didn’t need to see a doc because my lungs were OK and that probably meant that it was a virus and not a secondary bacterial infection that would necessitate antibiotics as I’m prone to pneumonia.

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, except for a cough and this annoying feeling that I have a fever but the thermometer says otherwise. I think I would be feeling a lot worse if I hadn’t been vaccinated for Covid and the flu, so I’m grateful for that. Ginger tea and Tylenol seem to help.

At the same time, my indoor plants are inundated with fungus gnats. They’re joyfully procreating and multiplying and are SO annoying. I sprayed the soil with a hydrogen peroxide solution that’s supposed to help–fingers crossed that it actually does. I’ve never had an infestation this severe and I’m not really happy about it.

If that wasn’t enough to put me in a foul mood, neighbors decided to build an absolute monstrosity of a remodel that looks more like an apartment building as it looms over my house. The construction noise has been ongoing for MONTHS and right now I’m listening to incessant sawing and hammering and nail guns along with an air compressor that goes off and on, off and on, off and on.

Closing the windows doesn’t do anything to muffle the noise and that’s almost impossible to do as temps are consistently in the 70s, so I suffer either way. When people drive or walk by, they look up at the giant structure and shake their heads, so I know it’s not just me.

Because of the way the wind blows (literally), all the sawdust and other building detritus comes my way so the side of my house was covered in sawdust, along with nails and paper from the insulation. I asked the neighbors to let their construction people know about it so they could clean it up and that didn’t happen so I sent them some pics and again asked to have something done about it, which they finally did about a month later.

Is there a real pervasive lack of basic courtesy and consideration nowadays, or am I the only one who thinks that?

Does everyone live in their own little bubble and not comprehend–or care — how their actions might affect others? Was I unreasonable to expect them to (promptly) clear away their construction mess? It’s definitely NOT my job to clean up after them and you can’t tell me that they didn’t look down from the scaffolding and see what was going on below them. Yes, SCAFFOLDING, because, like I said, it’s a huge, multi-story monstrosity.

Anyway…

I can’t take it much longer…I think I might have to scream into a pillow. SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP!

Note To Parents Who Pick Up Their Children From School

STOP ACTING LIKE ENTITLED A-HOLES!

This afternoon I took out the trash as school was being dismissed (I live near an elementary school), and at the same time, the postman drove up to deliver the mail.

Mostly blocking my driveway was a gigantic SUV which meant the postman literally had to stop in the middle of the street which is where I met him so he wouldn’t have to leave his vehicle.

The SUV’s back gate was open, as well as all the doors, apparently because the parents decided it was a good time to clean out their gas-guzzling monstrosity.

I said to them, “Why don’t you pull up? You’re blocking my driveway and you have plenty of room in front of you.”

The mom (I guess it was the mom) said, “We’re just here to pick up our kids from school”, as if that information was at all relevant or important to me. (Which it was NOT.)

I said, “How is that my concern? You still can’t block anyone’s driveway. Move your car.” (I’m assertive like that.😀)

And so they did. You could tell they thought about arguing with me and/or defying my directive, but the postman was a witness, so they grudgingly pulled up a few feet.

But it begs the bigger question about entitlement, consideration, and basic courtesy. No wonder the kids in my town feel they can recklessly — and without regard for anyone else–ride their stupid ebikes in the middle of the street defying all traffic and safety rules when they have annoying parents like this who feel so narcissistically privileged that they’re entitled to encroach on one’s property and then don the victim cape when they’re told to move. How RUDE!

There’s lots of conversations lately about entitled people. Entitled people believe they are inherently deserving of special treatment without considering others.

For example, why should I, a complete stranger, care one iota about whether they’re picking up their kids from school as if that should somehow ameliorate or excuse the action of blocking MY driveway? Not my kids, not my problem, especially when they could have simply checked before they stopped and pulled up a few more feet. They had plenty of room.

In fact, a vehicle cannot legally park directly in front of or across someone’s driveway in California, as it is a violation of California Vehicle Code 22500. One can contact local parking enforcement or the police department to have the vehicle ticketed and towed at the owner’s expense. 

I have no patience for these types of selfish people who think the world revolves around them in their egocentric illusion balloon. An egocentric illusion refers to the psychological bias where individuals perceive the world, their internal states, and their actions from a self-centered perspective.

I was more than happy to burst that balloon for them. Perhaps they’ll be more considerate in the future, wherever they park, hopefully not here. Maybe I’ll get a sign like this if it happens again.

Photo from Google. Not my house, but same situation.

Stop acting like entitled a-holes and model decent behavior to your children! Is that too much to ask?