Loose bits

Snap-ins are those annoying inserts they put in magazines that fall out all over the place and make it impossible to lay the magazine flat so you can read it while drinking a margarita and painting your toes.

I hate snap-ins with a hate that is never-ending.

That hate has got me thinking of all my other irrational targets of hate. Most have to do with loose ends and bits and pieces and, on occasion, gravity. I don't exaggerate when I say that if something passes through my hands that I don't have a designated location for, I become literally paralyzed by indecision. It's like the brain-loop my dog went into the other day when faced with his first mirrored closet door: He couldn't understand why he couldn't get into that room. So he just kept swinging his head left and right, left and right, left and right. That's me when holding an extra shoelace.

Other loose bits I hate:

Socks. Matching a clean load of socks is a total nightmare for someone with OCD tendencies. Hunt and peck. Hunt and peck. Hunt and peck. WHY GOD WHY? Folding (well, balling together) socks gives me such a tension headache...Oy!

Junk mail and flyers. I have not one but two stickers in my mailbox screaming NO FLYERS PLEASE! (Note the compulsory Canadian "please"--included even on a 3/4 by 2-inch stick-on label.) I blush to think how much it has reduced my overall stress not to get junk mail anymore. In one tiny way, something has been set right in the world.

Those extra envelopes they include with bills. Who the hell pays their bills by cheque anymore? Visa, Bell, banks of Canada: please meet my good friends, The Internet and The Bank Machine.

Bills in general, once they've been paid. WHEN CAN I LET THE OVERFLOWING FILES GO? I know, I know...the CRA needs to be able to go back 7 years. But...seriously...will anyone really ever need my cell phone bill from March 2002?

Mormon and Jehovah's Witness flyers. This place has been just crawling with evangelicals these days. If you're not home when they drop by (and by "not home" I mean "crouching under the window pane until that old man and his miserable-looking 37-year-old-virgin daughter drive away in their 85 Chevy Impala"), they now leave flyers. Go away and take your unnecessary paper with you! I resent having to bin things with Jesus's face on them. Especially when he's kind of cute and surrounded by all those cool animals.

Safety pins, bobby pins, and hair elastics. We fly people into space on a regular basis, yet no device has yet been devised that protects hair accessories from being sucked into the wormhole that leads under my bed, into the bottoms of my old purses, and into the back corners of my lingerie drawer.

Apostrophe misuse. I've noticed a particular problem with use of the possessive ( 's) as a plural (The street was full of car's.) among the British. Ironic, considering it is the birthplace of the language. For me, every misused apostrophe is like a little death.

I'm sure there's a deep philosophical point to be made here about loose bits interfering with my enjoyment of life's important details...Can't see the trees for the leaves, or something like that. Little bits and pieces need to be organized into a context, for me; I don't know why. Maybe I'm missing some synaptic connector (where did it go? is it with the bobby pins????)...This is my albatross. Feel free to share yours.