We all have pet peeves, that one thing that makes you want to pull-your-toenails-out-with-rusty-pliers CRAZY! It’s ok. We’re human. We learned to hate that attitude/action/habit through our life experiences. So I am here to shed the light on things that make me, and some of my Facebook friends and readers a bit nutty. Thank you to the travelers, moms, cool chicks and the assholes who pissed us off and helped contribute to this article!

9. “Anita: Sitting in the swimming pool enjoying the calm when the people around me start a loud conversation about a toxic subject: bitching about their friend, whining about their ex the heroin addict,yada yada. People yelling at their kids – drives me nuts! I would rather hear the happy chaos of children playing than the parents screaming at them to be quiet. Landlords stealing my security deposit. I have a lot of peeves”                 Swimming pools are definitely for relaxing!  Keep the gossip way down!  I totally agree Anita, toxic conversations should be avoided.  As for landlords, heh! I have had my share! haven’t we all?

8. “Tamsin: People coughing and sneezing all over the place without covering their mouth… yuck!  And perfume at the gym.”             Hygiene! It works!  I would take it a step further and say perfume in general, keep it light and classy.  If you smell like a cheap hooker and everyone within 10 feet of you know it, you might want to explore essential oils and more “natural” methods of smell-good.  For me it was always students who came to school covered in cologne….definitely a boy thing…they have body odor during adolescence.  Again, shower often, keep it light and please don’t strangle your teacher each time you come to her desk!

7. “MacKenzie: Not capitalizing my K. It’s so simple, yet annoying!!!”                 I think many of us can relate to “name issues” at some point.  Whether it’s spelling, proper capitalization….for me it’s a pronunciation issue.  Most of South America struggle to spit out the name Erin in the way we say it in the states.  What kind of “name related” pet peeves do you have?

6. “Megan: I don’t like that ppl become less social. Give a girl a call…. I’m not a true die hard facebooker!”
Girl, you are so right! There is definitely the assumption that social life begins and ends on Facebook. We have all been duped, programmed and deluded to believe that we need to be connected 24/7 to Social Media versus just stopping by a friends house and being “social.” When was the last time you walked down the street and chatted with your neighbor, complemented her even, about her rose bushes without posting about “How pretty my neighbor’s rosebushes are plus a photo you took without being too obvious.” It’s like an accepted form of stalking! Even my boyfriend has started taking my phone away from me at night so I don’t check Facebook in the morning without getting out of bed. Love that guy!

5. “Jessalyn: My biggest pet peeve is when there are girls who are mom’s and constantly post about their struggle and “I just pray we’ll get through.” Then turn around and post some paragraph of a status bashing some other parent about how spoiled their children are because they let them play with a tablet at 2 yrs old. Who cares?? You’re on fb instead of being with your child. It’s not like you’re the poster mom of great parenting either. Just makes me wish people would stop telling others how to parent. What happened to the rule I learned in pre-k? Worry about your own.”                       Wow, so true! Not much else I can say except in a few more months when my baby comes I will transition from receiving “pregnancy advice” to “parenting advice.” Yeah Jessalyn, I think I am starting to feel.your.pain!

3. & 4. “Heidi Lol!! When your middle and high school bully befriends you on Facebook and chit chats with you like she’s always been your friend. That is annoying.”
“Heidi: Or the daily negative people. Every other post is some angry or depressing status.”                      Again, pet peeves in the 21st century are definitely gravitating towards “Social Media.” I gave her number 8 and 7 because while I didn’t want to split them up, they are both SO DAMN RELEVANT! If you agree with this article start by observing your Facebook habits and making those tweaks that leave us all feeling less peeved and more relieved. Facebook is a great microphone, but only if we use it correctly.

2. “Jane: One of my pet hates is when people tell me ‘you are so lucky to travel. I wish I could do it’, and then moan about their present job or home town. As you know, you give up a lot for this lifestyle but there is nothing to stop anyone else from changing their lives too even if in a smaller way.”
Nailed that one Jane! We don’t travel because we are super-human or super-irresponsible. We just hit our breaking point, the proverbial “wall” and decided to stop whining and start doing! Travel can be a total pain-in-the-ass but we do it because its equally fun to “pack”, “get there,” and “post our awesome photos.” What most travelers try to hide is that they worked a job in Bali that they hated, or that we actually slept a whole night, or two or three, on a bed that felt like a block of stone. Goes back to that positive vs. negative post on Facebook thing, right?

1. “ME: People who friend you…that you haven’t seen or talked to since high school…and who post crappy looking photos of you.” So when my mortal enemy from high school asks to be friends with me, my first reaction was “HELL NO!” A little while later that morbid, stalker-like curiosity takes over and I start to think…hmmm, maybe she is a different person, maybe she is going to “make things right” between us as part of her bucket list. And so I click ACCEPT! Haven’t we all been in this place at some point? (I should have known better the second I saw the Herbalife logo plastered all over her page) Thinking about the past, wishing we could have “re-do’s” or “closure” from that person who kicked us while we were down or threw horse poop at us at the State Fair? (It’s true!) A word of advice from me-to-you, you can’t change the past! All you can do is accept it, make your own peace with it, (or not, we ARE still only human) and move on with life with one less person on our Facebook. So here is the picture…with faces blanked out (just in case this chick tries to say something about ownership rights, blah, blah, blah, shouldn’t have shared it on Facebook!). The girl who looks like someone peed in her cheerios is me! I was not a very happy person at this point in my life.

Life isn’t perfect, but we only live it once, so when someone pees in your cheerios get back out there, book a trip to some exotic place, and get on with it!

The best part of travel is it gets us out of our boxes, broadens our horizons and helps us to get over the past.  It relieves the burden of having a normal life by escaping it for a minute, day or even year as we try to rediscover and reinvent ourselves.  I really hate “teen movies” and “college movies” because they make high school or college seem like it was the greatest time of our lives.  The greatest time of our lives is RIGHT NOW!  We can’t change the past, but we can go out and decide to be happy and change ourselves TODAY!  So the next time someone criticizes your parent style, asks you why you don’t have Facebook or posts ugly pics of you, take a look out the window and just SMILE!  Life isn’t perfect, but we only live it once, so when someone pees in your cheerios get back out there, book a trip to some exotic place, and get on with it!