Today is Pet Peeve Day.  Yes, there really is such a thing.  So I’m taking a break from my regularly-scheduled helpful posts to talk about a few of the things that really bother me.  We all have piddly things that drive us crazy.  (Like letting political correctness destroy our grammar, or computers that seem to think they’re smarter than their users and change things on us in a seemingly random fashion.  Lauren posted a few of her own pet peeves here.)  And anyone who knows me knows that there are a lot of things that bug me.  (For instance, imposing our own cultural bias on Scripture or claiming to “fight” breast cancer by endorsing lifestyle choices that actually promote it.)  But this post is about a few of the big things that bother me on an ongoing basis.  (The things on this list are, largely, the kinds of things that inspire inventions and other improvements.  But it takes lots of money to make the improvements.  🙁   So go ahead and add that to the list: that changing things tends to be expensive!)  Maybe just getting the list out there will be a tiny step toward change.  (One can hope, right?)

So here you go – in no particular order, some of my biggest pet peeves:

• People who say that it’s no big deal to not eat wheat (or to not eat grain), because first of all, people weren’t meant to eat grains in the first place, and second of all, there are plenty of other things to eat.  (There is so much wrong with this philosophy that I will write another post about it later.)
• That it seems to be politically-correct to insult skinny people, even though it’s not politically-correct to insult fat people.  (Seriously, it is not even PC to state that a clearly-obese person is fat, even though that’s just plain fact, and even if/when it’s her own fault she’s obese.)  I am tired of comments like, “Real women don’t wear a size 0.” Oh, really?  How ’bout we just keep in mind that real women aren’t all the same, period?  ‘Cause last I checked, I was just as “real” as a size 14.  (As a total aside, if you are heavier than you think you should be for optimal health, and the methods that “should be” working to lose weight aren’t, you can read about how my mom lost 50+ lbs.  No hype, I promise – it’s my mama; I watched it happen. 🙂 )
• That the fashion world laments the fact that most women are wearing the wrong size bra (too large a band combined with too small a cup), while making it impossible to buy the right sizes. (What is readily available is – wait for it…too large a band/too small a cup for most women.  Especially if you prefer not to pay $75+ for every bra.)
• That clothing that allows for women nursing their babies is the exception, not the norm.  (One more indication, in my estimation, that our culture hates babies.  The primary two being abortion-on-demand and the popularity of birth control.)
• Doctors who don’t look at the “whole patient” before treating a single symptom set.  (For instance, doctors who assume that chronic hypoglycemia can’t possibly have anything to do with several instances of passing out, without even knowing what chronic hypoglycemia is.  Or a dermatologist who prescribes steroids for a rash without taking the time to discover that the patient is being treated for adrenal fatigue.)
• That, unlike the “old days” when, if you could afford food it was the real stuff and only the rich could afford refined “delicacies,” only the “rich” can now afford real food here in “developed” countries.  The inexpensive stuff is, for the most part, more like “food-like products.”

(I can offer one helpful tidbit, though.  If one of your pet peeves is that your newly-purchased laptop – apparently randomly – changes screen resolution/font size regularly, it’s probably because of something called “pinch-zoom.” This is a really handy feature if you know about it and are using it on purpose, but quite maddening if you don’t and aren’t.  Especially when none of the tech support people even know what’s happening or how to turn it off.  If this is you, search the Windows Help for “touch gestures.”  (I don’t know what to tell you if you have a Mac, but I think it’s still called “pinch zoom.”)  Or, to disable it, try this (or something similar, if your layout doesn’t look quite like mine): Navigate to Control Panel–>Hardware and Sound–>Devices and Printers–>Mouse.  Click on the “device settings” tab, then “settings.” The option is in there.  If yours is different, look all around your mouse-related stuff to see if there’s an advanced settings menu someplace.)