Let’s bring back this little feature, shall we?  Because while I’m actually NOT feeling particularly crabby today (I know… I’M SHOCKED TOO), there’s always plenty to hate on a Monday, including Monday itself.  And I didn’t post anything all weekend because I was too busy with the “ahh” and the “*contented sigh*” and that sort of thing.  Weekends rock.

Okay, on with the hate….

• caffeine headaches.  Yes, I know we all saw this coming with my addiction to Rockstar and all.  Shut up.  No one likes an “I told you so.”
• the iPhone OS 3.0 update.  Okay, the only thing I hate about this is that it’s not being released for another week or somesuch wrongness.  I WANT IT NOW.  SOUNDS AWESOME.
• our mailman.  Yes, it continues.  I NEVER know when the mail is going to be delivered anymore.  Is it SO hard to deliver stuff by 5pm EVERY day?  REALLY?  Do I have enough capitals in this post so far?
• headaches.  Really, how do you get rid of these?  Cuz ordinary pain killers seem to have no effect.  I’ve taken four ibuprofen and nothin’.  Suck.
• the sun.   I got sort of used to the sun being gone last week with all the storms and everything.  This summer weather is for the birds.  I want my rain back.
• that it’s five more days till the weekend.  Not right, man.  (Except that I now recall Kile is taking Friday off and his parents are coming to town so WOO HOO short week!)
• waiting.  It’s for the birds.  I hate waiting.
• my bruised big toe.  Have you ever had one of these?  I landed on it funny when I fell down the stairs last week and ever since it’s been in PAIN.  Turns out?  You use your big toe quite a bit when walking.  WHO KNEW?
• “Ned’s Declassified” on Nickelodeon.  This show is like nails on a chalkboard.  So is “The Naked Brothers Band”.  And come to think of it, I don’t care for “The Penquins of Madagascar” either.
• on the preschool side of things, I hate “Oswald”, “Miss Spider’s Sunny Patch Friends” and “DragonTales”, to name but a few.
• this stupid headache.  Seriously.  Get a clue, dude.

So that’s the list for this week.  Do you hate it?  You do don’t you?  You can tell me.  Anyhow, it would TOTALLY fit in with the whole overall theme.

Remember when I used to usher in the new week by spewing forth vitrol regarding everything in the world that was pissing me off?  Yeah, I’m doing that again this week.  Cuz I realized yesterday that I have a lot of Hate.  And it’s gotta be shared with the internet.

• The Children’s Place. We’ve spent a lot of money at this store.  Shoot, most of Harry’s wardrobe is made up of clothes from Children’s Place.  Cute clothes at reasonable prices.  Their sales were discount GOLD, people.  We loved it so much we got a store charge card.  We don’t do that, like, ANYWHERE.  We don’t do credit cards.  So to get one for Children’s Place was a testament to how much we liked shopping there.  I was looking forward to getting to get some of their utterly adorable girly clothes that had taunted me for years.  This brings me to last week when for whatever stupid reason, they canceled our credit account.  Why?  We made our payments on time.  We hadn’t paid much debt down but there wasn’t that much on there to begin with so big deal, right?  We paid every month.  We pumped a lot of money in.  And they cancelled our account.  The only reason given?  They checked our credit score and didn’t like it.  I don’t like it either, don’t get me wrong.  But shouldn’t our account history with the company take precedence?  Should it matter WHAT our credit score is as long as we’re paying our bills?  WTF, yo??  Let it be known this card was handled by Shittybank er Citibank. It’s truly a shame because I enjoyed shopping there.  But apparently in this trying economy OUR MONEY isn’t good enough.  They want AAA+ credit score customers only.  Whatever.  I’ll get my kids clothes elsewhere.
• Old Navy.  SERIOUSLY.  What is WITH these stores??  Do they not want to keep customers?  Is the pressure of ending up like Circuit City too much for them and they freakin’ fall apart?   We stopped in there yesterday for shits and giggles and browsed their sales.  They had a lot of cute stuff that was awesomely discounted.  I saw some toddler pajamas that were marked down from $14.50 to $4.50.  SCORE!  I showed Kile a pair (that had a discount sticker on them) and offered to use my PayPal funds to buy them.  He didn’t seem enthused so I put them back.  I did some more shopping and Kile apparently went back to look at the pajamas again.  He picked a pair that had monkeys on them (because Liam IS a monkey) but (gasp) it didn’t have a sticker on it.  Shouldn’t matter.  EVERY other pair had a sticker.  Shoot, Kile even saw another package of monkey jammies that had a sticker on them.  He figured the sticker fell off this one and tossed it in the cart.  Meanwhile, I found some totally cute long sleeved shirts that were originally $15 and were marked down to $4.  I need long sleeved shirts like you wouldn’t believe so I grabed two.  On was a purple stripe and another was a turquoise.  Pretty! We went to check out and the jammies rung up as being $10.  There was much hubub as we tried to explain ourselves and the cashier called back to a manager who said, “Nope, monkey jammies aren’t clearanced.  They’re $10.”  Well forget it!  Cripes!  We paid for the shirts and left.  I get home and I realize that one shirt was $9 instead of $4.  Turns out?  It was marked on it’s sticker as $9 but in the hubub over the stupid pajamas I missed it.  Now I’m cheesed off and am tempted to just return both the shirts and give Old Navy the bird.  How hard is it to SEPARATE clearance items?  HOW?  Can someone tell me?  Is it harder than moving the clearance stuff to ONE table and the regular or just plain sale stuff to another?  Surely it must be because otherwise they would have done that, right? RIGHT?
• People who run over Girl Scounts.
• That I was unable to get the yarn I really really really wanted this morning cuz I’m ze broke.
• That it took me FIVE tries to cast on the waistband of the pair of shorties I started last night.  I swear to GOD, I lost the ability to count somewhere there for a minute and I was about ready to toss the whole thing out the window.
• When dear friends lose their pregnancies.  That just sucks all around.
• When dear friends are losing their parents.  That sucks all around too.
• Rush Limbaugh.

That is all.  For now.

I don’t generally condone of the word “hate” because it has such strong connotations, but in this case, I think Monday deserves it.  How dare it force us out of the lull that is the weekend and make us be productive and stuff!  So here’s what I’m hating today:

1. That we’re about out of groceries here in the house, but yet the budget gave out last week sometime.  Hmm.
2. Little dogs that desperately try to curl themselves up on my legs in an effort to stay warm and give me leg cramps.
3. iCarly, the Jonas Brothers, Hannah Montana, the Naked Brothers Band, Drake and Josh and any of those retarded Disney/Nick shows that my son seems to really, really love right now.
4. Maggie and the Ferocious Beast, Miss Spider’s Sunny Patch Friends and pretty much the entire Noggin morning lineup these days.
5. I pretty much hate money in general right now, but mostly the lack of it.
6. That my parents’ gift STILL hasn’t been mailed off and now I’m worried that it’ll even get there before Christmas and that gives me STRESS.  STRESS STRESS STRESS!
7. Not that I have a van to drive it to the post office anyhow.  (still not registered but whatever)
8. Which means I need to rely on Kile to do it.
9. Which means I’m not holding my breath.
10. Stupid, nagging, caffeine-withdrawal headache.  I need a Rockstar.

So now that I got that out of the way, here are some pictures I cleaned off the camera this morning.

The rarely-captured feral blue-eyed boy.

The cup is a staple in virtually all photos of this child.

A nifty snowflake pin given to me by a good friend for my birthday.  It is officially Evie’s Most Favorite Thing EVER.

My first knitting project, my “practice blob” that I decided to turn into a bag this weekend.  GO ME.

Does this look cold?  Cuz it is.

Little tree.  Snow.  Nuff said.

Sure looks like a Monday morning to me, how about you?  I’m SO glad Harry takes the school bus now.

Kile’s van (aka: our only legal mode of transportation these days).  And snow.  Have fun driving to work, Kile!

It’s the return of the Monday Hate List.  Though, in reality, the Monday Hate List has never gone away.  It lives on in our hearts, Monday after Monday.   After all, there’s nothing not to hate on a Monday.  I stand by that.  

So here’s a rundown on what’s getting my goat this not-so-fine morning: 

• That it’s a Monday.  GAH.  
• That I haven’t had any caffeine yet.  Caffeine + Monday = ESSENTIAL.  (This could also be my fault but let’s not go into that.)
• That it is yet another 50+ degree day in sunny Reno, NV.  How the heck am I supposed to get into the Christmas spirit with such pleasant weather?? 
• Speaking of such things… WHERE IS THE SNOW?
• Have I mentioned that the weekend is over?  I hate that.  
• That there was no “True Blood” or “Entourage” to watch last night.  
• Me needy coffee…. 
• Dirty dishes in the sink.
• No black ink in the printer with which to print my Christmas letter. 
• Gift bags = still not shipped. 
• It’s a Monday.  

Mondays sure do suck, don’t they?  I hate to use the word “hate” a lot, because it’s such a strong feeling and to use it too often is to a) dilute it’s potence and b) foster a lot of unwanted negativity in your life.  But… it’s Monday.  And if you can’t hate Mondays then what can you do?  So I decided that for one day a week I would just embrace the hate and make a list of things that are ticking me off.  Some Mondays I might not run this feature.  After all, not every Monday sucks and there’s only a finite list of things to hate each week, right?  But gosh, I’ll bet getting some negativity off my chest (and ever-so-helpfully spewed into the Internet!) will help get me through the day.

• I hate freecreditreport.com commercials.  I hate the message that the most of them send (which is that someone else is often to blame for the dude’s poor fortune… the one where he rants about his wife’s poor credit and wishes he’d known about it so he wouldn’t have married her is the worst).  I also hate the stupid songs the guy makes up.  This is more true for the more recent commercials.  The only one that is halfway decent is where he’s working at the restaurant and is dressed up like a pirate.  The rest SUCK.  Especially the “rap” one.  Makes my ears bleed.  So not only do I like the image they’re trying to put forward, but I hate the songs.  HATE HATE HATE.  Plus, (as if I needed more reason to hate them) it’s all a lie anyhow.  NICE.
• I want to kick McCain and Palin and their stupid campaign in the ass.  I don’t want to vent too much, and disturb whatever Republican readers I might have, but DAMN.  The more I hear, the more I want to not only tear my hair out but theirs as well.  I’m so tired of the lies, half-truths and the manipulation of the public.  Why can’t we stick to issues instead of hinting at some nebulous (and pretty much untrue) associations with racial overtones?  SERIOUSLY?  Honestly, it’s obvious to me that McCain is just lashing out because he knows Obama has the upper hand right now and it’s just sickening.  This month can’t pass quick enough, as far as I’m concerned.
• Charter cable is really pissing me off.   For the last week we’ve had really spotty service.  Anything over channel 100 is hit and miss these days.  Which really sucks on a MONDAY when I really wouldn’t mind some NOGGIN to keep Liam happy.  I don’t want to watch Nickelodeon because of all the obnoxious commericals.  And since the service is spotty, I can’t even call up Blue’s Clues on On Demand.  AAARGH.  At least the box isn’t overheating every 30 minutes anymore but COME ON.  We pay for this service and we should be able to watch HBO whenever we damn well feel like it (thank god it was working last night so I didn’t have to miss “True Blood”!).  I’d have them send a service technician out but I’m scared to death that they’ll deem the problem is on “our end” and bill us up the wazoo for it.  NO THANKS.  Right now, I’m just counting the days until our contract is up and we can switch back to satellite.
• I hate pretty much anyone who shops at Walmart (myself excluded, of course).  I swear, that store has the RUDEST shoppers of any store on the planet.  I’m talking about the clumps of people who are always in your way when you want to get something off the shelf, but then if you are in THEIR way then you get the Glare of Death.  I swear, I think there’s a new syndrome out called Walmart Rage.  Everyone in there is just so MAD all the time.  And yes, that includes me.  I swear, my blood pressure was through the roof when we were in there on Saturday.  WTF?  God, I wish we had more Targets.  And at least ONE Super Target.

So what are you hating this (not-so) fine Monday?  Feel free to share the venom in the comments.  Let Monday have it!