Top Ten Pet Peeves--I just have to let it out!!!!

Ok, I don't let myself linger on the negative very much, because every place has it's good things and it's challenges. And what can you do about the challenges, anyway? We do love being here, and no place is perfect. But I have to admit--as I'm cleaning African-mud messes or stuck in crazy traffic, I sometimes sooth myself by "writing" crabby blogs in my head. Is that strange????

Well, this week has had some doozies, and it's been too long since I've written anything, so I'm giving in to my need to vent. So here are the top ten things, in no particular order, which send me to my knees in a semi-futile attempt to give thanks in all situations!!!

1. Large, important buildings (say, hospitals!) that are built with no thought of parking for the people that just might come use the services. I've literally spent an hour in 'traffic' inside the parking lot.
2. Parking attendants who don't actually "attend" to anything at all. I asked one if there were any spots left in the lot before I entered. He smiled at me and said, "Ahh. But it's just a matter of luck." Thanks.
3. Large, fancy malls who allow each individual store to determine their own hours, so that you never know exactly who is open when and on which day. The on-line profiles proudly boast being open 7 days a week, 8-8...but that would be the fancy doors to the open floor space of the mall, NOT the shops inside. If you want to go stand in an empty mall and stare at barred and padlocked store-gates, you are welcome at 8am, I found out.
4. Drivers who feel that lanes, red lights, stop signs, "one-way" roads, and 'no parking' signs are optional suggestions which clearly do not apply to them.
5. Having to work so hard to clean the food I spend too much money on in big expensive stores: cutting out worms from my strawberries, soaking chicken poop off my eggs, scrubbing layers of mud off my potatoes, remixing my peanut butter, and cutting bones, skin, and fat out of my meat. If I'm going to have to do that much work, it should have either come from my own garden, or have been cheap.
6. Buying my meat from men in bloody aprons and galoshes but no gloves. The same men who think nothing of setting the bag in a pile of one meat while filling it up, all while swatting at the hundreds of flies. And that's the reputable butcher--don't even ask what the market is like. Honestly, you don't want to know.
7. Hoards of flying ants who loose their wings, allowing the maggot-like wormmy things to crawl under the doors in such obscene numbers that the floors look like they're writhing. And then they smoosh and smear when you try to sweep them up. It's beyond disgusting.
8. Paying $12 for a small block of stinky, crummy cheese. Have you heard the expression, "cut the cheese?" It never made sense before I came to Kenya, but now I understand...
9. Having a freezer full of flour, rice, bread and noodles to keep them from getting wormy or moldy, or both. No, not ice cream or Popsicles or easy-to-eat-dinners, or even frozen berries. Bread and flour and noodles.
10. Having roses and sunflowers and pineapples and bananas grow all year long, because there's never a winter to kill them off. Sunshine, with or without clouds, year-round. It's so boring! (Ok, you got me...that's more of a 'humble-brag' item, but what was I supposed to do? A top-9 list just sounds weird!)