I've turned into a grumpy old woman! (Room 101)

Member Name: mumto3

Product:	Room 101
Date:	25/01/09 (216 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It's given me a chance to rant!

Disadvantages: Nothing will change

I love to read these Room 101 reviews because I find it fascinating what people put in there.

I never though I would be able to think of anything to put in to Room 101 and have told myself that if I can think of 5 things to put in then I will write the review! Well, now that I've started thinking of things I don't think I will be able to stop!

I have decided to stick to 5 things or I will be here all day. These things are in no particular order other than the order they came into my head.

1) People who wait for parking space in multi storey car parks! You know who you are! The reason this annoys me is because they don't see someone attempting to reverse and sit back and wait....oh no! They see some indicators flash alerting them to the imminent arrival of the vehicles owner and they sit and wait in the middle of the car park. Then I am stuck behind them also having to wait while some poor harassed mother has to unload a weeks shopping and four children and get everyone into the car and strapped in and then try and reverse out of a space that's too narrow into a space that's being hogged by some idiot who couldn't drive up one more level! Maybe I should chill out but this makes me stressed! I can see it's making the person getting into their car stressed and feel rushed and my children always end up asking about a million questions 'why have we stopped? What's that car waiting for? Why can't we go Mummy? Can we get out? etc. etc. etc.! Why don't they just go up another level? They would still only have to walk the same distance to the lift? Can they only park on a certain number or it's bad luck? I can see no reason for them waiting at all and therefore they should be banished! Also if I am the one being waited for when I am trying to exit a space it makes me stressed. Before I had children I would deliberately slow down if I saw someone waiting and even sit and have a cigarette in my car before I would leave the space!

2) Dieting. Now don't get me wrong I am all for a varied balance healthy diet although I don't always follow one. I am not suggesting that we all eat whatever we want and not worry about it that would be irresponsible. It is fad diets and these ridiculous fashionable diets that seem to sweep the country that get on my nerves. If you eat a balanced healthy diet and take regular exercise I feel there would be no place for these silly, only eat mars bars, only eat cabbage, half a grape and a glass of water diets. Everything you hear is about how people can't eat carbs and can't eat dairy and can't eat fruit because it too high in sugar when this is just ridiculous. You body needs carbohydrate, your body needs fat, your body needs sugar! The trick is getting the quantities right. I appreciate that some people have allergies or are intolerant to certain food types but these are medical conditions that make eating a nightmare so to voluntarily deprive yourself of something seems ridiculous. The most recent thing seems to be everyone is avoiding carbohydrates but if you look at the nutritional wheel or pyramid or whatever shape it is now the section containing carbs is the second biggest! If we all ate the food we needed in the right proportions Carbs would be a third of our diet! I have spent years of my live on silly diets and I have been made miserable by it and become obsessed with it. I have deprived myself of things I like and eaten horrible bars that taste like cardboard and milkshakes that just leave you craving the sensation of actually chewing your food. If you eat a balanced diet you can include all the foods you like but obviously within moderation. Surely this is better than trying to cut out whole food groups or even any type of enjoyable edible food. These faddy diets don't work in the long term and as soon as you return to a normal eating pattern you will gain weigh. Eating sensibly will be slower but it is a way of life and if you change the way you eat you will maintain any weight loss that you achieve.

3) Mother and Baby parking spaces. Now, I have two issues with these. Firstly there are never enough and they are always right by the door which only encourages people without children to park in them. Also the supermarkets always seem to put the double trolley or the trolleys for car seats on the opposite side of the car park. This means that you have to park up and then drag your children across a busy car park to get to the trolley that you need and invariably then you don't have a pound coin so you have to go inside the shop and queue at the kiosk and get a pound and then go back outside and get a trolley! I don't care if the parent parking spaces are at the back end of the car park, that would be easier to be honest. Putting them near the front of the store means that they are normally in the busiest part and so there are a lot of cars driving round and trying to manoeuvre. This means that those of us with toddlers and babies are trying to carry bulky car seats or wriggly babies and also hold onto a wilful toddler while cars whiz past with little consideration for those around them as long as they don't have to walk more than 6 feet to get to the store. I had three children under the age of four and for me the best carpark layout for mothers with babies would be a quiet corner at the side or end of the car park. Trolleys for babies and toddlers should also be kept in this area preferably under a shelter so we don't have to dry them first. Then all we need is a path to the store. This way we are out of the way so no-one else will want the spaces, the trolleys we need are at hand and won't be used by someone buying a pint of milk and a paper and we will have a path to the door so we don't have to dodge traffic on our way from car to store! So it is the car park planners that should go to room 101 not the spaces themselves. My second issue is people who park in baby spaces. This annoys me purely because it is almost impossible to open the door of a car wide enough to get a child seat in or to secure the straps of a car seat if you are parked in a normal space. I know people get annoyed that people with kids have special spaces and they feel that we are somehow receiving special privileges but in order for us to safety get our children in and out of the vehicle we need a wider space. We use car seats for safety reasons as because we are obliged by law to do so. I have been raced to a child parking space at my local Tesco on two occasions. Once by a single man in a brand new executive car, obviously worried about his paintwork! The other time was by a woman with two teenage children! I know they are called parent and child spaces but I would assume that once they reach sulky floppy fringed Emo stage then they are out of car seats and can manage to get out of a car unaided!

4) Flies. The flying kind! I live on a dairy farm. I know what you are all doing, you are imagining beautiful sunrises and cockerels crowing and the distant rumble of a combine harvester bringing in the crop and endless summer days with beast lowing in the field and hens pecking in the dirt. Now, I'm not saying that image is false except maybe the endless summer part but if you would like to add swarms of flies to that daydream you would be much more accurate! My husband doesn't understand my problem and just sees the flies as a necessary evil of late summer. I on the other hand am a soft townie southerner and I have never in my life known anything like it. It reduces me to tears because I feel dirty and feel that my house is dirty and I'm about at the end of my tether. I am fed up of having to constantly carry a fly swat and not be able to open a window or a door without them all trying to fly in. In the evening they all get a bit drowsy and want to find a spot to sleep and then normally settle on my house! If I look out my white render is a mass of flies bedding down for the night. If I look out of a window there they are all sitting on the pane and I don't mean one or two I mean 30 or forty per window! It makes me cringe just thinking about it. I have those sticky things hanging in my kitchen, I have one of the electrocutors, I use cans of fly spray and I am constantly swatting them with a fly swatter. I would say on average through the worst days I can kill about 100 flies a day just with the swatter! I spend all year dreading them coming and my weeks holiday is the only relief I get from them. I can't open a window, I can't answer the door, I can't sit outside in my garden, I hate trying to have a B-B-Q because they fly into your face or bite you. My son was born in September and when he was a new-born baby sleeping in a pram I had to use an insect net indoors because otherwise the flies would settle on him and bite him and they even drew blood! I can think of no use for flies what so ever!

5) Menstruation. I'm not going to go into any sort of detail because I know that some people are a little squeamish about this sort of thing. All I will say is that I could really do without it. I have been pregnant a lot over the past few years and so haven't had to worry about it and I can tell you it's worth having another baby just to stop it for a few months again. Obviously there have been times in my life when I have been relieved by it's arrival but other than that it is just inconvenient and uncomfortable and sometimes painful. The things needed to control it are uncomfortable and can cause you health problems and even kill you. You have to worry about what clothing you wear in case of leakage or unsightly bulges. You get P.M.S. before, during and sometimes even after. Sometimes it's so bad that it makes you faint and pass out and you generally just feel rough the whole time. A friend of mine has just had a hysterectomy and the thing she is looking forward to is not having to worry about it anymore. I am nearly 36 and so I have probably got about another 20 years of this! I'm finished having children and to be honest I really don't need it anymore!

Summary: I've had my say!