Smallish things I wish:
1. That my microwave, which beeps three times every thirty seconds or so when it is done microwaving, would do that ONLY on a special Coffee Re-Heating setting. I DO need to be reminded that my coffee mug is in there. I DON’T need to be reminded about ANYTHING ELSE.
2. That our realtor would EMAIL us updates instead of always CALLING us. We ALWAYS contact her by email. We have TOLD her we prefer email, more than once. We even made an accidental passive-aggressive point about it by praising the home inspector for emailing us back, saying how annoying it was to us when we email someone and then they call us or email back a phone number—and then realizing that with the realtor standing right there it was kind of an awkward thing to be discussing in front of her. But apparently there was no need for us to cringe, because she still calls us.
3. That I had more than two things for this list. It seemed like a good idea for a post when I’d thought of two, but I’ve been sitting here half an hour and nothing else is occurring to me. Perhaps you could add some smallish things YOU wish, so it seems more like a discussion-starter and less like a stunted topic.
1) That my new calendar (Victorian entertainment posters!) was one of the ones that starts mid-way through the previous year so I could hang it up NOW instead of waiting until January. (I never got a wall calendar for this year, so I don’t have one I need to finish before starting next year’s.) (Although I guess if I’d gotten one that started in, say, July or August, I’d be sad about missing those months.)
2) That Duolingo would just KNOW what level of French I was on before I started using their website, instead of having to painstakingly test out of every level. (I realize that the “test out” feature exists for this very reason, but it takes a long time to get through all the tests.)
3) That my thesis would write itself. (Okay, that’s maybe not a smallish thing.)
1. That the parking lot I use downtown would fix the deep basin around the drain. It floods on heavy rain days. Today there are 10 spaces no one can use unless they thought to wear rain boots or maybe fishing waders. I may have to write them a cranky email.
2. That I didn’t have to deal with phantosmia, an aging issue in which you smell gross smells that aren’t there. What I smell a lot is smoky/musty/litterbox-y and it sours my mood. It will just shut off sometimes and things will be fine, but it’s not fine because it always comes back. How I loathe the aging process.
I didn’t know this was a thing! Thank you! I smell intermittent musty smells, too, which I painstakingly investigate only to find…nothing. It has been awful.
You have my riveted attention on the phantosmia thing. I wonder if this explains why sometimes I keep catching mildewy smells on my clothing or whatever, when there is no good reason for it and no one else smells anything. I have been thinking my nose was just more sensitive, and that may be the case, but this is a new possible reason.
This has been happening to me too!!! Wow. I had no idea it was a thing.
It started out with thinking I was smelling fresh cigarette smoke (which I hate to smell). Only I am never near cigarettes. I thought it was in the vent at work; no one else can smell anything. But then I would leave and get in my car and still smell it. Then it would stop.
One day I googled “smell smoke when there is none” and up came phantosmia. There’s nothing to be done about it, but I guess it saves me a fruitless round of doctor visits and tests just to find out it’s nothing they can do anything for.
I just think that it’s really unfair that if my aging brain is going to do this to me, it sent a gross odor rather than a lovely fragrance. Because of course.
This explains me! I thought I was going crazy!!
LOL. I thought the neighbors were the ones going crazy because sometimes I smell EGGS. I thought they were using bad eggs at really weird, random hours. It’s probably all in my head.
I have the same thing. For me it’s usually triggered by actual smoke smell\cigarette smell. I actually found on google that it’s a type of migraine… which makes sense since I didn’t get it at all during my last pregnancy ( baby born in July), and now when it came back it took me a while to realize what it was again.
Oh. Oh. OH. Phantosmia is blowing my mind. This explains things.
BUT WAIT I have been DYING ON THIS HILL with my husband of, “Just because YOU cannot smell this gross thing doesn’t mean it DOESN’T SMELL!”
1) That I had a cold soda right now. We only drink one kind of soda in our household. I, as a good and thoughtful provider, make sure we are stocked in this soda. If you take the last cold soda out of the fridge, Put In More Soda To Chill. Because right now I have no chill, and no soda, and I’m Teh Grumps.
2) That I could rent or borrow electronics for an extended period of time to decide if I want to own them. I want to try an Apple Watch for like three weeks. Does anybody want to trade an Apple Watch for an Instant Pot? But not, like, for keepsies?
I’ve been debating an Instant Pot, because my Marshall’s has them on discount. Do you like it? Alas, I do not have an Apple Watch to give you to try. Just an old iPhone 5s.
The Instant Pot didn’t turn me (a non-cook) into a chef, which is not what it was designed to do and so totally not its fault. I think if you are already somewhat confident in the kitchen it will help you save tremendous amounts of time. I HAVE managed to make lovely soft-boiled eggs in it!
That is SUCH a good idea!! Why doesn’t Best Buy do that??? I want to rent an iPad, just to how much we’d actually use it, before shilling out the bucks for one.
Is Apple Watch one of the ones that tracks your exercise and such? If so, you might check your library. All the ones here* have a few to be checked out as part of the effort to get people moving. I’m sure there’s a foundation or something subsidizing it, and it might not just be local.
* I’m in a weird location where three different public library systems are easily accessible.
Ooh! Ooh! That our kid’s school/our school system would have, somewhere on, say, their webpage (or in information they send home, or the lengthy handbook) a list of the tools they use to communicate with parents and how to get included on those mechanisms. They definitely use both email and phone, and now that we have a middle schooler, also some website that provides actual detailed information about our kid’s academic accomplishments or lack thereof, but for the longest time for some reason only my DH got calls and only I got emails, and getting them to add us both to each system was a … struggle. And if I hadn’t been getting emails, we wouldn’t even have known they existed (for the record, these are a listserv and mass automated calls, not individual from-the-teacher stuff).
My small wish would be that my kids’ schools would pick one or even two communications systems to use. Instead, everything comes home so many ways that I’m drowning in duplicate information and worried I’m going to miss something buried under all the stuff I’ve already seen twice.
1. That there would be some way to take advantage of Starbucks mobile ordering whilst still using my reusable mug. Why am I being punished for helping the environment? Could they perhaps prioritize reusable mug orders?
2. That there was a way, without sounding like a negligent monster, to encourage daycare to use fewer wipes.
I could have written this exact post. Seriously, how does daycare go through 100 wipes per month?!
I feel certain that they used some of mine when others ran out or didn’t bring in more in a timely manner. Sometimes they “paid me back” diapers they borrowed (took) and I would know this because a different brand in a smaller size was on my child when I collected her.
I don’t miss the daycare.
Communication Method – ARGH
If I text you – please text me back do not phone me or email me – I texted you for a reason.
If I email you – please email me back do not phone or text me – I emailed you for a reason.
If I phone you – please phone be back do not email or text me – I phoned you for a reason.
Do not change the method of communication….yes this is a thing…
Ooh. Your microwave one makes me wish – we have this awesome avocado green vintage wall oven that works startlingly well. EXCEPT. If you use the integrated timer, it makes a loud buzzing that NEVER STOPS. Like, if you’re in the bathroom when the timer goes off, it will just buzz insanely loudly for five straight minutes. I assume it will buzz forever but I would lose my mind before being patient enough to test out that assumption.
I wish my dryer, which is right outside my bedroom door, didn’t make an annoying thumping sound no matter what is in it. And also that its sensor worked better so it didn’t dry for 2 hours if I don’t turn it off sooner. (I should probably get a new dryer.)
1. That I would remember to pick up my new contacts from the optometrist. I got scolded @ my appointment for not changing them often enough… Yet here I am, still wearing that same old pair, because I drive past their office TWICE A DAY and still have not retrieved the new lenses.
2. That my husband would grocery shop like I do. We are Learning To Budget because shocker of all shockers, teenagers are really expensive! (LOL!) I make a weekly meal plan, create a grocery list based on what we need, then I go to Aldi and then Sprouts to get everything. I save at least $40 by doing this every week, whereas he will just go to Kroger and buy everything on the list without any mind to cost. (Yes, he is helping me by doing the shopping, but it is actually not helpful.)
3. That Starbucks had made my drink correctly this morning. I am a total weirdo who doesn’t drink her coffee until it is basically lukewarm, so once I finally took a sip, it was monumentally disappointing.
That my husband could hear the baby crying at night, so that now that I am back at work and he is at home most days, HE could deal with the middle-of-the-night wakeups and diaper situations. Which, incidentally, is exactly what I did so that he could get enough sleep when I was home with the baby and HE was working (as apparently it is just My Job, in addition to my other, actual job). I have convinced him to stop sleeping with noise-canceling headphones for this reason, but he legitimately still cannot hear the baby unless he has only just fallen asleep or is very close to waking up anyway. IT IS MADDENING.
My husband was the same way. I solved this by shoving him awake when it was his turn to get up with the baby. But still very annoying.
Haha! Yes. This. Just wake him up!
My wish is more of a “hope” – I hope the next hot new trend that everyone desperately band-wagons is MANNERS!
I wish I was a liiiiiitle thicker skinned when my newly teenaged daughter says snarky things and doesn’t want to be with the family. I know it’s normal. It’s just…teenagers. The struggle is real.
None of the things I wish feel small right now. I wish that the CT scan I had yesterday didn’t make me feel queasy, or that I didn’t STILL feel queasy, or that I didn’t need a CT scan in the first place. I’m supposed to get the results today and I wish that I had them already or like instantly because not knowing feels like more torture than knowing something bad although maybe I’m only saying that because I don’t yet know if it’s something bad.
I’ll be thinking of you today, Jenny Grace! Screening/testing SUCKS A$$!
I’m not saying you shouldn’t have posted this here, but I feel like this is a Big Thing. I feel like you should get to sit down and be cosseted (a word I never use, but it seems right under the circumstances). Maybe that is the catastrophizer in me talking.
Please don’t criticize my catastrophizer, anyone. She does a lot of detailed planning. WE NEED PLANS.
It’s a smallish thing, but I can’t vent about this anywhere else. Thank you for this opportunity. LOL. I design ads sometimes for work – only when it’s for local nonprofits or a church calendar or something. Many times, these small organizations give me ad specs in this format: height x width, instead of the standard width x height. And, after I waste my time with the wrong specs, I’m told that I (!) have designed the ad incorrectly. I’m from the south, so I’ll just say “bless their hearts.”
1) I wish that online job applications, which generally have you upload your resume as step 1 or 2, didn’t also make you manually enter your education and work experience (including company, title, dates of employment, and skills/responsibilities for every. single. job). I have 20 years of relevant work history and it takes forever. YOU HAVE MY RESUME, JUST READ IT.
2) That my car doors didn’t automatically unlock as soon as I put the car in park. I’ll decide when I want to unlock my doors, thank you very much.
Are you sure that’s not adjustable in your model? We are able to change the setting on our Hondas.
Oh yes, I believe it could. I suppose a related Small Wish would be that I could summon enough Small Amount Attention to look it up.
oh my god I have this same pet peeve re: online job applications. because also if you’d like to format your resume differently (i.e., by skill group or something), you’re SOL putting it into their form.
I have no idea how I did this, but I figured out on my Chevy how to change it to unlock the doors when I take the key out instead of when it goes into park.
Ooh — I wish DH’s truck did not insist on locking the minute I am driving (or he is driving!). Where we live it seems to me MUCH more likely that we’d be in an accident where we’d want some good Samaritan to be able to get us OUT of the car than that having the car locked would in any way be important to our safety while we’re driving. I can manually unlock it but why should I have to? And who are you, truck, to tell me that I need to be locked in?! That is not your decision!
Could totally be wrong, but I guess that locking the doors improves the integrity of the car body when there is a crash.
We are about to run out of time on the 45 day contingency contract we have on a wonderful house. I wish that the sellers will extend our contingency 30 days, since they plan on taking their house off the market then anyway. I also wish that my house would sell in the next 3 days, so I wouldn’t have to wish the first wish!
My microwave does the same thing. Stop. It.
My smallish things are as follows:
1. I wish I could figure out what combination of hair products would allow me to wear my hair wavy/curly on days when I don’t want to dry it. No matter what I try, I end up looking like I either left the house with wet hair or went without combing it, neither of which is a look I haven’t embraced fully on its own, but neither of which I enjoy advertising when I’m going for something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.
2. I wish I knew, definitively, whether the small noises coming from my toilet and water heater are “range of normal” noises or “call the technician immediately” noises.
3. I wish my cravings for bell peppers/meals containing bell peppers lined up with when bell peppers are actually in SEASON, rather than now, when they are all smushy. I paid $5.99 a pound for red peppers this week because I am an insane person!
I switched to this combo a couple of years ago and it totally works for me to avoid the wet look. Small amount of curl mousse near the roots, small amount of curl styling creme in all hair. Flipping your head over while applying product (scrunching it in) helps avoid the “weighted down” look too. Hope that helps!
I wish:
-that I could figure out how to stagger/spread out my workload a little, because right now I am sitting in my planning period with absolutely nothing to do, but my students will turn in papers on Friday and I will be totally swamped with grading.
-that my sister’s due date were two weeks earlier so I could be there with her instead of having to wait a month or more to come see her and baby.
-and, to end on a monumentally petty annoyance, that the electric outlets in our new house were placed a little differently. It seems like every outlet is in the exact wrong place and I’m forever stretching cords across things or moving furniture to get to outlets.
SO FUNNY about the microwave! Mine does the same thing. But because I make everything anthropomorphic, I find myself saying aloud “Yes, Yes, I know. Thank you.” :)
Ugh, WHO USES THE ACTUAL PHONE ANYMORE!?!?! As my work phone literally rings! (I’m so on task, lol)
I had the same microwave issue and I could not believe my luck when the buyers for our house wrote it into the contract. Good riddance, relentlessly beeping microwave.
Also empathize with the realtor issue. Just had the exact same thing except every time he called he would say “I know you prefer text, but…” I’m pretty sure 99.9% of the time he called because he was driving and therefore convenient for HIM. He was also the worst realtor in the history of ever but the transaction is complete now and I took the high road in choosing to ignore his emailed request for an online review instead of leaving an honest one.
1. I wish I could tell, when buying new jeans, whether particular jeans will Shrink or Stretch Out. I feel like I can never tell, and when trying a new band/style of jeans there is a decent chance they will either shrink up super tight and small or stretch and bag out. And then I want to buy another pair either sizednup or down but that means the first pair was a TITAL WASTE.
2. I just had a new passport picture taken and I wish’s I could smile bc I look like death warmed over in pics where I don’t smile.
I always liked the aphorism that “if you look like your passport photo, you are too ill to travel.”
This is hilarious!
My small wish is very petty. I wish the two light switches that operate one light in our house were wired differently. When both switches are down, the light should be off; when one switch is up, the light should be on. (When both switches are up, the light will be off, but that one I can live with.) But, no! For the light to be on, one switch must be up and the other down. Both of these are in banks of light switches, so when all the lights are off in that room…some switches must be up. Argh.
I had this exact same issue in my house with 3 different (and often-used) lights. It got to the point of crazy-making that I finally called an electrician to come out.
Do you know what he did (for umpteen dollars, I might add), he took off the decorative switchplate cover, then unscrewed the two screws holding the actual switch in place, AND TURNED THE SWITCH UPSIDE DOWN! That’s it! No disconnecting wires or anything. He didn’t even turn off the circuit breaker! I don’t know squat about electricity, but even I could’ve done that! Though I probably would have turned off the breaker first to be safe.
Anyway, now when the switches are both down, the lights are off, and when either is up the light is on…as God intended! :)
(Standard disclaimer that every house may be wired differently, so ymmv.)
OMG I will be doing this in my house. Thank you!
I wish that the county inspector/landlord/electric company were a little faster. We have been waiting over 2 months for a few days worth of work to be completed.
I ALSO wish my car didn’t unlock as soon as I put it in park. It can’t be changed because it’s a “safety feature”. Safe for who is what I’d like to know. Lol!!
I wish my kids (2.5 and 8 mos) would sleep through the night. Eventually they will, right? RIGHT? I mean, or move out eventually….
Yes! They will! Eventually!
Smallish things I wish…
1. That teachers would not assign me jobs (I’m a substitute) without asking me first. I go to check my subfinder account and see I have a job I didn’t agree to, and cannot cover because of previous plans. In the scheme of things it isn’t a big deal, but it has happened several times with the same teacher, and just happened again an hour ago. It does take some finagling to get things figured out-and it seems like such a common sense concept.
2. Another work related one-I like to book jobs in advance, and it never fails, I book something and then get a request to be a sub for a librarian (my favorite thing) on the days I am already booked. I wish I had the option of keeping my schedule totally open, but only someone who doesn’t need money can do that.
3. I wish I could get those crunchy things that they used to put on Dairy Queen ice cream cones. I don’t even know what they were called, but they were so good! I haven’t had them for like 35 years, but I’ve never forgotten their crunchy goodness.
Ice cream crunch. Here’s a link to a crazy expensive one. But there are hacks for making it DIY. https://www.dickies.com/jeans/womens-relaxed-fit-straight-leg-bib-overalls/FB206MSB+XL.html?cm_mmc=google-_-PLA-_-women-jeans-_-FB206&cm_mmc=google-_-PLA-_-Women-Jeans-_-null&gclid=Cj0KCQjwuafdBRDmARIsAPpBmVWVQF8xQ4kYp5eyVnnkvXvui0P8IZyx8tpUzru0SuuucPoYLWc692gaAopvEALw_wcB
I don’t think those overalls are going to be crunchy.
Also I am now wondering about that stuff, which I have never heard of but I do like a little texture in my ice cream.
1. Men would STFU.
That’s really it.
LOVE. (Even more so considering what’s happened in the two days since this comment …)
Funny about your microwave. Though I *wish* mine was like that. In our old house, our microwave did what you are describing and our oven would beep nonstop until you went to it. In our new house, our microwave just beeps nonstop every second until you go to it. There is nothing in the microwave that needs such immediate attention. But our oven beeps once and stops! And in the oven, you really don’t want to forget that something is in there.
I wish my developing forehead line would stop, or that I would lose my vanity and embrace my aging face…
I wish our neighbors would learn to park. If you can afford European SUVs for your high school students, you can afford driving lessons.
I am a person who gets annoyed when I pick a specific slice of pizza and then the next person picks the same kind and when they come out of the oven the pizza-shop employee will give the other person MY slice. So I am particular about a lot of stuff. Yet I can’t find something significant enough to actually “wish” for – I don’t want to “waste” a wish when what I really want all seems too BIG for this thread. Like my 10 year old finally starting to automatically flush then wash his hands with soap after he uses the washroom. Basic hygiene is not “smallish”!
1. That it was possible to turn off ALL THE BEEPS AND CHIMES on our relatively new washer and dryer. The only ones you can turn off are the ones for when they stop. But they beep and chime their way through the settings. We don’t all want that much noise with our laundry, Samsung.
2. Noiseproofing on the kids’ rooms. They are young. They are light sleepers. My husband hates having to be quiet in the evenings. I would love a fix for the situation.
3. Someone else to plan meals that everyone in the house will eat, grocery shop, do the cooking, and clean up afterwards. I’ve been feeling the drag of meals for months, and I would love to offload everything.
4. That my phone would quit losing charge so quickly.
5. That my husband would take the kids away for a week without me; that I took that time as a vacation; and I just slept, read books, and played computer games the whole time. It will never happen, but… I would like a break from keeping people moving, fed, entertained, taught, helped, the whole nine yards. I could use a break from the grind.
There is a fix for #4. Our local phone repair place put in a new battery in my iphone for $20. Best $20 of my life now that I don’t have to recharge my phone four times a day.
White noise machines for the kids bedrooms.
With my kids’ toys when they were little, I would put a few layers of packing tape over the speakers of the really loud things I couldn’t turn off. It would make it nearly inaudible. I wonder if that might work with your washer & dryer?
I’m with you on 5. I’d settle for 6 straight hours alone in my house at this point, even.
I just want my mom to get comfortable with her smart phone enough to understand I see I missed a call from her and being a reasonably conscientious adult, I will call her back. It’s annoying to retrieve her voicemail message and only hear, “It’s mom. I guess I missed you. Call me.” Either don’t bother leaving a message or tell me why you called in the first place. Yet she went 6 months before admitting she didn’t know how to check her own voicemail (I gave her several lessons to correct this.) and would not ever be learning how to view her texts.