Three things I think are ginormous rip-offs: floor mats for your car, sodas and lip gloss.

Apparently I wear high-heeled shoes far too often, because I’ve managed to wear a hole in my driver’s side floor mat just below the gas pedal, a.k.a. right where the point of my heel would rest. The hole is small, but it’s visible; the fuzz of the mat is messy to the point of it looking like a bird was trying to nest in the footwell.

The last time I was in, I told the dude at the dealership about the issue.

“Oh, yeah – that happens a lot.”

The end.

It happens “a lot”? Weird. Maybe consider stepping up the quality a little since, you know, you’re Lexus and all.

“Hm…well, that’s no good. Can you let me know what it would cost to replace just that one mat then?” I asked.

“Oh, you’d have to buy all four,” he said.

Of course I would. Sheesh. And, yes, I realize the work-around here is to buy a one-off mat somewhere, but I’m clearly skewing in the all-or-nothing direction on this one. I do that sometimes. This time, I choose nothing.

I was wondering yesterday whether the alterations lady at my dry cleaning place would look at me weird if I brought in the floor mat for a patch job. Not that a floor mat is anywhere near a beloved, worn-in pair of jeans that would appreciate a new lease on life, but hey – they can usually fix anything, right?

I went to Subway yesterday with a co-worker, and overheard someone order a soda that was somewhere in the $1.70-something range. True, it’s not the biggest expense, but…it’s syrup and carbonated water. Such profit! Rip-off.

Lip gloss. Another button-pushing product! Perhaps if I dropped less coin and didn’t buy mine at a makeup counter in a department store, I wouldn’t be so perturbed…but I appreciate the packaging, and I appreciate the quality as compared to many of those bought at a drugstore. But come on, lip glossiers of the world – make a longer wand, brush or whatever it is that you choose to have the buyer use for applying said gloss. There’s always $3.84 worth of unused goo that I can never get to since it’s stuck at the bottom of the tube. I Googled a solution to this, and someone said that they resort to leaving their lip gloss in the car which, presumably, gets warm during the day, therefore causing said stuck gloss to shift a bit in the tube and become more reachable.

As much as I’d love to trek 15 floors down to my car, then across a courtyard, then into a parking deck whenever I need to reapply, I shall pass on this solution. Rip-off!

Rant, rant, rant. Hiss, hiss, hiss.

All amazingly, delightfully, painfully silly things to scoff at and blog about.  And all things that have simple fixes – fixes that I choose to ignore, as though they don’t exist at all.

The thing about these little nuisances, however, is that they can usually remind you of the absence of really big issues in your life. And when the bigger issues do come, those little irritations are the things that you sometimes find yourself thankful for.

Example: “Darn it, I overbleached my hair and a clump of it broke off. This is the worst day ever!”

Another example: “Dang, I need to have knee surgery? What I wouldn’t give for some damaged hair and a knee in good shape.”

See? Perspective. OK, maybe not the best examples, but I think you get my drift.

Today I am thankful for the little things that truly are little, and for the presence of little rip-offs in my life versus life-changing trials and tribulations. I know the day will come when the latter become more prevalent and time-consuming, but until then, I shall focus on conquering the challenge of goo-hogging lip gloss tubes and will share my fix with the world.