Occasionally, I use this space to address a number of trivial matters that are of no concern to most of you but drive me nuts. Hopefully, a handful of you will bear with me. If any of you would like to educate me on how to best deal with the items on this list, please let me know.

Why is it that grass grows everywhere you don’t want it, and nowhere you do?

I’ve got grass growing in between deck boards, up through our driveway and all sorts of other unruly places. But I can’t get a sprig to grow along the back of our property where I’ve cleared some trees.

I seeded the spot last year with a mix of bermuda and centipede. The bermuda thought about growing. It sprouted up green and proud but didn’t survive last summer’s drought. The centipede, which ran upwards of $30 per pound, is nowhere to be seen. I’ve got more grass growing in the cracks in my concrete than I do in that area of the yard.

I may not have the greenest of thumbs, but I’m no landscaping rookie. Through high school and college, I worked for a landscape architect and personally planted half of the shrubs now growing in yards throughout my hometown.

I’m sure I could sod the area, and it would look great, but I’m not willing to spend several hundred dollars to have something that will grow in a pothole alongside the interstate.

Why can’t children stay inside or outside? If you don’t have children, skip ahead. If you do, you know exactly what I’m talking about. My children will open the door to go outside, then come right back inside, at least 50 times a day. And that’s just the few hours I’m at home in the morning and in the evening after work. I assume they open the door thousands of times when I’m not around.

And none of them seem to know how to actually close the door behind them. I guess they enjoy the air-conditioned breeze that flows out of the open door and into their faces while they’re outside. I’m sure the electric company does, too.

Along the same lines, why can’t children wear shoes? Mine seem incapable of leaving anything on their feet for more than 15 minutes. I ask “Where are your shoes?” at least 100 times a day, and again, that’s only during the few hours I’m home with them.  We’ve no doubt lost more children’s shoes than we currently own.

One more about the kids. Why can’t they leave my stuff alone? I have one simple rule regarding my things — ask before you touch. That goes for tools, golf clubs, fishing poles, sunglasses, etc. But inevitably, I will find those very items hiding in the grass while I’m mowing. And I find them as the blades grind them into worthless junk. I’ve hit tent poles, hatchets, pliers, screwdrivers and even a putter.

Enough about the kids. Why can’t lawmakers be a little more consistent in their values and priorities? Even if you disagree with them, some consistency would at least give us some order of respect for them. But no, they prefer to extol the values of God and faith when it’s politically expedient, but quickly cast those things aside a day later.

We’re all hypocrites in some ways, but a consistent, logical voting record would at least make it easier to vote out the lawmakers we disagree with. The current crop is all over the map, which makes it tough to know exactly who they are and what they stand for. Maybe that’s their plan for staying in office.

Why does it hail so much here? I’ve been through extreme weather and natural disasters before — hurricanes, floods, even an earthquake — but I’ve never lived in a place where hail has fallen as regularly as it has here in the past six months. We’ve had at least three rounds of hail at our house this year alone, one of which caused some roof damage. I grew up just two hours from here, yet my family only remembers significant hail falling a few times in the past 30 years.

Were the last six months a freak occurrence or does Lincoln County have the perfect mix of topography, temperature and atmosphere to cause hail to fall here more often than other places?

Hail is only mildly annoying the first time it falls, but it’s a real pain after the second, third and fourth times — sort of like listening to someone gripe about things that don’t really matter.

Luke Horton is the publisher of the Daily Leader.