I have one acquaintance who trips my trigger damned near every time she sends e-mail these days. I'm not sure why it is I keep answering her. I don't consider the woman to be a friend. But I don't really dislike her, either.

When I first started corresponding with her, I liked her notes a lot more than I do now. I'm not sure whether I finally got tired of what was always there, or whether these have been small-yet-building-up annoyances. Either way, I now almost dread to see her name as sender.

Yes, I could quit corresponding with her. Or I could make sure she knows how I feel about her blathering. But I have for some complex set of reasons chosen neither.

I think I keep up with her, and don't mention the things that annoy me, because it fascinates me how many of my buttons she can push from a distance. It's an exercise in patience for me, and in being polite.

I first knew she was going to be a thorn in my flesh when she chastised me for not remembering tiny details about a town I visited when I was a child. Every so often it is necessary to point out the obvious: I told her in my response to that one that she needed to remember I was there but a few days and was very young.

A recent batch of blather from her brought a comment on how good I must feel having finished a segment of the latest work project I was doing (insert excess exclamation points). What a sense of accomplishment I must have (more excess exclamation points).

Yes, she was serious. This is how she writes.

Bear in mind that what I had told her about the project segment was that I was glad to be done with reading the website in question because it kept crashing my browser. I answered it by saying (okay, repeating) that I was glad to be through with the segment. But I was tempted to send her a copy of my prior e-mail with "Please reread; you have missed the point!" typed in the subject line.

Oh--and I also wish she knew there is not much in life that needs to be followed by more than one exclamation point. Some things deserve two. So far, I have not run across anything deserving of five. Certainly not anything she has said.