Random Thoughts 20

                                                                    

Here is something interesting I noticed about yoga classes.  Whenever the class is instructed to do the quadruped spinal flexion-spinal extension exercise, the instructor always refers to it as Cat-Cow (or Cat-Dog).  Something occurred to me recently.  Whenever I do the exercise,  I am always told to inhale when arching my back (Cow or Dog depending on the instructor) and then exhale when rounding my back (the Cat pose).  So in other words, the Cow (or dog) comes before the Cat.  So why is the pose call Cat-Cow?  Shouldn't it be called Cow-Cat?

                                                                    

Did you know a road is defined as anything that connects two points and a street is a public road with buildings on the sides, and an avenue runs perpendicular to a street (evident in the grid of Manhattan)?  

I find it funny that while I never looked up the true definition of those words until now, I always knew that definition instinctively.  

I was driving down the highway this morning and commented, "I am glad I am not driving down this street during rush hour."  I realized it was strange to be referring to the highway as a street and if I had been thinking properly, I would have called it a road.  That led me to wonder why I would have called it a road and not a street since both a street and a road are concrete surfaces one drives over.  Nobody ever told me a street is defined by the buildings on the side, but somehow I just picked it up after decades of living on this planet.  

                                                                       

                                                                        

Is it beautiful, or is it jarring to listen to a song where the music and lyrics don't match?  Last night I was listening to the radio, scanning the stations until I landed on an oldies station.  The song Human by Human League came on (and the real trauma was hearing that on the oldies station).  I hadn't heard it in a long time and I enjoyed listening to those lush, almost hypnotic keyboard stylings.  It almost made me forget the meaning of the song.  It's a song about infidelity - and double infidelity at that.  I thought to myself, "Couldn't they come up with more pleasant lyrics to suit such a dreamy song?"  But was that the point?  Were the songwriters saying, "Gotcha"?  That made me think of the Duran Duran song Save a Prayer, which I nicknamed "The Most Beautiful Song About One-Night Stands Ever Written".  Think of all the early adolescent girls in the Eighties who heard that song as a love ballad without thinking about the meaning of the lyrics.  What about songs that are beautiful, but the lyrics are blatantly depressing like Bittersweet Symphony?  Do pop stars make this mismatch deliberately, or do they merely write whatever lyrics come to them and go with it and if it's dark, it's dark? Does that spoil the beauty of the song for the listener, or does that improve it?

                                                    

If you like a controversial public figure because, “He tells it like it is,” can you please elaborate for me exactly how it is?  How is it and what is he telling you?

                                           

                                                    

 

I have an unchanging laundry schedule that includes doing bed linens on Saturday morning.  I have to do my laundry at the crack of dawn or before on Saturday because I have to do a million errands before setting out for the barn in NJ.  This means I have to kick Kevin out of bed on a Saturday morning so I can strip it.

Why did it only occur to me this year that I could change the sheets on Friday night and have the dirty linens ready to go on Saturday morning without disturbing anyone?

 

                                                   

Speaking of linens, over the years I have been told my laundry schedule is way too strict.  I remember in college I was having a discussion with friends about how hard it was to pinpoint the least busy days to use the dorm laundry rooms, but I found doing laundry on Tuesdays and Thursdays was the optimal schedule.  I said I did mostly clothes on Tuesdays and the sheets and towels on Thursday.  One of my friends piped up, "Aren't you Little Miss Cleanliness!"  Apparently my linen-washing schedule was unheard of.  I spent my entire life washing bed linens once a week.  I had no idea this wasn't the norm.  I recoiled in horror as my friends told me they washed their sheets around once a month.  

 

Years ago I dated a guy who felt cleanliness was next to optional.  I told him I was squicked out by sleeping on dirty linens.  He said he didn't have time to get to the laundromat, but went out and bought new sheets just for me.  I am not sure he ever changed those sheets after that (and he wonders why I didn't want to move in with him).  Even Kevin seemed a bit lackadaisical about such things when we were dating.  After he heard what a stickler I am about clean linens, he changed the bed right in front of me one day.  I don't know if he ever changed them again after that.  He only changed the fitted sheet and never used flat sheets.  I didn't dare ask him how clean the comforter was. Some things you just don't want to know.