How will I fit in
all I need to do this week?
Must make a spreadsheet.
all I need to do this week?
Must make a spreadsheet.
Racing the Clock
I hate cleaning. In fact, I hate any exercise that has to be done over and over but doesn't create progress. Maintenance. Yechhh.
Nevertheless, a certain quality of life has to be maintained... I can get by for months tending to dishes, garbage, and very little else, but people do come over to my house for work. So let's call today triage-plus, where I'll go the extra mile (ok, the extra 500 yards, then) to make my apartment comfortable.
I will make it a game, Mary Poppins-style, and since I can't have a spoonful of sugar, I'll make up a game called Racing the Playlist.
BATHROOM
The PLAYLIST: Right as Rain by Adele, Raise Your Glass by Pink, No Sleep Til Brooklyn by the Beastie Boys
10 minutes, 46 seconds
The WINNER: the Playlist.
At least I finished scrubbing the toilet.
Nevertheless, a certain quality of life has to be maintained... I can get by for months tending to dishes, garbage, and very little else, but people do come over to my house for work. So let's call today triage-plus, where I'll go the extra mile (ok, the extra 500 yards, then) to make my apartment comfortable.
I will make it a game, Mary Poppins-style, and since I can't have a spoonful of sugar, I'll make up a game called Racing the Playlist.
BATHROOM
The PLAYLIST: Right as Rain by Adele, Raise Your Glass by Pink, No Sleep Til Brooklyn by the Beastie Boys
10 minutes, 46 seconds
The WINNER: the Playlist.
At least I finished scrubbing the toilet.
 |
| The 4-day Pile o' Dishes |
KITCHEN
This one will be a project, so I give myself 28:01 worth of Set Fire to the Rain (Adele), F**k You (Cee Lo Green), Blue Suede Shoes (Elvis), Bad Love - yikes, 28 minutes worth of bad love would not be nice - (Clapton), 1 2 3 4 (Feist), Novocaine/She's a Rebel (Green Day), and Maneater (Hall & Oates).
This room harbors a 4-day mountain of dirty dishes (as in, it would take four days to hike to the top), an archaeologically-interesting fridge, and various other yet-to-be-discovered kitchen detritus. Triage indeed. Do I treat the dishes that are about to give me a stroke, the pile of mail that is bleeding out through the stomach, or the gangrenous fridge?
This one will be a project, so I give myself 28:01 worth of Set Fire to the Rain (Adele), F**k You (Cee Lo Green), Blue Suede Shoes (Elvis), Bad Love - yikes, 28 minutes worth of bad love would not be nice - (Clapton), 1 2 3 4 (Feist), Novocaine/She's a Rebel (Green Day), and Maneater (Hall & Oates).
This room harbors a 4-day mountain of dirty dishes (as in, it would take four days to hike to the top), an archaeologically-interesting fridge, and various other yet-to-be-discovered kitchen detritus. Triage indeed. Do I treat the dishes that are about to give me a stroke, the pile of mail that is bleeding out through the stomach, or the gangrenous fridge?
The WINNER: draw.
I was just dumping the last pile of floor dust into the garbage as Maneater repeated and faded out. It was a good stopping point. The gangrenous fridge will have to wait.
So now we're down to the rooms that don't get smelly.
LIVING ROOM
So now we're down to the rooms that don't get smelly.
LIVING ROOM
10 minutes is it for now. I refuse to do any more.
The PLAYLIST
All I Wanna Do is Make Love to You (Heart), Sex Machine (James Brown), Wave of Mutilation (the Pixies). 10:01.
...Um, please don't read too much Freudian stuff into that playlist.
The WINNER: the Playlist.
AUGHGHGHHGHH!!!
The PLAYLIST
All I Wanna Do is Make Love to You (Heart), Sex Machine (James Brown), Wave of Mutilation (the Pixies). 10:01.
...Um, please don't read too much Freudian stuff into that playlist.
The WINNER: the Playlist.
AUGHGHGHHGHH!!!
BEDROOM:
Much of my living room cleaning involved throwing handbags of various sizes into my bedroom, where I will now put them in a pile and deal with the more urgent piles of dirty laundry. Again, 10 minutes. But let's pick songs whose titles hint a little less at S&M, shall we?
The PLAYLIST
Roxanne (the Police) and Love For Sale (Ella Fitzgerald). Guess I'll exchange S&M for prostitution and try to get the thing over with in 9 minutes, 7 seconds.
The WINNER: me!
I didn't make my bed, but that seems a fruitless exercise for a time-poor single lady, and I finished ten seconds before Ella was done mournfully plying her wares on the 9th scale degree.
End note to belabor my point about pointlessness, and salute all the people in the world who do this FOR OTHER PEOPLE WITHOUT PAY (moms etc. - belated thanks, mom): when I cleaned out my bag from yesterday, I found my dirty lunch dishes. Dammit!!! I HATE CLEANING!!!!!
End note to belabor my point about pointlessness, and salute all the people in the world who do this FOR OTHER PEOPLE WITHOUT PAY (moms etc. - belated thanks, mom): when I cleaned out my bag from yesterday, I found my dirty lunch dishes. Dammit!!! I HATE CLEANING!!!!!
I See the Light - Oscar Songs
Following my mom's advice to remain quiet unless I have something nice to say, I will refrain from writing about "I See the Light". Some things I just don't like.
Ok, maybe I'll say one thing:
The "here/crystal clear" rhyme thing has been done before. It has been done on a melody of ti-la-sol, with ti ("CRY"-stal) on the downbeat. Not, ahem, a whole new world of songwriting. Definitely not a brave one. Then again, brave, exploratory art rarely wins awards from established institutions. That is the world we live in.
That is all.
What I love about learning a song a day: I am forced to prioritize, look at the big picture. What are the most important things about this song? What do I need to remember? Harmony, form, melody, feel. When the day is over, move on to the next thing, and just see how much I can recall later.
What I love about taking more time: Getting more in the details. What is the keyboard player doing? Why can't I play that one riff? Coming back with a fresh perspective - oh, that chord has an extension I didn't hear the first time through.
I played a game of schedule tetris yesterday. Actually, it was more like music chairs, because with tetris, everything fits somewhere if you can get to it fast enough. With musical time slots, there are always little tasks left running around with no hour to sit on.
My Weekly Wishes aren't falling neatly into the weeks. I'll learn my last Oscar song, "If I Rise", on Sunday. I will make the medley another week. Tonight and tomorrow, I need to practice "Black Coffee", which I'm supposed to record with my friend tomorrow. Or I'll work on the Gershwin transcription, if she has to reschedule (I just texted to confirm). Wrapping up this week's Wish is being pushed aside so I can finish up Wishes from other weeks.
Some Wishes, like learning to play accordion, aren't meant to fit into a week. (Sorry, neighbors. Sorry, kitty.) It's only a framework to see how much time I can find within a week to practice just for fun, because I still suck at time-management. To let it go and move on to something else, because I will need to practice letting go and moving on until the day I die.
EQ2EBG5HR59C
Ok, maybe I'll say one thing:
The "here/crystal clear" rhyme thing has been done before. It has been done on a melody of ti-la-sol, with ti ("CRY"-stal) on the downbeat. Not, ahem, a whole new world of songwriting. Definitely not a brave one. Then again, brave, exploratory art rarely wins awards from established institutions. That is the world we live in.
That is all.
What I love about learning a song a day: I am forced to prioritize, look at the big picture. What are the most important things about this song? What do I need to remember? Harmony, form, melody, feel. When the day is over, move on to the next thing, and just see how much I can recall later.
What I love about taking more time: Getting more in the details. What is the keyboard player doing? Why can't I play that one riff? Coming back with a fresh perspective - oh, that chord has an extension I didn't hear the first time through.
I played a game of schedule tetris yesterday. Actually, it was more like music chairs, because with tetris, everything fits somewhere if you can get to it fast enough. With musical time slots, there are always little tasks left running around with no hour to sit on.
My Weekly Wishes aren't falling neatly into the weeks. I'll learn my last Oscar song, "If I Rise", on Sunday. I will make the medley another week. Tonight and tomorrow, I need to practice "Black Coffee", which I'm supposed to record with my friend tomorrow. Or I'll work on the Gershwin transcription, if she has to reschedule (I just texted to confirm). Wrapping up this week's Wish is being pushed aside so I can finish up Wishes from other weeks.
Some Wishes, like learning to play accordion, aren't meant to fit into a week. (Sorry, neighbors. Sorry, kitty.) It's only a framework to see how much time I can find within a week to practice just for fun, because I still suck at time-management. To let it go and move on to something else, because I will need to practice letting go and moving on until the day I die.
EQ2EBG5HR59C