Hardest Goes First?

Do you have any "things" that you like to do in a certain order, but you don't really know why. You can explain it to yourself, but someone else may do it entirely different and explain it equally well. I'm not talking about sock, sock, shoe, shoe vs sock, shoe, sock, shoe, because everybody agrees the former is the correct way. I'm just talking about little things, and the sock shoe thing is definitely a big thing. A deal-breaker big thing. Right?

When doing homework or reading books, Aidan chooses the hardest first. Even if he chooses his two favorite books to read, he reads the "hardest" one first. Before starting on his homework, he looks through it all and sorts it from hardest to easiest and insists on doing it that way. On the other hand, Aimee does the easiest homework first and saves the hard stuff for last. Both of them can explain their reasoning seemingly convincingly, but I'm guessing that whichever way YOU do it, is the way that will make the most sense to you.

Watching him do homework reminded me of Alex doing his at about the same age. My sweet 18 year old Alex used to be 7, did you know? A long time ago. (It doesn't seem like quite so long ago.) He had a 5 sentence paragraph to write each day to practice the spelling words. His teacher firmly believed that if children learned to write the words in context, rather than in a list, they would continue to spell them correctly for their whole life. It's a great concept, but 7 and 8 year old children don't like to write that much every day. Each day Alex counted how many words were left. And instead of subtracting the amount that he wrote, every few words he recounted. It's not that counting was easier than subtracting; he excelled in math. He just liked to count them. I think he thought it broke it up and made it take less time, but I promise you, it didn't. Some days, homework seemed to last all afternoon.

This week, my friend and I went to clean the church. When I got there, she was already starting in the bathroom because "it's the hardest, so I always do it first." I, however, do them last because I don't like them, so I do everything else before. Unfortunately for her, (fortunately for me?) I didn't get finished with the other tasks before she finished bathrooms, so she did them on her own. (Incidentally, I was wondering if you all have families assigned or volunteered to help clean the church or if there is someone else who does that. We used to have someone, now we just all chip in and do it.)

PSA ala The Price Is Right

"Help control the pet population. Have your pet spayed or neutered." Seriously, people. This is not just a phrase of some random words thrown together. This is IMPORTANT. Gah! Stop selling animals like they are your living!! And no, most of you aren't careful breeders of some AKC breed that are carefully bred. Stop acting like you're doing the world a favor by guilting everyone into getting one more of your over-bred animals! I do feel for the animals, that's why I say this. What I wish was that you didn't think it was so great that your pet and its off-spring are paying for your irresponsibility as the owner. Telling us all about how cool it is isn't convincing anyone that it's okay for you to fail your pet.


Rant continued (if you are a cat lover, I don't mean any disrespect to you, just the over-proliferation of memes, I promise):
I hate cat memes. It's like the world is being taken over. How is it funny to keep posting "grumpy cat" pictures and referring this to your own life. I don't get it. And I don't want to see it. I wish I could report them as spam. Someone recently joked that there would soon be two internets: one as the regular internet, the other that is told as "Mean Girls" quotes. This would be slightly humorous, but not close enough to truth. There may be two parallel internet worlds, but one will be totally dominated by strange obsessive cat memes and cats who mind-control their owners into letting them run the computer. (Actually, as I typed this, I flipped over to facebook to post an idea and saw 2 new posts with that annoying meme. I can't wait for this trend to disappear.)


Lastly, this isn't a rant as much as a request, but I still feel kind of bad for saying it. (Apparently today's post is just the feel-guilty-for-posting-it one and I will hope that I don't incur the wrath of cat-lovers, meme-lovers, and lovers of music legends.) Blasphemy, probably.
Leonard Cohen remakes, please! I almost get him. Almost. There are parts in 'Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye' that I like. The guitar stuff in "The Stranger Song" is nifty. But then he sings some run on breathless too low lyric and I start to wonder again. I want to like them, but the songs are just too strangely written. I would like to see new arrangements. For example, the version of "Hallelujah" that we all know and love by Jeff Buckley was thankfully rearranged by John Cale, because really, the original sounds kind of creepy.
So, am I just not listening to the right songs or does someone really need to rearrange these things? Or if he's your favorite, can you explain it to me?

Maybe each of these situations could be corrected if Leonard Cohen would write a song about getting your pets fixed. Our veterinarians would have an influx and our world would be happier?

The Moment You Are Looking Forward To Folding Clothes...And Other Oddities

Ah the joyous feeling! You know the one. When you've been down with a cold, or possibly the flu, for 4 days, and you finally are able to see the mess that has accumulated while you have been faking the mom/housekeeper/homemaker part of your job, despite helpful children and husband. Even better, you realize that you didn't crash into bed at 9pm, but are awake at 12:30am and realizing that you have both the desire and the energy to clean it all up, despite the fact that the 6am alarm is looming in your mind. So, in the middle of the night, you sort the laundry, arrange the fridge, make lunches, and windex to your little heart's desire, because guess what?!  You can see without sinus tears running down your face. You can breath clearly! And when you exert for 2 minutes, you aren't panting! I have some catching up to work on today, but I'm thrilled that I can actually do it! Do the happy dance with me.