Yesterday, I was the clean up woman. Consequently, I completely forgot to post on Pop Rock Nation.
I got into the cleaning mode yesterday, probably because my landlords came by the house unannounced on Monday and it was not as clean as I would have liked it to be. I started yesterday morning by cleaning up a couple of puddles left by one of my dogs, then progressed to bathroom cleaning, laundry, dog washing, and linen changing. The whole thing involved climbing up and down a lot of stairs, since the house we live in has three floors and I spend a lot of time on the top story. The laundry room is in the basement and I did four loads. Yup, lots of going up and down with heavy loads and my arse feels it today. As I ponder all the housework I did yesterday, I am reminded of a classic song by Betty Wright.
A 1971 hit I was first introduced to when I watched Ally Sheedy in the 1987 film, Maid To Order.
Okay, so “Clean Up Woman” is really about a woman who gets sloppy seconds, right? She takes all the leftover guys with the blues and makes ’em happy. But it has a great beat for housekeeping. Maybe I would have been in a better mood to write about music had I turned on this tune while changing the sheets and hauling dirty clothes to the basement.
Another song that comes to mind is “Sara”… Yes, the song made famous by Stevie Nicks and allegedly about a baby she was carrying by Don Henley. There’s a version that runs for close to nine minutes and begins with Stevie saying, “I want to be a star. I don’t want to be a cleaning lady.”
OMG, I love this song. It’s not really about cleaning, other than Stevie Nicks’ sentiments about not wanting to be a cleaning lady.
Really, though, “Watching the Clothes” by The Pretenders is more like what yesterday was like for me. It takes forever to wash clothes with a European front loading washer. For one thing, the machines are smaller than American models. For another thing, the cycles tend to last forever. Sometimes I use the “kurz” cycle, which is only 30 minutes. But it feels like I’m just giving ’em a rinse when I do that.
The beauty of having your own washer is not having to dance in the laundromat as your clothes spin. Kudos to the creativity of the guy who made this video…
But since I am primarily a housewife, I suppose it’s my job to be doing this shit…
I’ve always liked this song by Jimmy Buffet, though I also like Livingston Taylor’s cover. Perhaps I should learn to embrace the joys of housework.
I would have liked to have added Kate Bush’s “Mrs. Bartolozzi” to this post, but alas, there are no YouTube videos for that song. I find it harder to find appropriate YouTube videos in Germany because they seem to be very strict about copyright here. Not saying that’s a bad thing, especially for artists and record companies. Just saying it makes it harder to find clever videos for my blog posts.
On the other hand, it’s not every day you find a video by Granny Clampitt (aka Irene Ryan) of the The Beverly Hillbillies. If you don’t watch any of the other videos in this post, I do recommend this one. It’s quite funny.
This is a much more fun version of “I’m A Woman” than the one used for Enjoli ads in the 70s and 80s…
I expect to be more on the ball Friday. Until then, happy housecleaning.
