Yah but is it ever that simple? Of course not. If it was I wouldn't be writing about it. Wouldn't that be an interesting installment. "Hi everyone I did nothing today and it was great and we had fun and it was so super we are doing it again tomorrow". Yawn. Well break out the glass shards for me to eat if I have to "enjoy" this day again. I woke up grumpy and stayed grumpy. Nothing went right but then nothing really went really wrong either. I won't bore you with the details. For the sake of getting to a more interesting topic let's just agree that today sucked. Good. It's nice to be right. At least that went the way it was supposed to. Yeesh!!
So here I am at 11:00 pm pondering about waking up on the wrong side of the bed. Then it occurred to me. What the hell does that expression even mean? Most expressions make sense if you think about them. A bird in the hand is definitely worth two in the bush. Hell it's probably worth 20 in the bush....unless you are scared of birds then it would be more like that old Alfred Hitchcock movie where people are getting their eyes pecked out. Thanks for the nightmares Mr. Hitchcock. Let's see you put your finger out for a sweet little chickadee now.
What about "the writing is on the wall". Which loosely translates to you are being stupid for not knowing this so I took the liberty of putting Jiffy marker to the wall board. Read it dummy!! Or having to "pay through the nose" which means you might as well pass a watermelon dude because this is going to really hurt. And I think we'd all agree that it's obvious what would happen if we put a bull in a china shop. Hope you brought your platinum Visa card with you.
Then there are a few expressions that seem somewhat intuitive but maybe require a little bit more thought such as "painting the town red". I'm going to sound smart now but I will confess that I had to look it up. Here it comes, get ready for it......While most of us may not know that there was a drunk guy and his friends who back in 1837 actually went around and painted parts of their town.....did you catch it? I sounded like I actually knew something cool. Trust me that doesn't happen often. I like to revel in those moments where I can. Anyway even without me telling you what it was based on you could probably imagine that to paint a town could be an exuberant and gutsy thing to do. It could be for example a great way to get back at your neighbors who say actually painted their fence bright orange. Yes, orange. I probably don't need to give you the address. Just drive to my house and you'll know the place. Don't get it confused with the orange house down the street. Apparently orange is the new white in my neighborhood. To get back to the point you could probably figure out that painting the town any color is kind of a rowdy thing to do even without knowing that it actually happened many years ago.
Another good example would be to hear something "on the grapevine". I don't think I need to explain that this is a bit of a stretch in thinking. Grapes really have nothing to do with information sharing....well unless it's in the form of too much wine but that's another blog entirely. The term is believed to have come from comments made by soldiers back in the mid 1800's to describe the twisted path ....not unlike a grapevine....that information was passed from one person to another often ending up incorrect at it's final destination. Wow, twice in one blog. She's on a roll people. Yah....I looked that up too. Sorry to disappoint you.
So all this thinking...which at best is a dangerous thing to do when you are this grouchy anyway....led me back to the expression "waking up on the wrong side of the bed". How did this expression come about? My brain started getting squirrely as it often does when these ridiculous topics jump into my head. I imagined a well groomed, snooty looking man standing around drinking brandy with some buddies regaling tales of his horrible day and pinning all the blame on rolling left instead of right to get out of his over sided bed with 800 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets and saying "har har har" as they all sympathized with his poor fortune. Hence the term was born.
Okay, I'll be honest. I did the research on this too. You'd think I was back in university for goodness sake. For those of you with enquiring minds several hundred years ago it was deemed unlucky to do anything on the left side first. That included getting out of the left side of your bed, putting on your left shoe first, or otherwise anything on that side.
So for those of you who eat left-overs, are left-handed, or who have left-wing political views watch out. The world is crumbling around you. You are best to just stay in bed and for goodness sake don't get out on the left side already. And for those of you whose partners sleep on the right hand side of the bed you now know just how selfish and spiteful they are for dooming you to a life of unrest, hardship, and misfortune. I suggest that tomorrow morning you crawl right over their pitiful sleeping selves as you ensure that your day starts the right way. Make sure to knee them in the ribs as you go. After all, isn't that what they deserve for stealing the lucky side of the bed anyway and not even telling you about it? I'm just saying it's a good that you have a true friend like me to tell you these things. After you finish climbing over them, watch as they roll out the left side. Look how grouchy they are. I told you. It's that damn left side of the bed that puts people in that mood. Now you know.
I sleep on the left and my life sucks.
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