Category: music
Seriously Old School.
Once in a Lifetime.
Rules of the Road.
Housekeeping Notes and Other Stuff.
I’ve done some housekeeping on here. I changed the comments settings, taking away word verification and moderation. There was a stretch in which I was receiving some snarky and rather insulting comments, from someone who wanted to remain anonymous which seemed to have stopped. I don’t mind snark, but own it, you know what I’m saying? I’ve realized from commenting on other blogs what a pain the new word verification settings have gotten to be. Some of you have thought blogger has been eating comments lately, but through the magic of the internet, they’ve shown up and been published. Well, the ones I know about.
I’ve changed some things around on my side bar too. I hadn’t updated my blogroll in quite some time, so I added a few new ones. My friends Ryanne, Julia, both of whom are new bloggers and quite entertaining. I’ve also added Suzicate’s “The Water Witch’s Daughter”, which I find inspiring. Suzicate, I’d love to go winery hopping with you next time you’re in Nelson. There are a slew of other blogs I read, so I hope to be better about swapping them out a little more frequently on my sidebar.
The conversation on Facebook that sprung out of the link I posted to my canning class yesterday led to it being restructured a bit. Instead of tomatoes and peaches, I’m going to teach canning tomatoes and pickles. I’m even more excited about this now. If you’ve paid attention to my posts over the last couple of summers, you’ll know how much I love to pickle things and that I will pickle anything. I plan on doing bread & butter pickles in the class and I will be sharing some of my other favorite pickle recipes. There’s a link sign up for the class on the sidebar now too.
I’m pretty sure I’m the last person out there to discover First Aid Kit. I can’t even take credit for discovering them, my dearest babydaddy heard them, realized I needed it and he made it the tunes I cooked to one day. I do love that man. Best Coast has a new album out, that I’ve heard great things about. I haven’t listened to it thoroughly yet, but I do like what I’ve heard. Anyone catch “Birth of an Album” on NPR this morning with Neko Case? Totally made my morning.
In a year of non-parties, the Oxford Road Block party was last weekend. I was worried when I wasn’t hand delivered my invite and instead happened to catch a flyer on a telephone pole. Turns out they didn’t invite anyone, it was all they could do to get the flyers up. At least they had the party though. There was a wonderful ‘mom circle’ that happened that refreshed my spirit that day in a much needed way. I heard other women that were there say the same thing. Maybe we need to do those things more often ladies. D- I’m totally serious about Wine Thursdays, just hollar. Also, I want that recipe please.
The best part of the evening though may have been watching Edie give the Fein boys a firehouse bath in the driveway. All is always right with the world when there are boys who understand she holds the hose and stays dry while they get soaked. I blame all older neighborhood boys who catered to her so much in her toddler years that she now expects all boys to do exactly what she tells them to do. The male portion of humanity has no idea what they have wrought upon themselves.
Running Past.
We woke up Saturday morning to the sounds of a race being run in the street past our house. I later realized when Saturday became the longest day I’ve had in a while, that there was a certain message from the greater universe in that.
The phrase that best describes the end of last week into the weekend is ‘everything at once’. Seriously. Starting Thursday afternoon, I found myself having to be in two and three places at once. I know from having spent the better part of almost the last 20 years with a man who is an environmentalist that this is his busy time of year. It’s this point every year that we become ships passing in the night, communicating by post-it notes on the counter and emails. I go to bed before he comes home some nights, he’s gone before I get up and the only way I know for sure that he actually came home is when I woke up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, he was beside me in bed. Also, he might sometimes leave a fresh pot of coffee on.
Friday night, we made a little time for a date night. Sharon Van Etten was playing down at the Jefferson and as she was on the everyday rotation there for a bit with my better half, who, by the way, puts almost no one on the everyday rotation, it was definitely a must-do. It was a lovely show and didn’t run too late, although Pat & I, being the music geeks that we are, even when we know we have to get up and be productive first thing in the am, can’t just come home from a show and go to bed. Oh no, we have to talk about it and listen to more music and maybe have another beer into the wee hours.
I had gotten an email from my hairdresser last week, telling me she had a spot for me on Saturday morning. She stopped being a hairdresser full time a few years ago, but she still is kind enough to do the hair of those of us who couldn’t find someone else we trusted enough with the task. I will go months on end without a haircut and then frantically decide I need one immediately. Over the years, she has figured out almost precisely when this is about to happen and will call or email me to say, I’ll see you this day at this time. I love this about her, almost as much as I love how freaking fabulous she is with my hair. Even when I haven’t had a trim in months people tell me what a great hair cut I have. She knows how to cut my hair so that I don’t need a trim every 6 weeks, something else to love about her.
I have taken Edie for exactly one haircut in her entire life. I trim her hair myself, because really, it’s not that hard, I cannot take her to one of those el cheapo places that I know will ruin her hair as they did mine growing up and I’m not springing for a haircut I can give myself. (I am THAT cheap.) This is what I’ve told myself for years. Last summer, I trimmed her hair and I’m not exactly sure how it happened, but I butchered it. Really. One of my neighbors got an eyeful of it and immediately asked ‘was there wine involved?’ No, there was not. Our then 13 year old babysitter looked at Edie and said, “I can fix this for you” and that is how a 13 year old became my daughter’s new stylist. She had not had a cut since and her ends were getting horrific. She refused to let me trim it and so I would mention maybe I’d take her for a cut. Maybe we could just go to one of those hair places….and I’d trail off. That kid held her ground. She told me for months that I should just take her to my gal. She’d throw in little comments like ‘Oh, you’d take me to one of those places at the mall? That means you’d have to go to the mall. You’d do that?’ because she knows that in addition to being cheap, I just cannot bring myself to go to the mall. Last time we were there, we were totally accosted by one of those perfume people and neither one of us has yet to recover.
So, when Boop emailed me last week, I asked if she could fit us both in. I waited until Friday night to share this with Edie, mostly so that she wouldn’t gloat too much. Boop could indeed fit us both in, so we headed downtown early Saturday morning to get our hair done.
We hit the farmer’s market while we were downtown, headed home for quick change to soccer gear, grabbed a sandwich, then we headed out to soccer. Her soccer game was west of town and Pat just happened to be working a festival just 10 minutes west of where we were, so as we left the game, she asked if we could go visit Daddy. He was scheduled to not just work this festival, but attend a dinner that evening, then work another festival the next day, Sunday. And he’s got to work the next few weekends, so any face time we can grab with him this time of year, we take. I had every intention of making it back for the upcoming elementary school garden festival committee meeting later that afternoon, but I had forgotten the festival he was working was also a wine festival. Fly fishing AND wine tasting? That is something for everyone in this family. There were only a handful of wineries there, but most of them were new to me, so I had to check them out. Meanwhile, Pat had to boogie off to a talk on the Jackson River Lawsuit, where he presented a check on behalf of his employer to the defendant to help with the now $80,000 legal fees he’s racked up in trying to keep Virginia’s rivers open for public use. It was interesting to hear about the case from some of the other interested parties, including Beau Beasley, a most entertaining fly fishing writer. We somehow ended up staying for the festival’s foundation dinner at the nearby country club that evening. Prime rib dinner I don’t have to cook or clean up and there was chocolate cake for dessert? Twist my arm. It was a lovely evening, but driving home at 9:30 that night, I realized I had been on GO since I had awoken to the sounds of a race early that morning. Needless to say, when we woke up to cold, gray and rainy yesterday, along with the news that the Earth Day Festival Pat was supposed to work that day cancelled, we joyfully all stayed in our PJ’s, read and watched movies all day long. It was glorious. We introduced Edie to “Gone with the Wind”. Apparently some of her classmates have seen it and some thought it over hyped and not nearly as good as “Mama Mia”. She expressed an interest in seeing it and since it is one of my all time faves, I jumped at the chance to watch it with her. She liked it, although she thought it was too sad in parts (welcome to Southern Gothic my dear, my absolute favorite genre) and she thought the ending left you hanging. We told her that was the classic problem with GWTW, does she ever get him back?
Today was another cold, rainy day, but I already know this week is going to be a repeat of last week, so there was no more glorious curling up in PJ’s like yesterday. I have successfully knocked out most of my to-do list in a wild burst of productivity and put off the fun stuff until last. I have a birthday cake to make for a dear boy who is turning 13 this week. He requested chocolate, chocolate, chocolate and maybe some fruit, so I need to go figure out exactly what cake I’m making him. I need to figure out what my Girl Scouts are doing this week, as the meeting I had planned was panned by the girl in my house. (I may just ignore that and take my chances, which I know, can end in disaster.). I swapped some bee balm for raspberry bushes so they, as well as the rest of the veggies for the garden need to get in the ground. (Today’s 40 degree temps definitely made me happy I’ve waited until the right time to plant, despite the unseasonably warm temps.). There’s end of the school year things piling up, like camp applications (We got confirmation today she’s off for another 3 weeks at Camp Lachlan!!), class picnics to plan and last night the evening news reminded me to purchase pool passes. Ah, summer, I can hardly wait! Not that I want to rush the season though – as it is spring is running past me! How is it the end of April already?
Spring Soundtrack
On music and motherhood.
There are certain things everyone says they will never do as parents. Of course, most of these declarations are when we are all knowing and childless. Sometimes these even run into the first few years of being a parent, when you still think you are somewhat in control.
The top of my list was becoming a soccer mom, going to a PTO meeting and listening to top 40 radio.
The first two have been violated, but I’m holding fast to that last one.
I have no problem admitting I’m a music geek. I love all sorts of music (generally), as does my husband. Even if our taste isn’t always the same, we both like discovering new bands and sharing them. Over the years, we have both made mixes (first on CD, now on itunes for her ipod) for Edie. Now that she’s getting older and starting to develop her own taste in music, she leaves us lists of what she’d like loaded on her ipod next. There is a frightful amount of what I call ‘that new crap’ on those lists, and so I hand it over to her father. He takes the time to listen to everything first, making sure it’s appropriate for her 9 year old ears. He will also then throw some songs in there that he thinks she would like. She recently complained that the last time she handed her father a list, he took the opportunity to practically fill her ipod with HIS music.
‘He put Nirvana on there. And Gillian Welch. And some other stuff you two like”.
Suddenly, we are being roped together in this music battle – Us vs. Her. (And yes, we’ve had some battles.) I’ve realized that my freakishly nerdy 80’s music trivia knowledge is being matched by my daughter’s equally deep knowledge about today’s music. A few weeks ago, she was curled up in the den watching the red carpet for some music awards show and knew who everyone was. There was some fellow I had never seen before and she started rattling off everyone he had been playing with – Nicki Minaj (I had to look that up!) as well as Usher. How does she know this?!?! We don’t have cable, her screen time, both TV and computer is generally limited and supervised. I get that she wants to listen to what her friends listen to. I worry that she’s liking it, despite our work of making sure she only listens to ‘good’ music. Our definition of good of course.
There are moments of hope though. I was cleaning her room a few months back when I stumbled upon an old Red Hot Chili Peppers CD in her stash. I asked her where it came from and she answered “Well, I needed something new to listen to, so I went through your CD’s and thought that looked interesting.” (She liked it!). She loves Ozzy. Driving home from market on a Saturday morning a few weeks ago, she recognized the Dead playing with Dylan on one of his songs, “Stuck down in Mobile….”. I was so proud. After all, how many 9 year olds can identify a Bob Dylan song?
That’s the thing about parenthood. You enter it with all the best intentions, only to have most of them shattered by those beautiful little creatures. You have to learn to let go, to surrender control and just hope that some of what you want to imprint upon them sticks.
Mixing it up.
I’m a total music geek. I’m not alone – our house has some sort of music playing device in every room but one bathroom. We have CD’s stacked in well, a good number of rooms. I listen to music at work all day, something that took the people I work with some time to get used to I think. I must have a soundtrack at all times.
I drove the same car for over 15 years. At one point, the cassette player bit it and the radio antenna came unattached, so it was a bit of a black hole, musically. For Mother’s Day one year, my dear husband got me a macdaddy car stereo that was worth more than the car. It played mp3 discs, I could hook a thumb drive straight into it and not even bother with burning a cd. My musical choices when I drove suddenly exploded. This was good. And then, last fall, my beloved 1995 Honda Civic needed too much money to keep it on the road. It just wasn’t worth it anymore. The new car is a 2001 and has a nice Bosch stereo, with a cassette player and a cd player that doesn’t played burned cd’s, so it’s a wee bit outdated (but nice. and in good shape). So while the new car is nice and runs well and has things like working air conditioning, I miss my old stereo.
Over the years, there are certain albums that have become my personal soundtrack. I have a tendency to listen to the same album over and over, day in and day out. There is always a current favorite (right now it’s Jenny & Johnny’s I’m Having Fun Now), but then there are the go-to’s, like Nothing’s Shocking. Green. The Caution Horses, among others. Those 3 albums listed I’ve worn out several copies of. I just burn a new copy and go on with myself. Not to mention the shows I’ve been to that I like to listen to – Pat went through my ticket stubs and got me every Dead show I ever went to, every Wilco show we’ve been to. Suddenly, I can’t have these on hand, in my car. I’m slightly freaking out.
I got an iPod for Christmas. Yes, I’m slow on the technology. I haven’t seen that much of a need for it frankly. I’ve got a boombox or stereo in every room, a decent car stereo….oh wait….
So the iPod has become critical for my musical pleasures in the car. But this means I have to get organized about what I put on there. And, it means examining what has been my lazy musical attitude for years. Maybe it’s time to switch up the ‘standard’ car music. This means taking out some stuff I’ve kept in the car since high school. Yes, that long ago. My dear husband has pledged to help me by telling me if I tell him what I need to have loaded into iTunes so that it can go on my iPod, he’s willing to do it. However, I’ve realized my iTunes is a mess too. We had a major computer crash about this time last year and I lost all my playlists. I don’t even know what all is loaded on my iTunes these days. Pat will find some new band he thinks I’ll like and load it up for me to discover. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been attempting to organize my iTunes. I found several new artists I didn’t know were there. I got some listening to do…. and I’m pretty sure Edie will applaud this. We have mother-daughter music disagreements on a daily basis, since I do spend a little bit of time hauling her around. Apparently I really burnt her out on Band of Horses and She & Him when they were my daily fare. She’s burnt me out on Arcade Fire and Gorillaz. Sometimes we have to just listen to radio because it’s the only thing we agree on.
All in all, I’m excited about changing my approach to music. It’ll be good for me. After those few warm winter days where I drove around with the sunroof open and realized I really do need REM’s Green in my car, he totally loaded it onto my iPod for me. He is such a keeper.