All I am saying is give the music a chance

Feel free to hate the Twilight “Saga”.  Please.  You are fully justified.  But you don’t have to be a fan of the movies to appreciate the soundtracks. 

Last year I gave you a sampling of the music from Twilight.  It was one of my favorite cd’s last year.  Lots of good stuff on there.  This year I picked up the New Moon soundtrack, expecting to like it just as much. 

On first listen, I found myself skipping through the songs, only stopping for a minute or so on each one.  I wasn’t so sure I was excited about them.  This soundtrack seemed a little more subdued (is that the word I’m looking for?) than the last one.  A little slower?  A little…uh…I dunno.  It was kind of like trying to listen to an entire Cranberries album in one sitting, if that makes sense. No, that doesn’t feel quite right. It’s hard to find the right words. Fuzzy? Foggy? Hazy?

There is a definite indie quality to it, even more so than the first one, I think, which I suppose can make it feel less immediately…accessible?  I decided to live with it for a few days in the car, and by the fourth or fifth time through I was pretty much sold.

Here’s a sampling of the cd.  You only get about 30 seconds of each song, but it will give you an idea.

1. Meet Me on the Equinox – Death Cab For Cutie  (The first time I heard this I thought it was like Willie Nelson meets Neil Tennant, and then I realized it was DCFC, and then I laughed at myself.)
2. Friends – Band of Skulls (This is DynaGirl’s favorite and one of the more up or fun songs, if you will. A good sing-along.)
3. Hearing Damage – Thom Yorke (This is Chuck’s favorite.)
4. Possibility – Lykke Li (I think I first heard this song on a SYTYCD routine, and the chick’s voice kinda bugged, but now I think it’s pretty—I still skip it sometimes, though.)
5. A White Demon Love Song – The Killers (I was surprised to find that this is not one of my favorites–you know how I love The Killers!–but it’s growing on me.)
6. Satellite Heart – Anya Marina (I like this song more and more every time I hear it.)
7. I Belong to You – Muse (Muse is always a good time.)
8. Roslyn – Bon Iver & St. Vincent (I cannot make sense out of these words, which I guess is just as well considering I can’t make out most of them anyway.)
9. Done All Wrong – Black Rebel Motorcycle Club (My favorite line: All the wrong I’ve done will be undone in song.)
10. Monsters – Hurricane Bells (Goose’s favorite—another fun sing-along and one of the few upbeat songs.)
11. The Violet Hour – Sea Wolf (My girls like this one, too. I hope they never really figure out what they’re singing, though.)
12. Shooting the Moon – OK Go (At first I found the drum beat a little overwhelming, but this one’s OK.)
13. Slow Life – Grizzly Bear with Victoria LeGrand (An apt title, but has that cool guitar thing going. Maybe one of my favorites, actually.)
14. No Sound But the Wind – Editors (The first time I heard this one I wanted to poke my ears out—“Help me to carry the fii-uh…it will light our way for-e-vuh”—but it’s cheese has grown on me some.)
15. New Moon (The Meadow) – Alexandre Desplat (Lovely instrumental.)

Definitely not as good as the first one, for me, but all in all a pretty decent soundtrack despite the lack of Paramore.

What do you think?

What I’m listening to

DynaGirl gave me Paramore’s latest album, Brand New Eyes, for my birthday last month, and I have to admit I like it.  I like it quite a bit, actually.

My two favorite tracks are at the end of the cd.  “Misguided Ghosts” is a pretty little melancholy number with that cool scratchy, squeaky guitar string action that I find so appealing, for some reason.

{Verse 1}
I am going away for a while
But I’ll be back, don’t try and follow me
‘Cause I’ll return as soon as possible
See I’m trying to find my place
and it might not be here where I feel safe
We all learn to make mistakes

{Chorus}
And run
From them, from them
With no direction
We’ll run from them, from them
With no conviction

‘Cause I’m just one of those ghosts
Traveling endlessly
Don’t need no roads
In fact they follow me

And we just go in circles

{Verse 2}
Now I’m told that this is life
And pain is just a simple compromise
So we can get what we want out of it
Would someone care to classify
Our broken hearts and twisted minds
So I can find someone to rely on

{Chorus}
And run
To them, to them
Full speed ahead
Oh you are not useless
We are just

Misguided ghosts
Traveling endlessly
The ones we trusted the most
Pushed us far away
And there’s no one road
We should not be the same
But I’m just a ghost
And still they echo me

They echo me in circles

“All I Wanted” is a little angry.  I’m digging the anger.

Anyway, say what you will about Paramore, but there’s some good, fun stuff on this cd.

1. careful
2. ignorance
3. playing god
4. brick by boring brick *This is my girls’ favorite–I think it’s the ba da ba ba da ba ba’s.
5. turn it off
6. the only exception *BigHugs likes this one–I think because she can sing the whole chorus.
7. feeling sorry
8. looking up
9. where the lines overlap
10. misguided ghosts
11. all i wanted

Moping

I have a plethora of ridiculously awesome wacky search terms, and I can’t do a thing with them.  I’ve been trying.  So far I’ve got: “cowbell for potty training—Time to get out of those gold-plated diapers, baby!”  Yeah, nothing’s coming.

You know, there are people in this world with real problems.  People who are sick, people who are unemployed, people who are homeless, people who are going through divorces, people who have lost everything in natural disasters, and yet I seem to think that my life sucks enough right now to justify wallowing in self-pity.  It’s disgusting, really.  I’m moody and angry and apathetic and irrational and selfish and disgusted.

I think I’ll go wash some dishes.

Something I decided today

Life’s too short to be eating stale-ish crackers.

I threw the almost full box away and opened a brand new one!  Yes, yes I did.  I didn’t even put it back in the pantry, pretending that someone else would eventually eat them.  It was all quite liberating.

What have you decided lately?

Week in the life

Sunday

Went to church, cleaned house (not exactly an activity typical of the Sabbath for me, or any day of the week, for that matter), removed all the painter’s tape from the stairs and upstairs hall that had been there since August 2008 (yes, I still need to put a third coat of paint on, but it looks so much better without the tape), made fried chicken and mashed potatoes, burned a pan of butter on the stove and immersed the house in smoke and a vague oily, fried-chickeny, scorched buttery smell.  But the gravy was darn good.

Monday

Spent all morning finishing up the cleaning I had started over the weekend so our realtor friend could come over and tell us how much he thinks we could get for our house.  (We’ve been seriously contemplating a move.)  I apologized for the leftover smell and he was very kind to say he hadn’t noticed.  He also said our place was “very cute” and that I had “done a great job with it” and quoted me a very acceptable price.  Then I spent the rest of the day running kids around to piano and such.

Tuesday

Told myself I would not clean a single thing in the house that day.  I’m pretty sure I stuck to that.  There may have been some dish-doing.  Also beat my head against the wall while volunteering in Goose’s classroom, went to take a second look at a house we went to see over the weekend, ran Goose to gymnastics and finished off Catching Fire, the sequel to Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, both of which were very enjoyable, by the way.  Oh, and had my birthday celebration with the girls that I mentioned before.  I will blog more about this next week.  It really does deserve a post of its own, but I’ll give you a sneak preview of one of the evening’s more notable quotes: “Big boobs…toggle, toggle.”

Wednesday

Took BigHugs to the store to pick out her snack for preschool.  I tried to steer her towards the more healthy fair, like maybe cheese sticks and some crackers, but we ended up with the chocolate chip candy cookies.  Whatever.  They were cheaper than the cheese option anyway, so that was a bonus.  I decided to skip out on volunteering in Goose’s classroom again, sat around and did pretty much nothing until I remembered I had a date with awesomeness via phone.  We had a short but lovely conversation then made the daily kid pickup/dropoff run.  The evening brought an unexpected and unwelcome turn of events (that I will share with you another time) and I spent the rest of the evening miserable and crying.  (Don’t worry, no one is sick or dead.  Just my hopes and dreams.)

Thursday

Woke up with puffy eyes and a headache, but pulled myself together to take BigHugs to gymnastics.  Had half a wheel of laughing cow along with half a box of crackers, some chips, a half dozen York peppermint patties and a bunch of other crap of which I have no recollection.

Goose came home from school with some stories she had published.  As you know, I so love reading my children’s stories.  This one is called “Clean Up!”

One time I got out a whole bunch of toys and it was so messy whenever I tried to get somewhere I heard something break.  Like…crash!  Bang!  Ow!  My foot would get hurt.  When my mom came in she yelled… “You know what you have to clean this mess up first thing in the morning!”  Then she tucked me in gave me a hug and a kiss and I went to sleep.  The next day I did not clean up and the next and the next!

When my mom found out I was not cleaning, she said… “You know what you have to clean up tomorrow or else you will be grounded off of no computer, Wii or friend playing.”  The next day my friend came to my house and my mom had to clean my room.  We got out all of the same stuff I got out yesterday.  When she left I said thanks to my mom for cleaning.  The next day I woke up early in the morning and started organizing stuf all the dolls and cloths in one bin and objects and other things in the other bin.  When mom was awake I was done.  I told her and she said “Rock on”  “Your welcome” I replied.

The End!

There were illustrations, but none that featured me, so obviously they weren’t essential to the story.

And our furnace went out yesterday.  It was coming on, but only blowing cold air, and the garage had that lovely eau d’ gas smell going on.  I only entertained the possibility that our house would blow up or that we would all die from some kind of asphyxiation for like half a second. 

Chuck came home early to check it out, and ended up calling a repair guy.  We don’t have a regular furnace guy, so he just looked up some random company in the phone book that promised 24- hr same day service and no driving charges.  It turns out our ignition switch was out, so they replaced it. 

With the service call charge, diagnosis fee, parts and labor, the total came to $500 for about 30 minutes of work.  “That’s like a thousand dollars an hour!” Chuck exclaimed in his best Napoleon.  The guy very generously threw in a “furnace service and tune up” (read “run a shop vacuum over it for about 30 seconds), regularly a $200 charge, for free. 

Chuck’s favorite part of the whole experience was having the guy tell him that sometimes they get calls where it turns out all they need to do is replace the batteries in the thermostat, and the people end up dishing out $350 for a service call and diagnostic fee for a couple of double As.  So basically he was saying, “I just screwed you over, but not as bad as some other shmucks out there.”

Friday

Still in pajamas, writing this blog post, which I was tempted to title “Weak in the life”, but feeling slightly more optimistic this morning.  At least for the moment.  The kids have early release today, and I should probably spend the afternoon preparing for the birthday party we’re having for Goose tomorrow.  I haven’t done a single thing other than send out invitations.  Not.  One.  Single.  Thing.  I think the main event will be playing Dance Dance Revolution on the Wii.  I figure we can throw in some cake and a little present-opening and call it good, right?  This party will be the first one I’ve had in I don’t know how long that hasn’t had some kind of theme, which is totally cool with me.  I think I’m ready to give up the pretense of over-achieving parent.

The rest of the weekend, who knows?  Anyone have big plans?

Born of awesomeness

I was supposed to volunteer in Goose’s classroom today, but yesterday I was supposed to volunteer in DynaGirl’s classroom, only when I went down there they had a sub who knew not what to do with me, so I headed over to Goose’s classroom instead, and I even told Goose’s teacher that I would plan to be back again tomorrow (today), but today I decided that I had more important things to do than volunteerism and helping to educate the future of America, plus also I didn’t think I was up to a repeat of yesterday’s banging my head against the desk whilst trying to explain how to count money to a third grader. 

Me: How many cents are in a nickel?
Kid I wanted to strangle:Ten?
Me: No, there are ten cents in a dime.
KIWTS:  One? 
Me: No, a penny is one cent. 
KIWTS: Fifteen? 
Me: No.
KIWTS: Six? 
Me: No, there is one cent in a penny, five cents in a nickel, 10 cents in a dime and 25 cents in a quarter. 
KIWTS: Oh yeah.
Me: If there are 5 cents in a nickel, how many cents are in two nickels?
KIWTS: Seven! 
Me: No.
KIWTS: Six?
Repeat for 25 minutes.

So what are my more important things to do?  Apparently, my more important thing to do is sit here.  And do nothing.

I am sitting wearing my watch now restored to its former non-glorious glory.  So that’s nice.  And I also got to eat my chicken pad thai leftover from last night’s GNO birthday club dinner, which happened to be celebrating yours truly.  I’m going to have to tell you more about this birthday club thing.  Because it’s fun-filled awesomeness.

Speaking of fun-filled awesomeness…

Mid-conversation with DynaGirl.

Me: Aren’t I full of awesomeness?

DynaGirl: Yes.  And that means I was born of awesomeness, which makes me the most awesome of all.

Hard to argue with that.

 

At the dinner table.

DynaGirl: Ew, I got gravy on my elbow. Mom, could you get me a napkin?

Goose: Just lick it off.

DynaGirl: I can’t lick my own elbow.  That’s impossible.

Mr. T, in all seriousness: It’s not impossible, but not everybody can do it.  I looked on youtube for instructions how to, and it said if you can’t do it after following the instructions, then you just don’t have that talent. 

Also born of awesomeness.

Hallelujah!

Guess what Goose found under BigHugs’ bed on Sunday?  Come on, guess.  Guess!

Wash and wear? What’s that?

Yesterday I went to get my hair color done while BigHugs was in preschool.  BigHugs is in preschool for 2.5 hours, which is just about as much time as it takes to do my double color foil.  I know it sounds like a long time, but apparently the results are worth it.  We finished with just about 10 minutes until time to make the preschool run.  It takes about 5 minutes to get to the school from my sister’s, so I thought I’d try to dry my hair with that 5 extra minutes.  My sister’s hair dryer was not up to the task of drying my soaking wet hair in that limited amount of time.  When the 5 minutes were up, I debated whether it would be worth it to spend a couple more minutes with the dryer and risk being a few minutes late for the preschool pickup. 

I decided I’d rather do the preschool run with wet hair than be tardy and incur the wrath of Ms. Jammi, the preschool teacher.  (That’s pronounced Jamie, by the way, and I’d really like to know what is up with that spelling because it clearly spells jammi as in pajammi.  I can see Jamie or Jami or even Jaime or Jaimee or possibly even Jayme or hell, even Jeighme, but Jammi just says pjs to me.  I would like to point out at this time that Ms. PJs is a lovely, lovely woman and her “wrath” is really more of a  tsk-tsk kind of look mostly disguised with a cheery smile, but still.  I don’t like being on the receiving end of any tskiness.)

As I was greeted by my daughter and her little friend we carpool with, the latter takes one look at my partially dry hair and says, “You didn’t fix your hair today.”  I thought it was pretty awesome of her to notice.  Nothing like a little grooming comment from a four-year-old.  I tucked my hair behind my ears, packed up the girls, dropped off Little Miss Observant, and headed for Goose and DynaGirl’s school for the next round of pickups.

I ran into a friend of mine outside of the school, who did a subtle double take (you know those ones that are all in the eyes) and then sweetly said with a smile, “Oh, did you walk to the school today?”  You know, it was raining yesterday, so I it was a fairly reasonable assumption based on the state of my do.  I explained the situation, and my friend recovered very nicely with a compliment about how great my color always looks.

After school got out, I took the girls straight to my sisters for a little bang-trimming and then finally got home.  I was a little amused and a little surprised that my hair had drawn so much attention in such a short amount of time, but then I looked in the mirror.  And saw this:

And remembered why I do not leave the house without blowdrying my hair.  Ever. 

What can you not leave the house without doing?

2010

Where the heck did that come from?  How did I get here??  Seriously. 

I owe Goose a birthday post.  She turned 8 last week.  I can guarantee it will be backdated.

I’ve had family in town for the past 10 days.  That’s totally my excuse.  For anything that hasn’t been accomplished in the past two weeks.  Or ever.  The last one left today, though, so I’m not sure how much longer I can justify riding this slacker train.

How are you?