Matt the Electrician and my musical life

During the summer of 1981, I was at Buddhist camp in Vermont and I made the mistake of telling one of the cute brothers from Canada that I liked The Who.  He had asked me about my  favorite bands and since I had recently heard The Who and liked them, I thought this was an acceptable answer. This was my first, painful lesson in music coolness.  He laughed in my face and then squinted up his eyes like he was dealing with a real snake.  "What's your favorite song? What's your favorite album and can you name the order of the songs on it? Name the band members."  I could, of course, do none of this stuff.  It hadn't occurred to me that you were not allowed to like music in a casual way and not know anything about it or its band-of-origin. I just liked that song that went "Who are you, who-who, who-who. . ." At least that's how I thought it went.

I stared blankly back at his adorable suntanned face until he gave up on me with a little disgusted puff of air and went off to tell his super-cool older brothers about how I was a total poseur who didn't know anything about The Who. 

This experience sort of scarred me and my scars were not helped by the fact that my brother started making fun of my musical tastes when I was seventeen and he was TEN (what's wrong with John Cougar Mellencamp, I ask you?) and the fact that I can not—simply can NOT—remember song lyrics.

So, I've never been big into music.  I like music, but I'm always sort of intimidated to express my opinions. What if some guy who has memorized the order of every Led Zepplin album starts to question me?  What if I have to admit that I once studiously memorized EVERY word to EVERY song on Thriller, or someone tries to force me to defend early Madonna? Easier just to keep it to myself.

Until now.

A thing I like 

My friend Jen gave me a CD called One Right Thing for my birthday and I just recently opened it and stuck it in the car stereo, and I've just got to say that I heart Matt the Electrician so much I am sort of beside myself. Why, you ask?  Because he's funny and he writes songs about everyday things, and he often thumps on the wooden part of his guitar, and he plays the banjo, and his music sounds to me like the smartest, most fun train ride in the world.  And, that's really all I can tell you. Listen for yourself. I just can't get enough of "Change the Subject."

Dating 3.0

The Mister and I had a date day yesterday, a thing we try to do once a month.  We look forward to it the way kids look forward to Christmas and birthday parties and turning 10. A whole kid-free day to what we please together.

Here's what we did yesterday; it was very romantic.

1. sanded and primed these new dining room chairs we got for free off the street (stay tuned for photos, they're going to be sweet!)

2. mailed our taxes.

3. shopped for toilet paper at Smart & Final, where we also picked up a 3-pack of Kleenex and a bottle of bourbon.

4. bought at case of wine

5. browsed a discount upholstery warehouse and bought fabric for above-mentioned dining room chairs (it has pheasants on it, but trust me, it's very cute).

This is the late-30s, married with kids version of a hot date, I suppose.  But before you get to feeling too sorry for us, I must mention that we also went out for the best BLTs on the planet, and took a "nap." It was a great day.

What was your last great day?

A thing I like

These Tessa clogs, which I wear everyday.  I'm not convinced they aren't responsible for my increasingly alarming back problems, but they are so nice-looking, I almost don't care.  Buy them here and get on the ride.

What can you accomplish in three years?

  Check out what Maggie has done in the last 35 months.

She's gone from this (standing on my hand at 2 days old)

To this (rocking out to Tom Freund while chewing her first piece of gum)

Impressive, huh? How have you changed in the last three years?

A thing I like

This hilarious essay by Starlee Kine, formerly of This American Life.  To my mind this is humor writing at its best: short and sweet, all about voice, quirky, relatable without being predictable or hackneyed.  I once used it in a class I co-taught on humor writing and a few of the students didn't really like it.  To which I say, I don't really like you. Seriously, if this is not funny to you, maybe we need to rethink our friendship.

Sicko

Can we just talk about colds for a second?  I don't mean to whine but I have been sick, more or less, since November.  It's now mid-March.  That's, let's see, 4 months.  Four months of hacking and sneezing and snuffling and croaking like a toad.  I've had bronchitis and a sinus infection and something that left white pustules on my tonsils.  I've coughed so hard I've gagged. I've had a fever and the chills. I have been sick so often I am actually embarrassed about it.  I show up at work and feel as if there is a collective recoil.  And can I blame them?  No.  Truth is, I'm kinda gross.

Today I went to the doctor to see if maybe there was a reason behind my incessant germiness.  I was hoping they would find something obvious like an unrelenting sinus infection or a horrible black mold allergy.  Even something truly terrible like lupus would have at least been an explanation.  But I'm here to tell you that going to the doctor is no episode of House or page from the New York Times' "Diagnosis" stories. No one is interested in your medical mystery.  No team of doctors approaches with clipboards and medical journals to try to figure out your problem.  Nope.  Instead you are informed that colds are caused by viruses (um, I know) and give a prescription for cough medicine (no current cough). In short, my visit to the doctor was a wholly unsatisfying experience and I still can't breathe through either nostril.  

Any advice out there?  Because I am starting to forget what it feels like to be healthy.

A thing I like

This lovely and true poem about why death is such a loss by the late, great John Updike. It makes me cry.  I hope someone reads it at my funeral. 

Perfection Wasted 

And another regrettable thing about death 
is the ceasing of your own brand of magic, 
which took a whole life to develop and market -- 
the quips, the witticisms, the slant 
adjusted to a few, those loved ones nearest 
the lip of the stage, their soft faces blanched 
in the footlight glow, their laughter close to tears, 
their tears confused with their diamond earrings, 
their warm pooled breath in and out with your heartbeat, 
their response and your performance twinned. 
The jokes over the phone. The memories 
packed in the rapid-access file. The whole act. 
Who will do it again? That's it: no one; 
imitators and descendants aren't the same. 

Charlotte's Web is a horror movie

The Mister is away again (don't worry, I'll get mine sometime soon) and this evening after bath I decided to let Magnolia and Oliver watch a little Charlotte's Web while I cleaned up the Great Spaghetti Catastrophe of 2009.  I had just finished the last dish when I heard a blood curdling scream, a scream of unmistakable terror.  I bounded upstairs and intercepted my two weeping and terrified children right outside the TV room (also know as the office and guest room).  Behind them on the screen cartoon birds were flapping adorably in their nest while the golden sun rose over the bucolic Zuckerman farm. Honestly, it didn't seem that scary.

 "Was it the rat?" I ask, clutching them to my bosom. "Was it Templeton?" (I had been a little nervous about Templeton).

"The pig!" they squealed, still visibly shaken. "I don't like that pig who runs in the house."

"No, Wilbur is sweet.  He's a good pig."

"Turn it off," they sob, shaking.

I have damaged my children with Wilbur, and here he is in the all of his gruesomeness.  He doesn't mean to be "objectionable" but, oh, the horror.  The horror. . . 

Jury duty as vacation

What does it say about your life when you are sort of happy to realize that you have jury duty?  That you consider those eight quiet hours in that big, stuffy room full of impatient strangers and badly stocked vending machines to be found time, a lucky surprise akin to finding a $20 bill in the pocket of a coat you haven't worn in a year?

It reminds me of something I read once (maybe it was a movie?) in which the main character hoped to be involved in a minor but injurious accident so she would be forced into taking some down-time in the hospital.  The balance was a tricky one: She needed something that would earn her a few days in bed but that also wouldn't hurt too much. I totally get that.

So yes, that is my excuse for my tardy post--jury duty.  And no, I did not get picked for the seven-week trial.  I wanted to serve on a jury, I really did.  But seven weeks? I believe in civic duty, but I don't believe in it enough to lose wages and pay for extra childcare.  Which of course makes you wonder about who can afford to take seven-weeks off from their life.  Which then makes you think about the make-up of juries and what exactly a "peer" is and whether or not anything ever works as well as it should.  

I do know one thing--spending eight hours in the jury room of the San Francisco criminal court further cemented my opposition to the death penalty.  You do NOT want a bunch of people subsisting on Mountain Dew and stale granola bars to decide whether you live or die. 

A thing I like

It's not just because I am the voice of the dispatcher, either.  This animation about Darfur by the dear Mark Fiore is everything , in my humble opinion, a political cartoon should be: funny, depressing, clever, informative, and able to make a point without being preachy.  Watch it.  Then go to his website and click on the "do something" button.  He might not be preachy, but I am.

New tricks

Maggie in a bucket on the first sunny day in weeks

Remember number 3?  This little jobby: "learn to sew, even a little?"  Well, check.  I spent the first sunny Saturday in six weeks in a strange industrial building learning how to wind a bobbin and sew a French hem.  It was just me and one 2o-something hipster boy in an ironic t-shirt who barely spoke except to say he wanted to learn to sew so he could alter his thrift store clothes.  Oh, 20-something hipster boys, how it warms my heart to learn that some things never change.  And here I thought all San Franciscans were now driving minivans and discussing pediatricians or how, on second thought, maybe Botox isn't so bad.  But, no, many are still buying clothes by the pound at Thrift Town and fashioning bedrooms out of hallways with nothing more than an Indian tapestry.

But back to sewing.  Here's the thing: it's fun and I made a nice little drawstring bag, but now I'm scared it requires a knack for spacial relations that I genetically lack. Also, there was some nerve racking adding of fractions.  Still I plan to persevere.  I'm even planning on making everyone I know beautiful cloth napkins.  Squares, I can handle.   I think.

My mother-in-law just made this outfit for Maggie.  Cute, right?

A thing I like

Craft Haven Collective, where I took my class in San Francisco. Not only do they teach sewing to hipsters and anxious 39-year-olds, they also teach sewing and entrepreneurial skills to at-risk girls through Turning Heads.  Pretty cool, huh?  If you want to learn to sew, you should take a class there. Really, they are very nice.