The Things They Listened To

For opening night of my first paid musical theater gig, my sound designer gave me a pile of CD’s. Some of them I had heard him play over the system during tech rehearsals, some I had never heard of. Every one of them was amazing and none of them would I have ever found on my own. Cassandra Wilson, Duncan Sheik, John Zorn, Holly Cole. Coltrane, Fiona Apple, Elvis Costello, Jonathon Richman. Loudon Wainwright, Tom Waits.

I was in Arizona at the time, home of the greatest used music store on the planet. For the run of the show, and for the rest of the time that I lived there, I would go to Zia’s every Monday (my dark day) and spend a couple of hours digging around the bins. My classic rock and heavy metal roots branched out to classical, punk, minimalist, new age, cowpunk, classic country, and the downright strange.

Which is half the story of how I later found myself, at age 28, to own over four hundred CD’s and no bed. The other half of the story I’m not telling.

CC and I had a moment recently where we realized our kids don’t have the experience of finding music that way. When CD’s first came out there used to be one store in the city that sold them, and he’d go in every day off and buy whatever came out that week. They were so new, so expensive, and there was so little available. It’s how he ended up with Israeli dance music in his collection.

Our kids don’t buy CD’s. There’s no store to go to anymore to find gems– you know, the things you missed when they were new and you were listening to something else. Our kids Spotify and listen to what their friends listen to. Fine for finding new popular music. But where do they go for unpopular music?

I haven’t Spotified yet. I play Pandora on the TV when I’m allowed control of the remote. But I love iTunes DJ on my laptop. It has an irony filter. Let’s face it, I’ve got a lot of music that I’m not going to actively seek out to listen to all the time. Before we left for Indiana on our Thanksgiving road trip, this was the playlist it selected for me:

It inspired me to set up the whole there & back’s worth of discs for our trip.

We started off at 5am with Jethro Tull’s Songs From The Wood. Went on to Chet Atkins, Gin Blossoms, My Chemical Romance, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Act I of Carmen. Right about there is when the kids could hold it in no longer. (It’s also when they were fully awake and out of donuts that hadn’t been squished).

Them: MY GOD! WHAT IS THIS AWFUL MUSIC???

Me: Carmen! Isn’t it awesome?

Them: IT’S HORRIBLE! IT’S THE WORST MUSIC I’VE EVER HEARD!

Me: Maybe you’ll like the other two discs better.

Them: OH GOD!

Me: Wait wait wait, the hook is coming up, hang on.

At which point they all started doing bad kid opera impressions and attempted to get the puggles involved.

I was unfazed. We finished the disc.

Next up was Prince (they knew Let’s Go Crazy and didn’t even notice Darling Nikki), Jonathon Richman (which #1 tried to skip over), Kiss (only #4 liked it), Public Enemy (“Oh My God, what IS this horrible music?”).

When I drove up from Indy to Chicago by myself to retrieve CC for Thanksgiving, I listened to Carmen in its entirety. I cranked it. I sang along, only slightly more in tune than the kids had been. It finished just as I hit full-on holiday rush hour on the loop and segued into Nevermind The Bullocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols. Perfect timing.

On the way home from Indy to New Jersey, I made excellent time before the sun rose and they slept through Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9, Elvis The Number One Hits, and Kate Bush’s Aerial– quite possibly the only album that might make you get fired up about doing housework. When they finally woke up, the complaining about my taste in music began again. Styx drew another “what IS this horrible music” from #4.

Shortly after we got home she came up to me excitedly, wanting to play a song for me that she just bought because she’d heard it on Guitar Hero. It was Renegade.

Me: Oh, I love that song! I have that album.

#4: You mean I just paid money to download a song that we already own?

Me: Yep. I played you the album when we went to Indiana and you were all, ‘what IS this horrible music?’, remember?

#4: I hate my life.

I’ve been working on getting all of the CD’s loaded onto the home computer so that we can have the shelf space back for books. I’m not even a quarter of the way done with it and I’m still having second thoughts about it. I haven’t actually gotten rid of anything yet, but stacked them in bins in the garage.

And I’ve discovered where my kids go to find their gems. Because in my house, nothing stays where you put it.

I got in the car that #1 uses last week and Heart’s Dreamboat Annie was blasting at a respectable volume for ten-year-old stock Mitsubishi speakers. Doing laundry, I heard the unmistakable sounds of Live’s Songs From Black Mountain coming through the walls of the music room. #2 has chosen their The Distance to Here as her driving soundtrack. I found a pile of discs that had migrated from the garage: Randy and the Bloody Lovelies, the Fratellis, Queensryche, Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers, Guns N Roses. Not that long ago I heard Rush cranking in the bathroom.

Apparently, I’ve become the used record store for the next generation.

One & Done Sunday #26

Hey. It’s One & Done Sunday.

I started writing this post this morning but didn’t get it finished. The dogs were out of food, #5 had batting practice, I went to yoga, #4 had batting practice, I made dinner, I called my mother, I forced the kids to do chores. We had a very pleasant visit with kid #1A who is returning to college tomorrow. All of this is to tell you that everything is pretty much the same here in spite of my absence.

See below:

Jack is status quo.

#5 informed me the other day that he’s going to be graduating in 2020. It doesn’t seem possible to me that he will ever be that old, let alone that it’s in seven years. He said he hopes he gets 20 pounds of bacon for his graduation gift. Since I have a source, I think we’re getting off easy. That’s way cheaper than a laptop.

The last time I made bacon for him, he held a piece up in the air and said, “I guess Charlotte couldn’t save Wilbur this time!”

This from a kid who set his alarm for 6:30 am on the weekends. When his sisters asked him why he gets up earlier on the weekends than he does for school days, he replied, “So I can play video games. Who wants to get up early when you’re not allowed to play video games?”

There’s a new post for Tuesday. I’ve blogged ahead, taking advice from Thoughtsy. I hope you come back.

Here are your links.

The Amazon banana slicer review was making its way around Facebook recently. CC hipped me to the fact that this is a trend, people posting ridiculously funny reviews for everyday items. Here’s a link to some of the funniest Amazon reviews.

Hey. How come nobody gets crabs anymore? Endangered Species a Victim of Brazilian Deforestation- Steve Maley.

The best part about this video is that Roundabout Theater Company actually threw down some cash for it. This is a well-produced piece of work. That, plus you get to see Chita Rivera chugging a bottle of champagne. The cast of Edwin Drood in actor Andy Karl’s rap about why bustles are hawt. Bustle Fluffah.

Infections Diseases of 20th Century Musicians. (thanks, Death Row for the link).

I love semi-colons; they thrill me almost as much as hot sauce does. Interview With a Semi-colon.

Happy Sunday.

If You Would Like to Break Into My House. . .

If I really get on a roll writing today, a bunch of things won’t get done.

That’s been the theme of the last six months for me. It seems like CC and I had a month’s reprieve from being in production at the same time (read: a shitload of overtime for both of us) and then it kicked back up for him.

Huh. I just checked the calendar and there’s no “seeming” about it, that’s actually how it happened. Nice to know I’m not crazy. About that, anyway.

He’s been out of town a lot. Like, for weeks at a time. Many. Weeks. I’ve been running the household.

I can hear many of you married moms going, “So?” or “I wish my husband would go out of town!” and the like. Well this is a very risky post for me, not only because I am revealing online the absence of my husband

-I interrupt this post to inform you that I am, indeed, armed, and while I’m not as good a shot as him, I am decent enough and I use a bigger gun

-but it’s also risky because I am revealing the fact that my husband does everything to run the household. If the women in my town knew exactly how amazing he is, they’d be plotting against me, five kids or no five kids.

He does all your typical man stuff. But he also cooks and cleans and does laundry and makes the kids’ lunches and lets me sleep in. He can sew, and he can wire the furnace into a generator when the power goes out. He has power tools and one of his greatest joys is teaching the girls how to use them. He grocery shops, which I totally suck at.

And most of this year, he’s been working like ninety jobs’ worth of hours out of town and I am trying to fill his shoes here at home, and every day I sit down at my computer and think, if I really get on a roll writing today, a bunch of stuff won’t get done. Because while my husband can get a tasty meal for seven on the table in twenty minutes, it takes me half a week of planning to make that happen. If I don’t plan to run this household, I’m screwed. Or they are, depending on how you look at it. Not a damn piece of it comes naturally to me.

Like, I made cookies. Chocolate Chip and a few White Chocolate Chip. They were really good too, because I added cinnamon. Because I add cinnamon to everything. The kids were not impressed, but I knew that when they got hungry enough they would eat them. Particularly since there wasn’t much else to eat in the house. The next day I was outside ~~engaged in a life and death struggle with the power washer~~ power washing the house. The puggles were on the couch at the window watching me. They disappeared. I figured they just didn’t like water aimed at their faces through the window. But actually they were gettin’ busy.

That’s two dozen cookies that you don’t see because they’re in dog bellies.

casey cookie — I like what you did with the cinnamon

Jack cookie — I feel guilty enough for both of us.

Here are some other highlights from this week:

I never restocked the refrigerator after we had to dump everything from the power being out for a week. We’re still eating out of the pantry.

I entirely forgot to pick up two of my children from school on Thursday. Never even entered my mind.

I managed to get an entire month behind in paying my babysitter. I may have to take out a loan to get current.

We now have to bring the dogs with us on our upcoming road trip and board them when we get in Indiana, about a 12 hour drive, because I couldn’t get all the details squared away in time. Though in my defense, Jack had a strong hand in it by spontaneously developing an upper respiratory infection the night before he was supposed to get shots.

What’s that? Road trip? Indiana? Why, yes! Which is why again I say if I really get on a roll writing today, a bunch of stuff won’t get done. There’s a lot to get done to prep five kids and two dogs and me to head out. We can’t wait! We get to see my whole famdamnily, and CC has Thanksgiving Day off so I get to retrieve him and bring him back to my mom’s.

Maybe when I get back I can restock the refrigerator.

*****

Meanwhile, back in New Jersey and New York, cleanup efforts continue. I got to see a former co-worker of mine yesterday who lives on Long Beach. We saw pictures and videos of the sea busting through his foundation, of the water rising up to the ceiling. His neighbor drowned in her home. And though he lost nearly everything he owned, including all the years of custom work he had done on his place, he said he sees so much good coming out of it. Before, he said, nobody would speak much to each other on the street. He only knew a few of his neighbors. Now everybody knows each other, they ask how they’re doing; they pitch in and help out.

More train lines are back up and running. Oddly, it made my commute worse, as there are now no trains between 10:14pm and midnight to where I’m going. I’m sure there’s a valid reason for it. I mean, the freaking land that many of the tracks are on washed away. The people along those lines were scrambling every day to try and find a way into work, and many of them still are. A friend of mine who also commutes explained it to his little boy like this: You know how you have your toy trains on your train table? And sometimes the tracks get moved and you have to put them back so the trains will run? Well, here, the train table washed away. He said his mouth dropped open.

And say what you will about Snookie, but she and her guidos/ettes raised a million bucks for their shore town. She was also at the telethon we performed on, early in the morning, answering phones. In Snookie-shoes.

Keep those positive stories coming. We all need them. I opened up the Sunday paper last week and just wept.

By the way? The gas rationing thing totally worked. Granted, getting more stations on line with power and more gasoline helped. But in a week we went from waiting in a line after midnight for two and half hours to no lines.

******

Here are your links:

So my babysitter (the one I owe all the money to) informed me that I really should investigate whether there was a seatbelt law for dogs because she saw something posted at the pet store.

She has sugar gliders. I love her.

Me: That’s stupid. I’m not getting freaking seatbelts for the puggles.

Her: Yeah but I heard it’s like a $250 fine if you get pulled over.

Me: If we get pulled over I’ll have #4 shove them down inside a sleeping bag.

I dutifully googled and the first hit I got was this article: Christie Says No ‘Stupid’ Seat Belt Law For Dogs In New Jersey

I love it when I quote Chris Christie without even realizing it.

This is funny. REALLY funny. The Hater’s Guide to the Williams-Sonoma Catalogue. Thanks Michelle for the link.

From the Star-Ledger: New Jersey’s Unsung Heroes of Hurricane Sandy

I just spent an hour looking for an article about gratitude that conveyed what I feel about it (that’s the equivalent of two loads of laundry started, for those of you playing along at home). I found it: Giving Thanks from Woman’s Day.

And let’s close this Sunday post out with a link I found on The Bloggess to a 1984 video clip from the Today Show about a toaster possessed by Satan. It Makes Good Toast.

******

PS: If you are, in fact, going to break into my house, could you please throw a load of towels in the washer? They’re going to moulder while I’m gone. Help yourself to the lemons in the fridge. There’s like, forty in there. Lemons are unfazed by power outages. They’re lonely.

Happy Sunday.