The Highlight of My Year

Looking back, it was a good year.  If I had to pick the one thing that blew me away or made an impression on me it had be the Decemberists in concert.  This was quite unexpected on my part, because I didn't know much of them. But when tickets became available, Julio insisted we must see them.  He tried to play me one of their songs before the concert, but I wasn't very interested in his song choice.  I was unaware of how diverse their music really is.  It turns out our favorite Decemberists songs are very different.  I had no time to blog when I did see them in July, so I'm finally able to share with you an awesome experience.

It was warm summer night at the Mann Music Center in Philly.  It's nice to think of that weather now being in December.  We had great seats.  The band had recently begun having a full orchestra behind them, since their budget increased with their popularity.  They are described as folk rock which does them justice somewhat.   Sometimes, they are very folk sounding.  Other times, their songs resemble folk only because of their storytelling nature.   I like how Stephen Colbert describes them as "hyper-literate prog rock."  This is because they make (sometimes obscure) historical or literary references in a lot of their songs.  Mostly, their music is touching, sometimes funny, and beautifully arranged. 

After the show, I was happy to have a husband who already had most of their music.  So when we got home, he could immediately download it in my music player.  The newest album the Crane Wife and Picaresque are my favorite albums.  There is no way to stay in a bad mood when listening to "the Sporting Life. " "The Crane Wife (part one)"  comes in a close second.  Even my daughter has come to love that song and we sing it together.  It is the Japanese story of a man who mends a crane's wing.  The next day, she returns as a woman and they marry.  You'll have to Wikipedia the rest.

It's worth taking a minute and listening to a live version of "the Crane Wife"  I have hand selected from YouTube for your listening pleasure.  The singer talks for a little bit and then the song begins. If you don't like this song, I'll bet there is a Decemberists song out there for everyone.  Don't be like me and judge the band based on one song. 

Just Rolling With the Punches

 I am a rock.

I am an island.

And a rock feel no pain.

And an island never cries.

--Paul Simon

 I have had to evaluate and re-evaluate myself more than I'd like to in a month's time.  Do you ever have everything hit you at once?  If things came, say a month at a time, they would be easier to handle.  So, I am an emotionally drained shell of a person that wants to hide under a rock in order to recuperate.  It's hard to recuperate in the open when another punch comes out of nowhere.  Where are these punches coming from?  All directions.  There is not one specific thing I can mention here because most of these issues are resolved unto themselves.  There is time needed to heal after a person goes through something emotionally traumatic.  I have barely had enough time to heal from issue number one when two through ten comes barreling on me.  I am trying my best to keep my blinders on and trudge ahead since there are no rocks nearby to crawl under.

At times like these, I think of the esoteric poet Emily Dickinson.  I have an insatiable need to read about the lives of poets, sometimes more than the poetry that made them famous.  I can't help but identify with some personality traits or threads that run through their lives.  With dear Emily, she was incredibly shy.  Well, it's hard to be a parent and still be shy. However, there is traces of shyness that will always run through my soul.  Emily never outgrew hers.  When her friends came to visit, she sat in another room and spoke to them from there.  Otherwise, she wrote them letters.  She felt the depth of their caring and friendship, even from such limited association.  She wrote the most exquisite poems on love, yet never had a beau. Could it be the fear of being hurt?  Yes, sometimes the fear can be more intense than actually being hurt.  That doesn't make it an easier emotion to deal with.  It's easier to have an ideal in place, rather than deal with harsh reality.  So Emily rarely left her house.  Some days, I don't blame her.  In order to interact with the human population, it's great to have a fortress guarding one's heart.  When there's an attack, there's no casualties.  You don't feel pain so intensely.  So since I had no fortress in place, the attacks caused some injuries.  Like all injuries, they need time to heal.  I need time to rebuild, but not in an Iraqi sort of way. 

Getting Up to Speed

My son was born with Supraventricular Tachycardia that would have killed him as an infant if it weren't for the meds Digoxin and Inderal (see poem).  His cardiologist weaned him from both by age two and said he should never have problems again.  The statistics at that time said a third of all children born with the condition would grow out of it.  I thought we were out of the woods until Julian was six and felt his heart race.  When he was born, the doctors at CHOP told me to take a bag of frozen peas and place it quickly on his forehead to shock his system out of the arrhythmia.  Taking that information to heart, I used it then with success.  I also immediately scheduled an appointment with his then Cardiologist at  DuPont.  He said the attacks weren't occuring enough to warrant medication.  Also, the side effects would not be worth dealing with.  He said to have Julian bear down (strain) like going to the bathroom and that should break the arrhythmia.  He started doing that the few times a year he would have the tachycardia always with success.  I thought everything was managable.  Then a few weeks ago, he was complaining of a racing heart and bearing down was not working.  After a few minutes, I thought of the frozen peas trick and got out a bag.  After two tries,  it didn't work.  I thought to myself--what else was there besides the ER?  And let me mention here, my local hospital/doctor knows nothing about heart arrythmias in children.  By the time I would wait to be transported to CHOP, it would be faster to drive there myself.  So I just kept trying to break it by shoving frozen peas in his face.  After a few more minutes, it worked.  That scared me.  I scheduled an appointment then with the DuPont cardiologist for January.  Then, Julian's therapist recommended I try CHOP and see if I can get in sooner.  It was the best advice I got this year.  They seemed much more on top of things there.  For instance, when I called to schedule an appointment, the receptionist said a nurse would call me to make one.  When the nurse called me, she reviewed his history.  She asked how I stopped the last episode of tachycardia.  I said after bearing down didn't work, I put frozen veggies on his face.  She laughed.  She said that's something they used to tell mothers to do to their infants.  The idea of a boy getting an old infant treatment amused her.  She joked, "Well, if he never eats vegetables, you'll know why!"  She said he needs to be seen not just by a standard cardiologist but an Electrophysiologist.  Here's a definition: Electrophysiology is the study of the electrical properties of biological cells and tissues. This is the first time I'd ever heard of one. She asked me when was the last time he wore a holter monitor (a device to monitor his heart rate for 24 hours)?  I said not since he was two.  It was something I was going to request, and it made me all the more confident for this visit that she asked first.  I'm excited to see how different this condition is treated since I was plunged into knowing about it as a young mother.  The nurse got me in for next week.  I have learned that sometimes it's better to go with the name brand (CHOP), especially when it concerns your child's health.  But now I have a problem...what am I going to do with all those frozen peas? :)

Remembering a happy time of my adolescence

I give you this title because God knows there weren't many.  There's a commercial out there right now where someone quotes a song from the band Air Supply that jogged my memory. Anyone remember that band from the 80s?  It took me back to how I loved them as a young teen.  All those romantic sappy love songs... I can play each hit and remember each guy I dedicated it to back then.  So having a Microsoft Zune pass with unlimited song download, my hubby added them to my Zune.  As I listened to them, another more pleasant memory came to me.  How would a young girl obsessed with Expose and Debbie Gibson even like Air Supply?  (Ok, I have to admit I had a weakness for the Carpenters that goes unchanged.) But I have my aunt and uncle to thank for liking the band.  They would load my cousins and I into their station wagon and pop in the tape.  It was bizarre to me that everyone in the car would sing the songs in unison.  In my family, we had the oldies station on in the car all the time because that was the only music my parents could agree on.  I didn't have an appreciation for that genre until I moved out of the house.  So, I'm in the car with my cousins and everyone is singing...how great!  Being a very dreamy romantically inclined young teenager, I loved their songs.  (It's later, I would become the jaded Alanis loving young adult.) So, soon I was singing along with my family.  One memory from that time was from the song "Two Less Lonely People in the World."  I remember my aunt saying that the song reflects her son who just started dating a girl in high school.  Well, it's 16 years later and they are still together.  Those times singing in the car lifted me up and made me forget my troubles. It made me feel part of a family when my home life wasn't so great. So today I'm listening to the "best of" album in the shower and I remember every word like it was yesterday.  I hadn't heard their songs in over 10 years.  It made me feel thirteen all over again. 

(Thanks Flo!)

My Inner European

Was there ever any doubt? ;)

Your Inner European is French!

Smart and sophisticated. You have the best of everything - at least, *you* think so.

Who's Your Inner European?

It's time for some women to grow up!

I think some women have been getting off too easily in the way they act and present themselves.  Of course, men aren't going to complain because it's for their visual benefit.  So it's time for a woman to woman chat, ladies.  What exactly am I talking about?  I'm talking about women leaving the flirting to the teenagers and back off married men!  Some women don't have high standards like caring if  a wedding ring is on a man's finger.  They think it's innocent fun, or a chance to be naughty without the consequences.  Women know what they're doing, there is nothing innocent about any coy remark.  I'm going to take this a step further and say women should develop standards for their office attire.  I'm at the bank and this young bank teller's cleavage is staring me in the face.  I was going to make her aware that I didn't need to see what bra she bought at Victoria's Secret, when it occurred to me she knows what she's doing.  She wants that attention.  There's a woman at my husband's office that too easily revealed her stomach just by reaching above her.  She knows what she's doing too.  It upsets me when I see Today show segments about women being able to "express" their sexuality by the clothes they wear in public.  I say you can express your sexuality by the lingerie you select that only one other person will see.  I don't want to see it.  Ah...but that's the interesting point.  It's not for me.  It's for men.  Men are visual creatures.  It's the "shiny nickel" complex.  They just can't help but look.  I say the women that dress this way all the time have the lowest self-esteem who need to get mens' attention by taking advantage of their visual weakness.  It seems women are foregoing the importance of the respect women before them have fought so hard for.  It's more important to them to be viewed as sexy then demand respect.  It's very hard to have both.  Beauty and brains, yes.  The office mattress and respect? No.  C'mon ladies, we have boobs.  Men know we have boobs.  Do we really need to go further?  Where does the need come from to show them off to every Tom, Dick and Harry.  You're at work, then work.  Stop wasting company money by flirting. It's not high school.  You are setting us back 50 years.  Why don't you stay home like women did back then and gossip with your neighbors if you can't act like an employee? Do you really think you'll get that raise by showing off your goods to your boss? You might get an advance that you don't want and then cry you're being sexually harassed.  And don't get me started on Hooters!

What was I thinking?

I actually arrived at Kohl's at 4:05 a.m. on Friday.  I couldn't believe they were selling a classic Kitchen Aid mixer for $120, orginal price $250.  The last time I did anything black Friday related was four years ago, and even then I didn't get to the store until 7:00 a.m.  I had my mind fixed on having this mixer.  By the time I found where they were, they were gone.  I got the second thing on my list (pots and pans) and attempted to get in line.  Five minutes later I am able to find the back of the line and wait...and wait.  I hear a woman say to her husband, "There's no line in the front of the store."  My half-awake brain tries to decipher the information and when processed, it's a eureka moment.  I say to the girl next to me, "Let's go to the front of the store!"  We head there and the line was not half as bad.  Everyone was extremely nice considering the bad rep a black Friday crowd gets. 

I just couldn't admit defeat about that mixer.  I thought, if Kohl's can get the price so low, surely another company can sell it for that as well.  I found it on Amazon for the same price, free shipping.  So in the midst of my determination, Julio asks me why do I want this mixer?  What does it do?  I say I don't know, but everyone wants one.  He thinks I'm joking because I'm never like that.  I just know it's a much coveted item for women I know.  It's like an heirloom to pass on to generation after generation.  It will blend food.  Beyond that, not sure.  Anything that helps me cook is a good thing.

All the time and expensive gas wasted, and now it's being shipped to me from the click of a checkout button. Brillant!