We Can Work It Out

It's been a bit of a rough stretch for me during the last couple of weeks as a deadline I'd been working toward crept closer and closer. The closer it got, the less time, energy and ability I had to carry out the other tasks for which I am responsible, such as buying food for/feeding my kids. I thought I was doing well enough at faking it until my daughter rode to karate with the neighbors. When they got home, my neighbor walked over and told me that the kids were hoping we could all eat dinner together, and that my daughter had started to offer: "I know!My mom can make dinner for us --oh no, but she hasn't been to the grocery store in like two weeks." Busted!

So we eventually settled on ordering pizza, which seemed to please (almost) everybody. When I was growing up, my mom used to say "you can please some of the people some of the time." It drove me CRAZY, but now that I'm a mom, I know it's just the way it is.

Tonight, too, we had a hard time settling on a dining venue (the cupboard was still bare) -- and as we were haggling, this classic (and oh-so-wise) tune popped into my head. And we did work it out, in the end, with a little help from our friends:

Life is very short, and there's no time
For fussing and fighting my friend...

Take Me Home, Country Roads

Tonight while my daughter and I were brushing our teeth (yes, at the same time, I'm so tired I was hoping she'd tuck me in tonight) when she busted out with:

Mountain Mama!
Take me home, country roads.

What a revelation this was -- I had no idea she knew any John Denver songs -- and I knew her Dad hadn't introduced her to it. Turns out, she heard it from a friend at school. That just really warms my heart, that in the year 2010, kids are singing John Denver to each other on the playground.

She asked me if the lyric was really "Mountain mama," I told her it was. Then we looked it up on you tube and listened to this version of John singing his classic hit.

We also found this version of John with his pal Johnny Cash (with a partially obscured face), and this one of Olivia Newton-John, who apparently was the one to make his song popular down under. She sure is beautiful in this video, but what's up with its bizarre beginning? It reminded me a little of the Stephen King movie Carrie.

I loved John Denver when I was a kid, ALMOST as much as I loved Olivia Newton-John. But you'll discover more about that in future blog posts. For now:

Country roads, take me home
To the place, I belong
West Virginia, Mountain Mama
Take me home, country roads...

All That She Wants

There's just something about Leos -- so many important people in my life have the sign of the lion. Today is both my sister's birthday and one of my dearest faraway friends. It's been a crazy day, too -- I called my sister to wish her a happy birthday and she told me our mother had fallen off her bike and landed on her head and was in the hospital with a severe concussion. I talked to my mom this evening, and she's ok. She's even thinking of buying a helmet (she's never been big on safety). And then a bunch of minor things happened -- a glass got broken in the kitchen, not one but two glasses of milk were spilled at dinner -- it just seems like something is a bit off.

Since I didn't get to speak to her, I wanted to choose a song today in celebration of my friend. She was with me on many an all night revel, and we danced to a lot of songs together, but this is the one that came up for me. I have particularly fond memories of her moves during this part of the song:

So if you are in sight and the day is right
She's the hunter you're the fox
The gentle voice that talks to you won't talk forever
It is a night for passion
But the morning means goodbye
Beware of what is flashing in her eyes
She's going to get you

I hope it won't be too much longer before we're back on the dance floor together again.

I wonder, too, if this song is the one that came up because I started the morning at my OB/GYN office surrounded by pregnant women and wishing for that brand of big belly? It's not all that I want, I swear!

Get Here

I love this song. It's been on my internal playlist pretty much daily since I found out that one of my favorite people on this planet will get here -- reach(ing) me by airplane -- later this summer. He introduced this song to me years ago, and hearing it today, it brings back memories of how much I wanted him to get here so many years ago. And I'm so grateful he's gonna make it soon.

It's also an appropriate song for my friend in Seattle, who last year met and married her Albanian love and then had to wait a whole year before he could join her in this country. He was able to get here -- reach(ing) her by airplane -- yesterday. Yeah!

Airplane seems to be the standard mode of getting here -- although there were a couple of other ways she sings about that stood out for me. One was "you can reach me with your mind." Yes, you can, and you do, but it is infinitely less satisfying. The other is "you can windsurf into my life" -- which made me smile and think of the man who windsurfed into my life, and then back out again, on my latest trip to Maui. But that's neither here nor there. (Sorry, couldn't resist.)

Take it away, Oleta!

There are hills and mountains between us
Always something to get over
If I had my way, surely you would be closer
I need you closer...

Hallelujah

I really need to get a good night's sleep tonight, but I'm having trouble getting there. The anxiety in my stomach that used to be a constant companion now just comes back every once in a while to let me know when I'm ignoring a feeling that really needs to be felt, even at an inconvenient time like tonight, when I have a job interview in Chicago in the morning.

Lucky for me, riding the coattails of my anxiety this evening is this beautiful song sung by the equally beautiful Jeff Buckley. Listening to it, I'm struck most by the power of him singing the word Hallelujah, but I'm also struck by these lyrics:

Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

I think that's both really sad -- it's like Leonard Cohen's (the man who originally wrote and sang this song) version of Buddha's teaching that life is suffering -- and really beautiful at the same time. Love may not be a victory march, and it may be cold and broken (at times), but it's still an expression of joy and praise.

Hallelujah!

Now please let me get some sleep...

Born to Run

Once a month, I get to spend alone time with one of my kids, usually an overnight. This month it's my turn with my daughter, and we'd been talking for weeks about how we'd spend the time. We finally settled on a trip to Devil's Lake, a state park about an hour from our house. We put our bikes on the back of the car, grabbed our beach gear, and off we went.

Like all the best adventures, it didn't work out at all like we planned. We never actually went to Devil's Lake. Driving into Baraboo, the town you go through right before arriving at the entrance to the park, we saw that something was going on. Streets were blocked off, booths were set up... we'd skipped our local farmer's market this morning so we could hit the road, but when we spied what we thought might be another market, we felt compelled to park and check it out. That was at 11am -- we finally drove away from that parking space at 5pm. What we thought was a market turned out to be "Old Fashioned Days." One of the highlights of Old Fashioned Days was a huge water fight (pictured above) using actual fire hoses to shoot at a keg that is suspended in the air. It was awesome! The woman next to us said they'd been doing this every year since the 60s, when she'd come to watch it as a little girl. We've decided to make it an annual trip ourselves.

But the best moment, we decided over dinner this evening, wasn't something we were able to photograph. Later in the afternoon, we'd unloaded our bikes and rode them toward the riverwalk, which one of the locals recommended as a nice place to ride. It was magical -- especially the part where we rode down off the riverwalk on a trail, right to the edge of the river, and climbed out over the river on the trunk and branches of a Weeping Willow tree. We fancied it as our river home -- and the leaves that hung down all around us as the curtains. We wondered if maybe we could live there, at least in the summertime.

Heading back to Madison, I turned on the radio to see what was playing, and it was none other than this song by the Boss -- a man I grew up loving (and whose arms -- and voice -- I still have a definite affinity). Although the song is not about anything as innocent as pretending to live in a tree over a river, it is about how amazingly free you can feel when you leave it all behind, even for a few hours...

I Don't Want To Talk About It

Sometimes I feel like I get so much out of therapy; other times I feel like it's really just me saying the same shit over and over again. And while the insights are still coming, I am finding that the deeper they are, the harder they are to implement.

What's a girl to do? I'm trying to be gentle with myself. Sleeping a little more, and knowing that when I'm ready, I can and will continue to change the things about my life that aren't working.

This is the tune that my inner jukebox is spinning this morning. Check out this classic video of Rod singing it live in his pink suit with barely a hint of a shirt on underneath --who else could get away with that look? I also discovered this little treasure on youtube -- Rod accompanied by Amy Belle -- and when she sings:

I don't wanna
Talk about it
How you broke my heart...

It's almost more powerful than the original by the man in the pink suit. Almost.

I don't wanna talk about it anymore either...