Today was a Snow Day, sort of. The threat of a storm caused skittish schools and daycares to close, meaning I had no childcare for the day. With a phone interview to conduct and a phone consultation that should not be rescheduled, I decided I could work from home if only my wonderful husband decided to take a snow day to help wrangle the Wee Mobile Loud One, who Murphy’s Law dictated would not be napping when the above phone appointments needed to be kept. He did, so we braced ourselves for the storm and had a family day at home that was only occasionally punctuated by work.
While we worked and cooked and played all day, we had a music station playing on the television. If you have cable, you probably have these as part of your channel options. They play music of a certain genre and give the artist and tile information on the screen, along with still images and random fun facts about the artist or the music industry. The still images stay on the screen for a while and are not overly exciting (my apologies to the art director for these stations), so the baby doesn’t pay attention to them and neither do we. There are no commercials or interruptions, just a nice selection of music to live your life by.
The Adult Alternative station has had some worthwhile material in their rotation recently, and since I was home all day yesterday listening to it, I was finally able to catch some of the song titles and artists that I want to make part of my music collection.
The following is a list of songs that caught my ear today, and what I find appealing about them:
Kandi by One Eskimo: Feeding the baby lunch, I find myself bopping toward the high chair. I scatter a few cubes of cheese on the tray, and I start to sing along to the chorus. Husband comes up behind me, sways me to the music, I take his hand and do a twirl, the baby claps. Keeper.
I and Love and You by the Avett Brothers: Cabin fever setting in by the late afternoon, this is the music I match socks to. Baby helps by pulling them out of the basket and trailing them all over the living room, husband helps by helping, We lob them across the living room to see if we can get them to stay on the seat of the loveseat without rolling or bouncing off. I find myself singing this song at a volume that is not under my breath. Grandiose dance moves ensue that make the baby laugh. Husband knows better than to laugh.
Fidelity by Regina Spektor: This song makes me feel like it should be late spring with the windows open. Probably a Saturday afternoon, post-grad school, pre-marriage, the man who will someday be my husband is on his way over for a date that I spend some extra time on my hair for. Life is good. How have I not paid attention to Regina Spektor before now?
The Story and Dying Day by Brandi Carlile: These are songs that I will sing when I am in my car, and I will sing them at a volume that is louder than anything that has a prayer of sounding good, but it will feel good to do it.
Low Rising by Swell Season: This song reminds me how much I love Falling Slowly, which reminds me I need to listen to our wedding mix CDs more often.
The thing about listing out all of this music is that I had to Google the links, and the Google results all pointed to one irrefutable fact: I like music that is played at Bonnaroo. I like music that is played with instruments and spends more time on lyrics than costumes and tabloid headlines. I have a type. I can appreciate all different types of music, from the wah-wah saxophone sounds of jazz, to classical, to the music that Ryan Seacrest covers every week on his Top 40 radio show. But this is the music that speaks to my soul, that gets my hips swaying and gets my thoughts turning to reinventing myself as an indie rock goddess. Always has been, probably always will be.
So, Fabulous Thing #41: Adding to the soundtrack of my life.
One Fabulous Thing 