When emotions are high, or raw, or low—this is when music is most essential.
I sometimes fall into a feeling of normalcy over some things. That my parents are no longer walking around in the world. That my only sibling is mentally ill. That they were, we were, once, a little family with little kids and dreams for the future.
The crashing of the dreams is the most haunting part.
Tonight I am reminded and it doesn’t feel normal (although that state may be a delusional one, at best).
So I landed on the song. I had to listen so hard to hear the story. But it was worth sticking around for.
Like me, you have probably spent hours pondering the qualities you share with Robert Downey, Jr., Hugh Jackman, and George Clooney. Unlike me, you may not be a woman who has compared brow furrows with these giants of the silver screen, and won.
I’m hardly proud of this fact, but why not? I have not weathered heroin addiction, but I have compulsively raised an eyebrow throughout my adult life. For this, I wear the battle scars. For this, I must view ads for the likes of something called “Miracle Blur,” and wonder just exactly what would be blurred upon application. The post-40 eyesight decline provides the same luxury, if only for me.
Truth be told, I do harbor some resentment that guys with real foreheads are perceived as looking sexier and more interesting with their lines, while women run to shoot up some paralysis juice, or at least Miracle Blur themselves to near invisibility. The eighties female rock stars that “look great” have been stretched and they look good to us because we can’t deal with our own aging and what it actually looks like. Is looking like we looked in the 80’s really the process we should be undertaking?
We have this huge expanding force of older people, yet we remain youth obsessed. Oh yeah. The Fountain of Youth. Even back when life expectancy was, I don’t know, 35– that quest was worth taking out a few native people along the way.
Excuse me while I order my free Lifestyle Lift brochure.
I am pretty sure that the school nurse does not have this one in her records.
During the course of a classroom discussion about a field trip to the zoo, one of my students casually informed me that he cannot go near the elephants. One would suppose that he was afraid of elephants, right? They are extra large.
Nope.
“I’m allergic to elephants.”
In a suburban school, a teacher might suspect that the boy was pulling her leg or being a smart aleck.
However, if you work in a school that is a veritable casting call for the “Small World” ride at Disneylandworld, you tend to not bat an eye at such a statement. I have many students who hail from environs that could support elephant interaction as an everyday occurrence, along with goat roasting and violent insurgencies.
Peachy: “Okay, no problem.”
AND, this is my disclaimer, that of course, elephant allergy is real and is no laughing matter. And just to take it to the universal level, let it be stated that everything allergy is real and is no laughing matter.
I probably should have something more reflective to share. After all, I have stuck with the blogging thing for two years, posted more than 200 posts, and connected with a few folks who have enhanced my world.
Still, the burning issue that keeps nagging at me is the fact that I hate the yellow pants in this insurance ad.
Who made this decision? It works within the “cautionary tale” genre, I suppose, which fits with insurance.
Thanks to my lovely readers who patiently humor me in my yellow pants moments. And I promise you that you will never have to see me in those (or any) yellow pants. There are advantages to anonymity.
Despite the fact that cats obviously trump dogs on the internet, there is still a debate raging within the hallowed halls of my house: is our dog smart, or is our dog stupid? Does she emulate her owners and live that duality to a full extreme?
Here’s what my dog can do:
*Stuff that will result in a dog cookie. She will sit, and lay down and go to her crate.
What she can’t do:
*Shut up when told to shut up.
*Not jump on people when they first arrive.
Before you start sharing your wisdom and suggest upping the dog treat factor, understand that if I gave a treat every time she shut up when I said to, she would become morbidly obese.
Let’s investigate this barking thing. My dog is the Anti-Watch dog. This is the dance broken down into dog behavior vs. actual situation.
A daily assemblage of the obsolete, the antiquated, and the curious practices of the erstwhile homemakers of a vanished era. Including lost secrets in the areas of Cooking, Baking, Personal Care, Remedies, Cleaning, Entertaining, Crafting, Decorating, and other miscellany of household management.
Life as a sandwich generation x’er, stacked with irony. As a ‘normal’ person peering out from the boundaries of suburbia, as a transplant from another state, maybe another planet. As a mother of teenage boys and freelance working writer balancing parenting with helping to care for my mother. And now as an only child of a mother with Alzheimer’s (which sucks).
