Thursday Thoughts - when I win your heart I'm gonna paint it cherry red

1. I was in the car last week when this song came on. I've been obsessed with it ever since after having forgotten it existed for the past 30 years. Then I watched the video and became even more obsessed. It is terrible and marvelous in its terribleness. Oh, 80s. What a time to be alive.

2. This is what happens when your car is parked on the street during snow and ice events that are salted, continually pelted by passerby castoff grime.

3. I need to go to Target tonight, and since I'm going after a meeting, MFD is going to be with me. There's too much co-shopping going on recently for my liking. I like to be in and out like a cart pushing ninja and he is the middle of the aisle dawdler.

4. This week in dog town, I am awaiting a new $60 orthopedic bed for Gus that he will surely turn his nose up at, and Bruce is getting his booster shot today so he can start going to Camp Bow Wow once a week to play. Mae continues to attempt to rule with a judgmental fist.

5. Things I do not recommend: this Sweater from Target - loved the color online, not so much in person; Dermalogica Ultra Calming Cleanser, Skin Smoothing Lotion, and (not pictured) the exfoliant - Pay one million dollars to have my face look like it was rubbed with sandpaper and decorated in hives? No thank you; and Toms Ella Bootie - I got them in black cherry (no longer avail) for the color, but they are way too narrow for my feet. There are a bunch of Philosophy products that are about to go back too. I feel like I am treating drugstore skin with cadillac products, but I have Korres and Lush to cycle through before I slink back to the dingy aisles of Rite-Aid.

6. I'm sorry, I can't. All of his insanity about the anthem and he does not know the words and can't stand still for it? Stop it right fucking now. Speaking of not understanding, if you need help decoding the transcripts of the Fusion interview Feinstein released, check out this Twitter thread.

But what do I know. He's the stable genius, after all.

7. I know many of us are looking for someone to pull us the fuck out of this mess, and people are all Oprah 2020! but this is how I feel about her Golden Globes speech - it wasn't about her. It was about us. "This was a speech about how seeing someone else model the fight against racism, sexism, and injustice activates us to fight alongside." Yes, yes, and fuck yes. Please read that opinion piece.

8. Feministas: Check out this article about how to raise empowered women starting in middle school. I don't think it covers everything but we need to be talking about this earlier and not sending women out into the working world thinking they can be perfect and not knowing how to deal with setbacks and failure.We are still raising girls to please others too much to the detriment of themselves. I'd like to drop the girls are princesses who will be saved by men or who are entitled to a perfect life schtick also. Princesses have a place and it's in the imagination and playroom. Not in real life. And do you follow wearemarchon on Instagram? They are counting down the days to the Women's March next weekend and it is everything.

9. Reminder: Being satisfied with yourself is not stagnation.

10. E-card of the week:

Whatcha got?

Thursday Thoughts - you better put your kingdom up for sale

1. Made up existential crisis of the week: what if I had to choose between these albums and could never hear songs from the other again, as long as I live?

2. Nails: Essie Warm & Toasty Turtleneck, one of my favorites. I got them done this week to clean up my cuticles. I hate getting my nails done by someone else but try to do it once every two months for a clean up. As they were drying, someone walked in and asked me if we do eyebrow waxes. I was like well I don't work here but they do wax eyebrows. All of the girls in the salon loved it. 

3. How you know your husband is home from his trip even if you don't see him. 

4. Anyone interested? My friend Mrs. Tiff Dee is selling these through her KEEP Collective biz. She's raised $210 so far for the ACLU by donating her commission on every bar. If you want her info, let me know. They're custom so they're not on her site. 

5. This is the political portion of Thursday Thoughts. I could write a blog post on this shit daily but I'm not going to do that. So it lives here, every week, in one or two or three points. It's time for trump to release the tax returns he promised to release. We already know he doesn't pay taxes, that's not what's hiding. If there's nothing in there that will harm the country, it seems like a no brainer to me - it would go very far to quell the fears of people about foreign influence and interference in this administration and stop some of this shitslide. Then you have the elected officials who voted against forcing him to release them...what are THEY hiding? Why was it important for all other presidents to release their taxes BEFORE taking office, but now that this guy is in there, it suddenly doesn't matter and is an invasion of privacy? Newsflash: if you run for president, you know you're going to have to release your taxes. Why the fuck are we still chasing these down? Call your rep today and demand they support a push to release them and for a full investigation of the administration's foreign ties. Find your rep in the House here and in the Senate here. Should foreign interference not merit the same exhaustive investigation a blow job did back in the 1990s? Anyone remember that? As for his response...First, it's nonsense, not non-sense; second, I do believe this twitter account is unsecured. Hillary who? You're the president now. This is all on you. The only people talking about Hillary still are you and your cult members. But her emaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiillllllllllllsssssssss. Sorry, it was three members of YOUR campaign that  resigned due to foreign ties during the election. Not three members of your opponent's. Get it together. 

6. Have you ever seen Red Dawn? Wolverines.

7. Now we all know every damn month is black history month and women's history month, but to play along in the designated BHM...Sometimes people say that slavery was so long ago and black people need to get over it and we're equal now and and stop with the black lives matter shit. Then you read something like this, where black women of above average intelligence were being sterilized without their permission - in 1961 in Fannie Lou Hamer's case. That's less than 60 years ago. Less than 60 years ago. We have not come that far. Can we stop pretending the playing field is level just because it looks even where we're walking? The opportunities, by and large, have not been the same. The treatment has not been the same. It takes nothing to admit that and to work hard within yourself to do your part to change that.

8. I have unfounded and irrational anger at egg whites. Like when I see them in a recipe I feel stabby. Same with egg white omelets. No thanks. Is there a support group for this?

9. Reminder:

10. E-card of the week:

Made in America, 

Linking up with Kristin & Joey and 

Life Anthems

In the five plus years I've been blogging, I have managed to successfully avoid a soundtrack of my life post. I've done summer playlists, songs I never turn off, songs I always turn off, a Christmas Playlist, but never any explanation about anything and I think a life anthem or soundtrack of my life post deserves a little explanation. To name an arbitrary number of songs that define me or have spoken to me over the past 39 years has always seemed like an impossible task. Then I started thinking well I don't need to include them all and maybe I could write a little backstory instead of a list and they don't have to be my favorites and it can be more than one post and just fucking try it. I mean the backstory is where it's at, really...because when I think of it, the songs that are my life anthems are not necessarily the ones I love the most - they're the ones that have followed me around through certain moods and memories.

This is me trying it with three to ease into things, and go along with Alyssa's blog challenge prompt.

Have You Seen Me Lately by The Counting Crows
This song has gotten me through some things. Driving around singing it as loudly as possible. It appeals to my fuck you all, I can do this by myself mood that I get into after I've been unexpectedly hurt by someone. If my blood is boiling or if I'd rather be defiant than sad, this is a good thing for me to listen to and it starts with the clanging guitar opening it up. Listen here.

Get away from me

This isn't gonna be easy 

But I don't need you

Believe me

You got a piece of me

But is't just a little piece of me

And I don't need anyone 

And these days I feel like I'm fading away

Thunder Road by Bruce Springsteen
Not my favorite Bruce song by a longshot, this song has nevertheless been a constant for me for what feels like my whole life. I've shouted it out in hundreds of bars, I've sang it on roads on both coasts of this country and in foreign lands. I've sang it through all of my eras. It's never been left behind as I moved on to another age or way. The harmonica intro pulls at something in me and Clarence's solo taking it on out always gives me the chills.

Into the Mystic by Van Morrison
This song makes me feel cradled and peaceful with just a dash of wistfulness. I walked down the aisle to this at our wedding because I wanted all of those things in my heart at that time.

That's all for now, I'll be back with more in the future. 

What are three songs from your life anthem list?

This post is a part of the back to blogging challenge on Alyssa's blog. 

To read more like this or write some like this:

Thursday Thoughts: Mother May I?

1. OLE, mofos. I made guacamole (4 avocados, finely diced red onion, 1 tbs salsa, 1 tbs sour cream, juice of one lemon, juice of one lime, salt/pepper/garlic powder/garlic salt to taste) for a work party today and last night was baked queso tacos.

2. In 2015 I started using a Plum Paper planner and it served me very well. I adored it, it was my bible. I bought another one for this year but over the past month have basically stopped using it aside from the calendar function. I'm not one to stick with something that isn't working, especially if it's designed to make me more efficient and is actually making me less so. I'm going back to basics with a purse sized planner that I'll use in conjunction with my Poppin notebooks. I section them off with paper clips so I have one for work, home, shore, and blog - all my stuff all in one place works best for me.

3. What are you reading? I started Miller's Valley by Anna Quindlen last night. Show Us Your Books is on Tuesday.

4. I've shit the bed on the bracelets every weekday in spring goal but I'm loving my new waterproof man's watch with a big ass face. I also wear watches on my dominant hand, I think most wear it on the hand they don't write with? Anyone? Bueller?

5. I went to Target twice last weekend, had to go to the bathroom twice too. Felt safer in the bathrooms than I felt in the parking lots...you know what I would like to address though? Can people not be such gross pigs in public restrooms? Let's clean it up ladies.

6. I can't stop listening to Same as the Sun by Jesse Cole. MFD usually bitches at the songs on my Puttering playlist on Spotify - my Puttering playlist is what I listen to when I'm cooking or doing little hausfrauing projects - and he didn't even utter a peep during this one. He was probably just not listening, but still. I'll take it. He refuses to hear the Cup song at all.

7. I can't even muster a Trump joke at this juncture. I did get a huge kick out of the Ted Cruz is the Zodiac Killer shit. That was a riot. Currently on the fridge:

8. I'm ready to go Office Space on my dryer right now. All loads have to be run through twice.

9. I have spent so much time studying google maps of Ireland this week trying to finalize our trip that it's like I live there.

10. E-card of the week:

Linking up Kristen and Gretch for What's New With You?

And I drove out of there with no one behind me...feeling funny and free

It's 17 years ago this May, but the day I drove away from my house on Madison and off of the University of Delaware campus, leaving my footloose and fancy free college self behind, is still crystal clear to me.

I had a mix CD in my car, and I heard Reunion by the Indigo Girls and Wildflowers by Tom Petty before I got on 95 to head north towards home. Looking in the rear view mirror, it seemed like it had all already slipped away even though it was still in view. It passed in the blink of an eye.

In true egocentric early 20s fashion, I was overly dramatic about the end of this college era. I felt bereft, ripped from the familiar, thrust forward before I was ready to witness the death of some less responsible, more carefree versions of myself. I had bills in college and I had worked beginning at 16, so the work and bills aspect of real life weren't exactly new concepts to me. My parents didn't go to college. I knew it was a privilege for me to go - did I do it right? What if I didn't? More than the mundane details of adult life, I think I was afraid that leaving meant a turning point I couldn't cross through again. I felt like I was closing the door on endless possibility.

While I've absolutely done things on a whim and felt freedom in the years between college and now, it's never been in quite the same way because I've never been as open to possibility as I was then. That day I feel like I could've stood in the middle of a great plain full of possibilities and gone whichever way the wind blew me. In years since, I've learned to tame the wind.

When I think about it now and how hard it felt then, I know it wasn't the huge deal I made it out to be. Life went on, quickly. I adapted to being back home. I found a job and stayed there for three years, and what I did there put me on a trajectory career-wise that I'm still on today. I'd never go back to my 20s, or to any previous age. But when I think about it I still feel little threads of melancholy over that state of being young in a time of timelessness.

Just another things I think about post, like last Wednesday's 90/10 post. I write these whenever they come to mind but don't always publish them. I've been trying to be better about that - to push publish on random writings that don't feel finished to me and are unrelated to anything in my life at the time they're written. I mean, if I wait to write about something until my thoughts on a subject are complete or until I can connect it to something that's happening currently, I'll be waiting forever. And I do hate waiting. So thanks for indulging me.

TWTW - the one with New Year

Raise your hand if you didn't make it until midnight on New Year's Eve...my hand is raised. I did take Gus to acupuncture earlier in the day, MFD and I were unintentional samesies dressers, and Debbie came over for crab dip and other apps and a super easy ice cream sandwich.

Good thing I made the traditional pork & sauerkraut New Year's meal on New Year's eve because as I was settling in with my coffee to make mashed potatoes on New Year's morning, I got a call from MFD that he needed me to bring his sax to the clubhouse. It's not Mummers Day unless he forgets something that requires me to leave the house in pajamas. And then he came back home looking for something else. I felt anxiety and I'm not even a mummer. LOL

Peters and I met Jenn & Kit Kat at the train station...then I had to get off at 30th Street to pee. So, need to pee before the parade and I wore a coat that wasn't warm enough. Amateur hour. No matter, Peters and I hopped a cab down Market Street to see Frank at Fralinger and take a look see at the street scenes before heading to see Ferko.

We watched Ferko run through a few times.

Then we made our way to the stands where we encountered a hipster in an awesome suit and a marshall with a man bun. We were sitting in the back, which is where you can see the marshalls sweat it seemingly more than the performers sometimes. Many things go into a show, not just what you see in the front!

Lots of chicanery on the train home, a stop at Three Monkeys, then Jenn picked me up and we headed down to Ferko. I was very pleased with the parade through the neighborhood after it was announced that Ferko won second prize. Congrats to South Philly on first prize! Plus time with my favorites before I started whining to go home. Old ladies cannot drink beer all day. Trust.

I loved Ferko this year, especially the music. Here is aYouTube clip of it below if you're interested.

I meant to do a great many things Saturday including driving down to the shore, but when I woke up I didn't want to do much aside from watch Making a Murderer and order food. Luckily MFD and I blurted out to each other immediately that we didn't want to go to the shore as planned which alleviated either one of us from feeling like a ruiner. We stayed home and he went to make his Mum rounds at night. After we watched the parade again, of course.

Sunday it was time to pay the piper. We were on the road to the shore by 9:30. We took photos to put it up on VRBO and winterized it. We stopped at the beach to see the ocean and on the way home we made a huge list of things that need to be done in the spring. Well, not on the way home. On the way to a showing appointment. I was driving Miss Daisy all over NJ and got home a few hours later than planned.

I had grand plans of things to do at home, but I was exhausted. So I made mashed potatoes to accompany the leftover pork, made scrambled eggs and poop soup for the dogs, and egg muffins for breakfast for me this week. Lunches are salads (buying from Wawa) and dinners are leftovers and spaghetti squash with olive oil, black olives, grape tomatoes, and fresh mozzarella. I'll make that today or Tuesday.

Speaking of dogs...

And of course, the best thing about January - the return of Downton Abbey.

I hope you started 2016 off on a good foot! I'm looking to settle into it this week. I'm feeling a little overwhelmed...time to stop thinking and just breathe and make some to do lists.

My BFF Laura celebrated her birthday yesterday, and my aunt Sue celebrates hers today. Happy Happy!

Linking up with Biana at B Loved Boston for Weekending

In the Garden

Sunday night I shut the light off and settled back in my pillow. Music drifted up the stairs from something MFD was watching.

The Avett Brothers were singing In the Garden. MFD rewound and played it a few more times. The rest of the house was silent, and we were on different floors, just listening. Not typically a lover of religious hymns, I was mesmerized.

On a cold and windy January night, it made me think of spring, of promise and wistfulness, of mouths set in grim lines, of young hands held by old hands, of darkness falling more swiftly in the mountains, of twilight, of yearning. Different things, some in opposition to each other. 

It made me think of opening my grandmom's back door to the comforting constant of the radio playing low in the kitchen. 

In late spring we'd sit at the dining room table and talk about how the lily of the valley were coming up that year in the garden. If they came up and spread, Grandmom thought that was the harbinger of a good year, and when I was older I knew we were talking about more than a good year in the garden. Today I have my own garden and a patch of lily of the valley that I have my own conversations about.

Music is a great inducer of memory. Like in Piano Man - He says, "Son can you play me a memory, I'm not really sure how it goes." It can transport me immediately to a moment or a slideshow of moments:when I first heard the song, or a time when I loved or hated it; to a big or small event where it was on in the background like a soundtrack to a moment, or to something I haven't thought of in years but was reminded of instantly.

Listening to that song Sunday night made me feel how circular time is, like everywhere I am in the present, a small piece of me has been there before with someone else in a different time and place. Is that weird? Maybe. But I like to think that is the case, so that everything and everyone that has gone before is always a part of me and my layers of memory.

Linking up with Shanna for Random Wednesday