Calling myself out

So, a couple of months ago I rented Fantasia 2000 for Olivia hoping that it would allow her a more concrete vision for some admittedly challenging music for a three year old. Well, it worked too well. One of the lighter pieces was Rhapsody in Blue and I don't know if it was the animation or the music, but she went nuts for it. I had to pay my $.99 to iTunes for it because I couldn't get it to come up often enough on the satellite radio.

Today I took her to a program where a member of our local orchestra plays their instrument for kids and does a little talk and plays a little music. Well, it was the clarinet and she played the opening bars of. . .you guessed. I thought she was going to crap her pants, seriously. She starts jumping up and down screaming "Rhapsody in Blue!!" over and over. I see this poor musician, still playing just start staring at me. So I am trying to quiet her down and she is having a fit, now all the parents are looking at me and I am sure they are thinking, "How the hell can this kid recognize this song?" As a parent I have two options, play it off like, "Yeah, my kid's a prodigy, she has Gershwin memorized. Your kid doesn't know the alphabet? Oh so sorry. " Or I can own up to the fact that I planted my kid in front of a Disney movie and try and pretend that was okay because classical music was involved.

I chose to just let it ride and see what happened after the program was over. Which was Olivia running over to the musician and informing her of all the things that she ate while listening to Rhapsody in Blue. Then performing a strange impromtu dance. So there you have it. My reward for listening to all 16 minutes and 35 seconds of freaking Rhapsody in Blue three times a day for weeks has been that about a dozen parents out there think that I am either:

A) One of those psycho parents who drill their child in iconic jazz pieces.
B) I am the chagrined parent of an idiot savant who is obsessed with her own diet.

Karma is a bitch.

We cut to win

I am looking at a flier on my desk entitled All About YOUR Vasectomy, as if other brochures talked about OTHER peoples vasectomies. So here it is, the blog post you may not want to read about Chad and I's quarter -life crisis. Chad turned the big 3-0 last year and I will be turning thirty, eventually, and we are having a crisis. I think at one point people had these when they turned forty or even fifty, that moment where you ask yourself what have I done? Or worse yet, what now?

My friends who are almost all thirty, some quite near to forty, laugh at me with some bitter derision that I am afraid to turn thirty. The last few months have been starting to feel like all the decisions in my life are getting replayed for me, my friends are finally getting married and having babies, things I did nearly (ouch) a decade ago. Now this, the V word. I won't get into the gritty details of the back and forth of this decision, suffice to say Chad thinks he is done and I wasn't ready to call it quits. Yet, I can honestly say that it has nothing to do with having more children. As much as I love children and opening my home to the children of my friends, I like my me time and more kids equals a lot less of that. Yes, yes we have heard all the arguments for siblings and we don't buy them. It is nothing against my friends and relatives who want to have numerous children, I love siblings, my own included, it is just not for me. Why then is it so hard to say that I don't want any more kids? Mostly because then I have to figure out what's next.

I have to admit that this is it, this is all that there is: one kid, one house, the spouse, his job. That is the sum total of my life. It shouldn't be a crushing realization, I love all these things very much, well maybe not Chad's job. But I love the money, yes I do. Now here is where I want to state that I do not want six posts from everyone telling me to get a job. A job is not what is missing. A career, even when I loved my job, and I did have jobs and co-workers that I really loved, most of the time just felt like one more thing pulling me yet another direction. I love the path that I have chosen, I guess I just wish that it felt cooler. I know, lame! Can the ennui really be just about not being the person I thought I would be? Did that rhyme? I read Candide at fourteen, I sang "When I Was A Teenage Whore" in the mirror before Hole was the Courtney Love show, I got kicked out of AP English for calling my teacher a dilettante. I maintained cool for a good long time, through college, what happened to me? Explaining Diane Arbus to Olivia just isn't cutting it.

It's like the doctor told Chad today, we cut to win.

Exhausted

This has been one of those weeks where everything was clicking so well at the beginning and as we are reaching the end I am dragging my ass across the finish line. The other down side of my job, no weekends off. I have some good posts about my on-going quarter-life crisis, my recent hair cut and Chad's new business idea, but not today, not today.

Another dream crushed

Why didn't I stop talking about it and just do it? This guy did.

Why iPod's shuffle feature will change the world

So I am cleaning around the sink with a toothpick-what do you mean why? How else do you clean between the lip of the sink and the counter? No, it is not OCD. Obviously you and your mother did not enjoy special bonding time over scrubbing the refrigerator with Q-tips. That's not weird! No, my mother does not have a distorted view of work ethic. Who asked you anyway?

Moving on, I am cleaning and I have my iPod set to shuffle. Fugazi comes on. I don't remember downloading it, it must have been in the heady days of "reclaiming" music from record industry moguls via Napster. Damn the man. Anyway, it totally took me back to my first concert as a teen and those great times when you are sixteen and invincible. I am not a musically talented person, quite the opposite, but as I get older I am starting to develop a real emotional attachment to music and how it defines me. I now consider my shuffle to be a totally comprehensive view of myself, Marvin Gaye, Wilco, Kanye West were what followed my Fugazi. iTunes may do nothing but make Steve Jobs a great big pile of money. But, it might also change the world by reminding us of where we have been, extending the invincible us.

I am currently at war with my husband to get his (and the kid's) junk off my iTunes. Nothing kills my momentum like Dar Williams, ugh make it stop. By the way, note to the Pentagon, if you are looking for a new way to torture people in secret prisons, play them the same three Snow Patrol songs in a row, over and over and over again. I'm pretty sure that Chad has either inserted subliminal messages into this album or is trying to wear me down to the point where I buy him his own iPod. I hear it my sleep. . .

Olivia's first game

I find it a little ironic that Olivia was taken to her first live baseball game by her mother and not her baseball obsessed father. Jocelyn and Daisy (pictured with O) invited us to a UW girls softball game and we had a blast, even though it was pretty cold. Olivia actually enjoyed the game itself, (which bodes well for Chad's Father's Day gift), but Bucky Badger was definitely the highlight. I wish I had videoed them dancing together and cheering on the team. Though Chad and I keep emphasizing that girls play sports like soccer and softball, I think we are fighting against the tide of a natural born cheerleader.

Best job ever

Okay, so some days my job sucks: bodily fluids, housecleaning, temper tantrums, immunizations, you get the idea. Today is not one of those days. Today it is 75 degrees and sunny and the kid and I went to the lake. We picnicked, we wandered, we fed ducks and ate orange sherbert. When was the last time you ate orange sherbert? Now I am going outside to set up a very elaborate tea party for my good girl. Iced chamomile tea, bare feet in the grass, this is a pretty sweet gig. I hate to brag, but unless you are in my yard in an hour, today is just not the day it could be for you.

I promise I will blog tomorrow and tell about cleaning the stain of unknown origin under my dishwasher if it will make you feel better?