284th Friday Blog Roundup
Josh had to clean out his car before we traded it in at the dealership and in his scouring of all nooks and crannies, unearthed a CD I’ve been looking for since the twins were born (you’d think it would be easy to find something as large as a CD in a space as compact as a car, but alas, no).
It’s a mix I made called “Women Rock!” (get it? It’s like…women rock because we’re so cool, but also women rock, as in “we rock-n-roll.” I felt the need to explain that to you as if you were Josh and were not fully appreciating my witty mix CD title). It starts with Carly Simon’s “Let the River Run.”
It’s asking for the taking.
Trembling, shaking.
Oh, my heart is aching.
We’re coming to the edge,
running on the water,
coming through the fog,
your sons and daughters.
Can you understand why I’m so excited to have this again? Just for the hope that’s in her voice? I couldn’t have found it at a better time. It has a version of “Midnight Train to Georgia” performed by the Indigo Girls and Ani DiFranco and “Blossom” by James Taylor (he’s sort of like a girl…um…I don’t know how he ended up on this CD) and “Uncle John’s Band” sung by the Indigo Girls (the Dead version is one of my favourite songs of all times) and “Lilydale” by 10000 Maniacs.
Finding this CD made me give trying to restore another mix CD a final try. I’ve been trying to get the music off this disc for years–it’s badly scratched and won’t play in the car anymore. And I don’t have any of these songs elsewhere. And miracles of miracles, I got it to work and saved it to my computer and burned a new, fresh copy for the car. It starts with Mahalia Jackson singing “Wade in the Water” and it has a lot of the music we played at our wedding: “Marry Me” by Dolly Parton (um…yes…we did play that) and “I Love You Too” from Pete’s Dragon (I swear, we played more than one Pete’s Dragon song at our wedding).
We had all this good music, so it was time for a road trip. Doesn’t good music make you want to drive?
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I have to admit that I thought maybe 100 people would participate in the first part of Project IF so I was blown away that more than 300 “what ifs” are on the list. If you haven’t read the comments yet, you should take a quiet moment to do so. It is one of the most powerful things I’ve ever read.
The list isn’t closing completely, but Resolve and I are culling out 10 “what ifs” from whatever is on the list as of 11:59 p.m. tonight (going by the time stamp). So this is your last chance if you haven’t added one. On Wednesday, the 21st, you’ll find out the second part of the project in time for NIAW.
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The Weekly What If: What if you could fluently speak another language other than your primary language? Which language would you choose and why?
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And now, the blogs…
I know this first one was from last Thursday, but since I read it on Friday, I’m counting it for this week (my blog, my rules). Mrs. Spit has a post that meanders through numerous thoughts. It is about everything and nothing. And without being able to put my finger on why, I thought it was wonderful. I am fond of tiny vignette posts. And it is a deeply, brutally honest post, and reading that rawness is moving.
Single Infertile Female also has a post about the thoughts that flitted through her mind during an acupuncture session. What I think is most notable is not only the calm conveyed in the post (despite the emotional thoughts), but the calm she admits she felt while she was thinking them. And, of course, I had to crack up over, “I’m thinking it must have been the bum needles helping me keep my cool.”
Circus Children has a brief, but breathtaking post titled “Intruder.” It is about the strangeness that exists, invisibly, amongst the normalcy.
The Lucky Life has a completely non-IF post that blew my mind about the time she spent in a coma. What seeped into the unconscious state and what she missed. I just found it a fascinating read.
Lastly, Are We There Yet? has a post about controlling her emotions since her son’s diagnosis, and how it is similar to years of infertility. I love this thought: “I never got upset about the emotions I felt during our adoption and in-vitro fertilization journeys. I just allowed myself to roll with the waves as if I were a surfer at the mercy of the tides.” Read this post not just for the advice and amazing writing, but for the story she tells about the woman she meets at the zoo and the catharsis this stranger brings her.
The roundup to the Roundup: Mix CDs + good weather = road trip. Last chance to add a “what if” for Project IF. Answer the Weekly What If. And lots of great blogs to read.
17 comments
I would love to swap mix CDs with you if you were up for it?
Ah, I love a good mix CD. And I love finding a long-lost CD and being able to “restore” a bad copy! Road trips were made for mix tapes and sadly, my iPod’s shuffle function has taken the place of a well designed track list. Must remedy that.
As far as your weekly what-if, this is the easiest one for me to answer yet! I would lovelovelove to learn German. It really sucks not being able to clearly communicate with my father-in-law and many of my husband’s friends. And it sucks sitting around with my husband’s colleagues missing half of what they say because they’ve randomly switched to German at some point in the conversation. And of course, with my little half-aliens on the way, I really want them to be bilingual, which is possible with a native speaker father, but would be much better and much easier if I also spoke the alternate language. I think I would be absurdly broken-hearted if my children weren’t able to talk to their grandparents. I can’t even imagine how sad that would be. So yeah. It’s a priority. I really need to get on the ball with learning more German.
I love CDs like that…I have many MIxes that make me happy. 🙂
Actually since we had a computer crash last year we have been trying to find our Huge folder of CDs that I was sure was “here” or “There” and dammit we just couldn’t find them in a basement that IS NOT THAT BIG and was just cleaned. Then I went to get John’s short sleeved polos (spring!!!) and voila , there it was…I brought it to my husband like I had found the gift of the Magi. LOL
I was sooo happy to know that all those songs can go back on my IPOD once he copies the CD to the new harddrive.
if I could speak another language, I think it might be French. It just seems sexy. But yesterday when I was home with a feverish Gio and I was locked into Nick Jr for hours…They had the woman who sings and signs on…I love her. In my early 20’s I actually took sign language class with a boyfriend, but we broke up before we could go beyond the beginner class. I would love to know sign language fluently…..I was just thinking that yesterday…today here is your question…and my answer. 🙂
TGIF!
Good weather and good music ALWAYS makes me want to drive. With the windows down, and the wind in my hair.
Finding something special that you thought you had lost is always a thrill. : )
Being Canadian, it would be logical for me to want to be able to speak French. I did take French all through high school, & I can sometimes get the gist of what they are saying on the French TV channel, but after 30 years, whatever vocabulary & limited fluency I had attained have been sadly diminshed.
When I was a kid, I took after-school Ukrainian classes one year. I never learned more than to count to five, but I remember the pleasure on my Baba’s face when we told her what we were doing. I have very little use for Ukrainian these days (although it was spoken by my grandparents, my dad & my aunts & uncles at all my childhood family gatherings), but I would like to know it better as a way of connecting to my past & my heritage.
The Bank I work for has expanded into Latin America in recent years, so much so that we have almost as many Spanish-speaking employees as English-speaking employees now. Being able to speak Spanish is a great career asset here.
But I think I would most like to know Italian, because that’s what dh’s family speaks, particularly the older generation, including my FIL. Most of them speak English pretty well, but at family gatherings, they lapse back into Italian & while I’ve learned a few words over the years (& it’s similar enough to French — & they throw in enough snatches of English for me to get the gist of the conversation)(after meeting dh’s family, I told my mother I knew how she must have felt meeting my father’s Ukrainian family), it’s maddening not to be able to follow or contribute.
We should run away together.
Let the River Run is in my top 5 favorite songs ever—because it’s so hopeful. I made S listen to it on our second date….
I don’t really want to learn a language as much as I want one of those babelfish from Douglas Adams books! You know – the ones they stick in your ear, and it translates any language into the one you understand?
OK, I’d like to speak Italian, because I love Italy. But I’d also like to learn Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc because they’re so completely different than English.
Oh, Man, I am so in need of a new mix. My kids are on an Irish music binge in the car. Love Irish music, but this one mix is beyond old for me now.
Now Let The River will be running through my head all morning. 🙂
Hey did you know that they sell these cellophane (?) things that sort of … snap … onto the back of a scratched CD/DVD … and solve that problem? Mike brought a pack home from a conference once and I’d had no idea such a solution existed. Since he brought them home as a freebie, I don’t know where you buy them. If you ever need them again, mayb ask at Best Buy? Or google it?
I would like to speak almost any language. I had Spanish in high school and six more semesters of it in college. But I never had to use it and as a consequence, don’t speak it. Such a shame. I quit it just before the class where you have to read Don Quijote … because the art studios were just too time consuming to continue with a “hobby” like that.
I guess if I had to pick, I’d choose Italian. I just loved traveling there. But I always felt so … rude … for not speaking the language. It made a lot of situations really tense. It would be lovely to be able to move more fluidly in such a beautiful place. Rather than feeling like a big, ugly, American sore thumb.
Thank you for the mention Mel, and always for your roundup that brings light to so many different blogs! 🙂
Mel, I’m from that era and remember that song on the radio and love all the songs from that era… back when the singer/songwriter ruled and all the ladies and guys seemed to be lovers in passing, writing songs with each other and about each other!
My favorite mix would have to be (and it is taped over, unfortunately) this mix tape made by a DJ in Zaharo, Greece, my favorite place on earth. In 1984, the summer was incredible there and the dancing at night in the outdoor disco, just brings back incredibly free and lovely memories for me.
I taped over it by mistake. Replacing the beat of disco music with the beat of 1970s icon David Pack (of Ambrosia fame). Waaah.
I miss that music. I miss those carefree days when my health wasn’t fragile and I was surrounded by a family that was still living and present in my life. I miss my BFF, Rena, who lives over there, still. I have not seen her in quite a few years though we speak frequently.
I speak Greek and English. My DH is Greek. My kids are bilingual.
If I could speak any language outside of those two I’d have to say, Italian. I am 1/4 Italian so it is literally the “mother tongue” of my maternal grandfather.
OK, first: You just about made me pee my pants with excitement! Seriously, thank you – you just made my day!
Second – I have more than one Women Rock mix (although, not as aptly titled – I may need to steal the clever title!), and Ani is all over those bad boys! My friend Loo and I are forever making each other mixes. It is seriously a highlight to my day when she has a new one for me!
Finally – I would probably want to be fluent in French, just because I think it is so beautiful. Alas, I am a foreign language failure. I just always had a difficult time picking them up. I survived 2 years of Spanish in high school solely because the teacher liked me, and I made it through 3 semesters of sign language only because while I was the slowest signer you’ve ever seen – I managed to nail the facial expressiveness my instructors were looking for!
Romanian!! I’d love to speak fluently with my husband in his native tongue.
The fake husband and I are…thrifty. (I was going to say cheap but that’s not really accurate.) As such we roadtrip a lot because have you ever checked airfare costs in Canada? Ouch! So we drove to Chicago and back last year. That’s 30-ish hours in the truck. He made 11 CDs. We have two CDs that he made for the roadtrip to Prince Edward Island a few years ago. We’re going back again in June and I know he’ll make more, especially since most of his CD collection is now digitized.
He plays so much music in the truck that we had to replace the stereo last week. He wore out the old one.
Congrats on finding the CD!
I would definitely love to speak Spanish. I live in Texas for one thing so it is everywhere but mostly because it would allow me to speak with my son’s first mom without the need for a translator.
Oh, I love-love-love mixes. I started out with tapes, I had quite a bunch of them, peppy stuff, sobby stuff, lovey-dovey stuff, at least one tape for any mood I might have gone through in high-school.
Then CDs came. And MP3s. And I had to do it all over again! It is a never ending job. 😉 And yes, good music makes me wanna drive.
I would really love to speak German fluently. Without counting mother tongue, I speak fluently English, French, Spanish and Italian (bragging, I know), but fate had us settle down in Germany, and it should be easy for me to learn it, right?!, but it is not. And it is frustrating. Urgh!
Oh, mix CDs. It seems so long ago, yet the days of mix tapes feel like yesterday. How is that possible?
I can’t decide if I would want to speak Spanish or Japanese. They’re the two languages I’ve focused on. I used to speak passable Spanish, but I haven’t had a chance to use it for years now, and the more Japanese I pick up, the more Spanish slips out of my head.
My second language would be Spanish for purely practical reasons. There are so many spanish speaking patients I interact with on a regular basis. It would make my life so much easier.