"Only Under Hip-Hop Supervision"

My brother Luke was killed 9 years ago yesterday. I didn't really feel like posting about it, because any sort of grief I'm going through these days...it's really hard to share for some reason...but then again I know isolation is not the answer...so a story:

2003, maybe 2004, washed-out pale-gray cracked 2-lane highway in Baja, Mexico you can only drive on during the day because a) it's not safe at night because, I don't know, we're just told it's not, and b) the speed and swerving of the semi trucks going the other way...are all the drivers drunk?...in the dark...just no...

We're coming back from a surf trip, nothing but salt water and campfires for days, my hair starting to dreadlock, everything filthy, so filthy that the military checkpoint teenagers with machine guns who stop us to search the car start poking around our tent and say what's that and we say hot sauce and they make a face and wave us through.

Anyway. Beastie Boys on I guess a first-generation (or close to it?) i-POD...God, it's been a long time since I had my brother with me...

There's this line before the song starts that talks about scratching a record and don't try this at home, only "under hip-hop supervision," except Luke thought it was only "ON the Hip-Hop Super Vision" like an actual thing you could buy at the store. We must of argued for an hour about it.No cell service so we couldn't Google it. (Did they even have Google back then? I can't remember. Or wireless? God, it's been a long time...) Luke even bought me play-turntables for Christmas that year and elaborately redid the box to brand the toy the "Hip-Hop Super Vision," just to proove his point.

I don't know why this converation sticks with me, but it does. I even use it on my kids sometimes...like they'll want to do something like smell my glass-contained candles and I'll be like, "uh-uh, not without me, only under hip-hop supervision."

My brother does live on in a million ways...

[Click the image above to listen...]

XOXO

Every Morning We Sing a Song...

One of the things I love to do while spending time with the kids in the mornings is to put my iPOD on random and sing and help them dance to whatever songs come up (skipping particular songs if we aren't in the mood.)

But before we do this, we usually ask Siri to "Play '40 Dogs.'" It's a song by an artist called Bob Schneider out of Austin, Texas, where I went to grad school. I saw a lot of live music those couple years I was down there, but Bob Schneider was my favorite. (I've probably seen him live more than any other artist. He's amazing.)

Anyway, I don't know how we got stuck on this song, but some of the phrases in the lyrics...it's just so us:

"There's something right about you and me..."

"We ain't got no time to waste, we got too much life to taste..."

"We can do what we want to do..."

And the chorus:

"We're like Romeo and Juliet, like 40 dogs, cigarettes

--(except instead of cigarettes, I sing: '40 dogs we like to pet')--

We're the good times that haven't happened yet, but will.

I can tell you where we're gonna be

When the whole world falls to the sea:

We'll be livin' ever after, happily."

Here's a link, if you want to watch/listen [to Bob Schneider, not us. :)]

Happy Friday! Thanks for spending some time here this week! :)

XOXO

Grace in Small Things, October 10, 2011

Snow at my brother's, southwest of Denver. He lives where we grew up...so cool...

Hi Everyone! Happy Monday!

I'll be doing my usual weekly pregnancy post tomorrow...today there's a lot of good things I want to share! :) I usually list small happinesses here, but some of today's are big:

1. Spent the night at my brother's Friday night (he lives in the foothills outside of Denver), and woke Saturday morning to snow. And I wasn't expecting it at all. I felt like a little kid...delighted...it was magical

2. My parents had two dogs, Jack and Comic. Comic died a short time ago, from a freak illness, which made my parents sooooo sad, but they kept saying, "At least we have Jack."

Well, they went on vacation and left Jack with my brother (who is amazing with dogs, by the way). About a week ago, Jack went missing. And he wasn't wearing a collar/any ID. My brother spent so much time last week, and my husband and I helped this weekend searching for him...ads online and in newspapers, flyers posted all over the place, checking the shelters, going door-to-door looking for him, etc., etc., etc. No luck.

It hit me hard when we checked into our Denver hotel Saturday...we were planning to have Jack with us as we were going to bring him home with us when we came back (we live near my parents, my brother is about 4 hours away from us). The hotel is super dog friendly and had a little chalkboard that said, "Welcome, Jack!" and a dog bed and dog dishes and treats in the room. But we had no dog to check in with. I was feeling so sad. I just couldn't imagine my parents losing BOTH their dogs in such a short time, you know? 

But today--finally--Jack has been found! Don't know the details, but so, so, so happy about that news! :)

(By the way, if you want to make yourself sad, go check out the lost-and-found rooms at your local animal shelter. So many, many sweet, hopeful dogs looking up at you and wagging their tails as you walk by...I hope most of them get found...)

3. Closed down a hip Denver restaurant with good friends of ours on Saturday night (after visiting the coolest little bar [I am of course drinking non-alcoholic beer and water these days, just FYI])...you know it's been a fun night when you suddenly notice it's just you and the wait staff (we left a big tip, BTW).

4. Foo Fighters Denver show last night. Absolutely lived up to my hopes for it (and my hopes were BIG). What an awesome night. They played until almost midnight and there was so much good energy, the crowd was great, the band was great, they played every song but one that I wanted to hear (and that one's pretty obscure, so not surprising). Made me so happy. 

5. Have I mentioned I'm feeling better?!? It's like I was living in black-and-white and the whole world is now Technicolor. I didn't realize how much I was struggling, how down I was feeling just because I was so sick 24/7. Not being sick like that has had a HUGE impact on my mood, how I'm feeling about being pregnant, and I'm feeling like I can handle actual babies (it's hard to picture being any good as a mother when you can barely get out of bed.) I'll talk more about the medication I'm on tomorrow, but bottom line is it has made such a HUGE difference...

Hope everyone has a lovely week!

XOXO

P.S. Courtney, I promise to post pictures of the aspens sometime this week. :)

A New Friend, Italian Food and the Sublime James McMurtry

An almost-full moon rising over the hills outside Paonia, Colorado.

So part of my strategy for dealing with the endless waiting associated with IVF is to plan some fun things vs spending all my time moping around the house. Last night, as part of that, we went to Hotchkiss and Paonia.

Hotchkiss was to visit with a new fried of ours (a lovely woman my husband met in film class last semester)...she lives in a little cottage with a view of mountains and sky, a wooden fence carved out in twigs and birds, a huge screened-in porch out back and a tiny cabin on the other side of a lush green lawn that if I lived there I'd turn into a writing studio. Plus the whole house is furnished with one-of-a-kind vintage everything, photographs, the picture she's currently painting on a easel...she had snacks for us and glasses of wine for my husband and it was lovely to be in her presence.

After, we drove the short distance to Paonia, which is a little hippie town at the base of the mountains that go up to Aspen. We had Italian food in an outdoor garden with hollyhocks and a burbling fountain, nicoise olives as dusk fell and then we went to the tiny Paradise Theater to see James McMurtry, whose music I've loved since I spent a couple years in Austin, Texas back in the '90s. He was at his best when it was just him and his red acoustic guitar, singing "Ruby and Carlos"...the whole place was just spellbound:

"Holding back the flood, just don't do no good

You can't unclench your teeth, to howl the way you should

So curl your lips around the taste of tears and hollow sounds

Than no one owns but you, no one owns but you."

There's so much pain in the world.

And so much beauty, too.

What I'm Listening to: The Foo Fighters Wasting Light

Love, love, love the Foo Fighters. (And Dave Grohl is my celebrity crush.) Their new album, Wasting Light, is all I've been listening to for the past week or so, and it is AMAZING. Love.

One of my best concert experiences ever was in the fall of 2005. My lovely friend Clayton took me down to LA to see a benefit concert for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, and Dave Grohl played an acoustic set. I don't remember the venue, but it was one of those cool old music venues in LA, small and ornate and it was like a Tuesday night or something and the place was PACKED. Halfway through the set someone yelled out "'Skin and Bones'!" and Dave Ghrol said, "How the F@#! do you know about 'Skin and Bones'?" (He'd just written it, it had yet to be released.) And then he proceeded to play it, in all its haunting beauty. He also played 'Friend of a Friend,' which is about Kurt Cobain, also something that had yet to be released, also so sad and so beautiful.

This was in the recent aftermath of my brother being killed. I'll always remember that night as a little pool of light in my (at the time) dark, dark, dark world.

Love the Foo Fighters. Love that music can make me so happy.

XO

Lullaby Playlist

Anyone who's actually been to Graceland has to have Elvis on their baby's playlist, right? This is a close-up of the stained glass in Elvis' living room. My dad and I went to Graceland last summer--had a blast.

So my husband said the other day that he read somewhere that if you play music or sing songs to the baby before it's born, when it hears the same music after it's born it'll be soothed by it. 

"The baby can hear by Week 8," he said. "Maybe we should make a playlist," which has by now evolved into separate playlists because what he wants to play for/sing to the baby is different from me. (Although he's got some good ideas. "Journey, Don't Stop Believing," he says. I can respect that.)

This weekend, I made my lullaby playlist (which my husband says is too hippie chick, lol). I love making playlists. I tend to make one every three or four months, and listen to it pretty much exclusively. Then that music is so embedded in that particular time and place in my life...it's really interesting how music so quickly takes me back.

Anyway, I wanted to use music I already had (so no buying new songs). Below, the annotated list, in order of the year the original version of the song was released:

• Over the Rainbow, Willie Nelson (1939)--this song so reminds me of my childhood
• Young at Heart, Frank Sinatra (1953)--we listened to a lot of Frank Sinatra when I lived in Seattle right after college
• Love Is Here to Stay, Ella Fitzgerald (1956)--from my brother Luke's music collection
• (Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear, Elvis Presley (1957)--Elvis reminds me of my grandpa. Love him. Miss him
• Blackbird, The Beatles (1968)--God, I love the Beatles. I used to play this song on my guitar in the months after my brother died
• Your Song, Elton John (1970)--I'm sure I heard Elton John growing up, but what his music really reminds me of is college
• Rocky Mountain High, John Denver (1972)--my mom was a huge John Denver fan. I can sing entire albums start to finish. And every kid born in Colorado needs this on his/her playlist
• The Rainbow Connection,The Carpenters (1979)--again, a song from my childhood
• Old Pictures, The Judds (1987)--the Judds remind me of my dad for some reason, this song especially
• If I had a Boat, Lyle Lovett (1987)--I've always thought of this as a cute song for kids
• Take Me to a Place, Little Sister (1994)--a kind of obscure Austin, Texas band I saw live about a million times when I lived down there after Seattle. This might be my favorite song on the list
• Wonder, Natalie Merchant (1995)--these next three songs remind me of living in San Francisco, putting music on the stereo and going for a drive
• Heaven's Here on Earth, Tracy Chapman (1995)
• Dance With the Angels, Lisa Loeb (1997)
• Starfish, Sister Hazel (1997)--again, a song I've always thought of as a cute little kid's song
• How Do You Fall in Love, Alabama (1998)--so the baby will know how much his Mommy and Daddy love each other
• Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key, Billy Bragg and Wilco (1998)--this is such a great album...reminds me of driving to Burning Man with my lovely friend Chris the first year we both went
• Life Uncommon, Jewel (1998)--more songs that remind me of San Francisco...mixed in with driving to Santa Barbara to surf with my brother Luke, and then moving down there to live with him...
• The Lucky One, Alison Krauss (2001)
• Godspeed (Sweet Dreams), Dixie Chicks (2002)
• Nightingale, Norah Jones (2002)
• Blessed to be a Witness, Ben Harper (2003)
• Love Is Everywhere, Bob Schneider (2004)--another Austin musician I adore
• Wildflower, Sheryl Crow (2005)--this was on my iPOD on a long bus ride in Chile, down with a girlfriend of mine a few months after my brother Luke died. I sat in the back corner of the bus and sobbed. What an amazing trip that was, but I was just a wreck at the time
• Upside Down, Jack Johnson (2006)--A happy little Santa Barbara song...this reminds me so much of the 17-year-old who came to live with me after my brother died (long story for another time)
• Come Alive, Foo Fighters (2007)--oh, how I love the Foo Fighters. Need to see if there's an acoustic version of this song...might work a little better for lullaby purposes
• Umbrella, Rihanna (2007)--I wanted to have this be the song at our wedding (but we ended up having a really simple wedding where we didn't do that kind of thing). I love its message about standing together and helping each other through things
• Stars 4-Ever, Robyn (2010)--my best friend recommended this album to me...it makes me think of her...
• We Are Hot Dogs, Danielle Ate the Sandwich (2010)--again, a silly little kid's song is what I thought when I first heard this. And I love the refrain: "And I can't recall a feeling better than this."

Photo Credit: Growl Roar.

An Artsy Weekend...I'm a Happy Girl

So if I still lived in Seattle or San Francisco, or were in Boston, a weekend like this would be easy to put together. But not that much happens in Grand Junction, so having all this stuff in one weekend was such a treat. 

Friday: Went to a poetry reading, a fundraiser for the Western Colorado Writer's Forum. Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer writes gorgeous poems, sings with the prettiest voice imaginable and looks like a beauty queen...it was such a pleasure to be in her presence. I took home the book to the left and also learned of her poem-a-day blog, which you can access HERE.

Saturday: On our way to breakfast at the Dream Cafe, I saw a poster for a show that night at the Radio Room. Danielle Ate the Sandwich is a performer I wanted to see in Denver last summer but didn't get to, so how great to see her here, in a small venue. She's as funny as her songs are beautiful...it was the best show I've been to in a long time. Oh, and she plays the ukulele, which made me totally miss making music with my friend Charlie when we both lived at the Cota House in Santa Barbara. Her newest CD, which I took home, is above. Go see if she comes to your town...her website with her tour dates is HERE.

Sunday: I was really excited to see Black Swan, but I figured I’d have to wait for video, because art movies aren’t big here/don’t often make it to this small town (although some do come to the Avalon…so grateful for that). But I got to see it on the big screen! More than anything the movie is just so visually beautiful. The visual of the ballerina literally turning into a black swan was unbelievable and something that will stay in my head for a long time.

I love the arts and don't usually get enough. One of the hardest things about living in a small town. Grateful for weekends like this.

What I'm Listening To: Robyn's Body Talk

So my best friend has this cool job in the music business, and one of the benefits of that for me is I get recommendations. One of her latest: Robyn's Body Talk.

“I can’t stop listening to this album,” my friend said to me, and I feel the same way. How is it that I’ve never heard of Robyn? The album: dance-y and pop-y and so very happy. I’ve been listening to it this weekend making Christmas presents, running errands.

The artist herself is interesting, too. She’s been in the music business a long time, and I love that she left her label when they didn’t approve of what she was doing artistically, and has since been releasing her music on her own, so she can do anything she wants to do. Artistic freedom/integrity is something I think about a lot with my writing. It’d be easy to turn to very commercial projects, get them published. Even this blog--I know I could put together a different kind of blog that’s very commercial, if I was trying to get an enormous readership or make money. But my creative projects, I want to do them the way I want to do them, stay true to my vision vs letting somebody else/the obvious money-making needs and wants of the marketplace dictate what I do. I love seeing other people follow that same path (and be successful at it--that’s inspiring.)

Love Robyn’s artistic vision. Body Talk's definitely worth checking out.

Nor Cal

Ah, the Marina.

I’m all over the Bay Area yesterday, today and tomorrow. It doesn’t hurt to be here like it hurts to be in Santa Barbara. I miss it, but it also feels really intense. Traffic is crazy. Listening to Die Wandaland (Patrick Porter). Patrick was my brother’s best friend in high school. I listened to this album for the first time on a trip to the Bay Area four years ago, and it felt like the right thing to listen to again.

Haven’t cried about my brother’s birthday yet, but it’ll happen; I’m kind of intermittently on the edge of tears right now. Trying to keep this trip mellow but still feeling edgy and uneasy. Can’t wait to be home. Miss my husband terribly.