One More For The Road; Twenty-Eight Weeks In

As anyone who knows me is aware, I always have a song stuck in my head. Always. I like to think of it as the Soundtrack of My Life. The last few months, I have had snippets of the Hamilton soundtrack stuck in my head, and not just the big ones like Here comes the general! or Helplessssssssss or I’m not throwing away my! shot! but random lines from random songs. I’ve woken up in the middle of the night suddenly thinking Angelicaaaa, ELIIIIza, and Peggy. The Schuyler Sisters! or, horribly, We have resorted to eating our horses. ON REPEAT. This has been going on for months, no matter what else I have listened to during the day.

Then, suddenly, last week I woke up with – of all things – the Lido Shuffle going through my head. How or why this happened I cannot say, but I slid into my car singing to myself one more for the roooooaaaad, turned on the ignition, and THE LIDO SHUFFLE WAS PLAYING ON THE RADIO.

The station I listen to most of the time is Sirius 70s on 7, and I was driving to teach at the community centre the other day when The Coward of the County came on. I don’t want to flex on you people, but I’m a bit of a savant when it comes to song lyrics. This is particularly true with anything I may have heard often in my youth, and my parents were big Kenny Rogers On Vinyl people. All of which is to say, although I hadn’t heard The Coward of the County for at least thirty years, I automatically sang along.

You know how there are songs that you know all the words to, but have never really given them much thought? That was me. As I sang my way through the song, I startled myself. Have you LISTENED to those lyrics? It is an incredibly violent song. Gang rape! Murder! Probable execution TIMES TWO. All sang in a kindly, lovely, Kenny Rogers voice. I had a Moment, not unlike when I discovered that Ring Around The Rosy was all about dying from the plague. Why is this tune so cheerful and the subject matter so grisly.

We have Sonos speakers all through the house and the kitchen ones are what are utilized for when dinner is being prepared, eaten, and cleaned up after. Last Sunday I had Soul Classics playing, and after dinner I retired to the couch to read while my husband and younger son cleaned up the kitchen. My older son went downstairs to finish some homework, and as I picked up my book, I could hear the distinct, but faint, sound of Blue Rodeo’s Try. At the same time, I could hear, much louder, Soul Classics from the kitchen. The window was open so I stepped outside to see if Try was coming from outside. It disappeared. I called down to my son to see if he was blasting Blue Rodeo while studying. What? What’s Blue Rodeo? So, no. I asked my husband if he could hear it. What? No. I walked into the kitchen and, indeed, all I could hear was Signed, Sealed, Delivered. No Blue Rodeo. Back to the couch. Oh, baby you try. Tryyyyyy.

This was more than having a song stuck in my head, this was music that I could hear and, apparently, I was the only one hearing it.

Isn’t that a sign of something? I was honestly starting to get worried. I can hear music that no one else can. Then, I noticed something flash on the TV; my husband, in an attempt not to see anything about the Patriots game he was recording to watch in its entirety after dinner, had flipped the channel to a music one, and had turned the sound way down…but not apparently to zero. I was hearing the very soft music on the speaker beside the couch.

Well, that was a relief.

Also a relief; I had my first salon visit in over six months. Here’s the Before, During, and After:

I know what you’re going to say: it’s dark. Mmmhmmm. It’s actually way darker than I like; my hair therapist had changed colour lines and warned me that my usual colour might need “tweaking” and here we are. This dark colour is very similar to my “birth” colour (as opposed to “natural” as my natural colour is grey-white), which I haven’t seen in 25 years or so. Honestly, I find it startling every time I look in the mirror.

Well, as my friend Monique (HI MONIQUE) said, colour fades over time and I colour every four weeks or so; this is a temporary thing. It’s not like I just got a face tattoo or anything. Who knows, maybe I’ll grow to like it, but in any case, I have four boxes of Garnier in my cupboard from when they were on sale at Superstore for $4.99. Also, the cut made it feel so much healthier and bouncier, which should get me through the next six months or so.

Pandemic Reading

What happens when a father’s dying wish is for his family to sit shiva for him? A lot. This was a mixture of Wow, That’s Sad, and Horrified Laughing Out Loud, and I Didn’t Predict The End. In other words, worth a read. According to my Instagram friends, this was made into a movie.

A baby girl is abandoned at the YMCA. I am going to tell you that this is a beautifully written book, not unlike Room, wherein if you start it, you need to finish it for the message of hope and love. HOWEVER, like Room, it is extremely upsetting and disturbing and difficult to read. There’s your caveat.

Speaking of difficult to read, I picked this up as it was written by a friend’s sister-in-law. It deals with the death of the author’s sister and best friend – the sister, suffering from extreme mental illness commits suicide, and the best friend succumbs to cancer. It’s a very raw and emotional read.

Whew, after all those books of death and despair, I’m going to read something very very light. I will let you know what exactly I’m reading next week. xo

Comments

  1. I have a playlist called Soundtrack of My Life. It’s not songs that get stuck in my head, though. It’s songs I’ve used as blog post titles. It reminds me of whatever the post was about as I listen and is not a bad recap of the past 13 years. It’s also really long. It takes over seven hours to play.

  2. I am currently reading Mexican Gothic, and it is very well-written but I will wait to recommend it until I find out how it ends because it is, unsurprisingly for a book with Gothic right in the name, a bit DARK at the moment.

  3. That story about you hearing music coming from SOMEWHERE is hilarious. I am the opposite of you – no idea the names of songs, who sings them, what year they are from, or what the words are . . . doesn’t stop me from singing along, my poor family.

    Your hair does look great, but I get the adjustment phase.

    Those are some heavy sounding books. I do not finish a book as fast as you but I have recently checked out the Body Keeps the Score book and I am reading All Adults Here – I might be messing up the title. Too lazy to go look at the cover. I am enjoying it. Porter has just run into her friend Rachel at the OB office. 😉

  4. Yes, the color will fade a bit. But I actually like it.

  5. Like you, I always have a song in my head. And I can always relate a line or conversation to a song or song lyric. So funny, I ALSO heard Coward Of The County last week and was thinking it was such a pretty song, but it really is such a horrible story. Maybe you and I were listening to it at the same time…..I also like Sirius 7. And I also couldn’t imagine my life without Sonos; it’s the first thing I get started after I brush my teeth in the morning.
    I DO remember the movie This is where I leave you; not sure if I liked it or not as it’s been so long.
    Your hair looks great! Must have been a treat to not do it yourself.

  6. I always have a song in my head too – I think every single part of Hamilton has been in my head, as well as all the ones from Waitress, until just recently. Once, for a protracted period a few years ago, it was Put Down the Duckie by Hoots the Owl and Ernie from Sesame Street. It’s a good song, but it nearly drove me mad. I just made my first hair appointment in eight months – I was okay with my self-shearing abilities and the gray roots until, abruptly, I was not, and I’m going in before we get closed down again.
    Nicole, I SAW THAT MOVIE. It was extremely quirky, but I liked it. Jason Bateman and Tina Fey are in it. And Jane Fonda is really funny in it, because she’s not my mom – if she was my mom I would die.

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