10.10.08
Good Advice, Friday Edition
It’s probably not a good idea to make tuna salad in a house that also contains a very fat cat if you want to eat your lunch in peace.
10.02.08
iTunes Amnesia
Lately, I’ve been trying to get back in touch with the music world after taking about a year hiatus while getting into the groove of motherhood. One of the first steps I took was to see what was in my iTunes library, and tried out the new Genius feature that will recommend things to you based upon what you already have in your library.
It was during one of these perusals of my iTunes library that I discovered that I must have had a momentary lapse of sanity on several occasions, because there are quite a few songs that I do not recall downloading at all there. At first, I thought I could blame one of my late night bouts of insomnia and heartburn during my pregnancy (and therefore the cause was obviously “pregnancy brain”), but no, the songs were all downloaded BEFORE I got pregnant. So, I’m at a loss as to what happened.
Here are the ones I have no memory of downloading:
- “The Human Hosepipe” by Harry and the Potters (I’m blaming this one on Kari)
- “Hysteria,” “Supermassive Black Hole,” and “Starlight” by Muse (I’m thinking I’m going to have to blame my emo/goth/intellectual alter ego for these)
- “Angel” by Aerosmith (WHAT THE HELL?)
- “Ana’s Song” by Silverchair (I… have no good explanation.)
- “Song 2″ by Blur (WOOHOO!)
Has anyone else had this happen? Oh, just me? That’s what I thought.
09.28.08
High School Confidential
Maybe it’s because I’m a mere four months shy of 30. Maybe it’s because I’ve been reading melodramatic teenage novels. Or maybe it’s because I’ve gotten back in touch with a lot of people via Facebook over the past few months, but I’ve been thinking back on my high school years a lot lately. High school was a necessary evil to me. I knew I had to get through it in order to get to college, and that’s pretty much why I was there.
I was never cool or popular, nor did I really have any desire to be either of those things. I had a smallish group of close friends, and we were all pretty much those who didn’t quite fit into any of the usual groupings you see. Maybe that was the bond that held us together - we weren’t jocks, we weren’t goths, and we weren’t super-geeky. We all seemed to have class together, but our performance in those classes varied widely from those who always made straight A’s to those who really didn’t give a rat’s ass as to why they were there (I fell somewhere in the middle). We had pretty widely varying political and social ideas, and those led to some pretty heated disagreements on occasion, but we were friends, and we were there for each other.
I didn’t date much in high school, either. I only seriously dated two guys, the first of which was a SPECTACULAR failure and a cautionary tale about why you should listen to people if both your parents and your friends don’t like the guy (suffice it to say that having a rich daddy doesn’t mean you can buy yourself a personality). The second wasn’t so bad - it just wound up that we were better off as friends, and we’re still friends today. I went to prom with guys who were friends both my Junior and Senior years. I’d known most of the guys I went to high school with since elementary school, so I guess it was just hard for either me or them to see the other as anything other than an acquaintance. Plus, I had a bad habit of telling guys when they were acting stupid, and apparently they don’t like that. Oh, and there was that one time when I jokingly told a guy I was a lesbian and he believed me, heh.
As an only child (and a girl to boot), my parents were probably a little more overprotective than some of my friends’ parents were. I had the earliest curfew of any of my friends (10:30), and Mom and Dad refused to budge when I begged and pleaded to extend it to 11:00 (I believe my dad told me “Someone’s got to go home first. Might as well be you.”). Luckily, my friends were pretty accommodating and willing to take me home so I wouldn’t break curfew, and Mom and Dad were pretty cool about letting them hang out at my house until they had to go home if they wanted to (and on occasion, they let me stay out a little later if I called and told them I was just down the street). Of course I thought my early curfew was monstrously unfair back then, but now that I have daughters of my own, I’m sure I’ll be as strict as my parents were. Besides, I think I turned out okay.
There are a few things I wish I had do-overs on, of course. Those of you who didn’t know me back then may find this a little surprising, but I had a hard time sticking up for myself. I wish the backbone I grew in college had come in a few years earlier, I guess. I also wish I hadn’t been so willing to walk away from situations rather than confront them, especially with regards to friendship. I also wish I was a bit more willing to laugh at myself and not be so melodramatic back then (but what former teenage girl doesn’t?).
In all, though, I’m at the point now where I can look back at high school and see where my experiences there made me into the person I am today. I learned a LOT during those years, about myself, about friendship, and about God. I won’t say I’m willing to go back and do the whole thing over again, but I do have some fond memories of that time. I hope in another ten years, I can look back and say the same thing. Though I think I’ve had much more fun in my twenties than I did during my teen years.
09.27.08
PS - Housekeeping
I just did a big purge of my blogroll to weed out inactive blogs, or ones that are no longer there. So, if you see your name has disappeared, it’s not because I hate you. You either need to blog more or you need to tell me the address of your new blog. 
Long time, no blog?
Once again, I’ve managed to neglect this here little blog for a little longer than I intended to. What can I say? Stuff happens. Especially when you’re running after two nearly-walking twin girls all day.
Not too much has been going on in Holland Land lately, although we did recently celebrate Erin and Grace’s first birthday! It’s hard for me to believe I’m the mother of toddlers now, especially when I have moments where I forget I’m a mom in the first place. They’re doing new things every day, and I couldn’t be prouder of them. But I won’t gush about them here. That’s what this page is for.
As far as reading material, I’m once again delving into Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. And, as usual, I’m finding things I missed the first four times I read it. I’m also beginning to read The Children of Men, something I picked up about a year ago but never started. I’ve also got The Painted Veil to read. (Perhaps I should start reading books that aren’t already made into movies?) I also was one of the unfortunate folks to get thoroughly sucked into the Twilight saga. I know, I know. Melodramatic vampire romance novels do not exactly seem geared toward nearly 30-year-old women. But so help me, they were entertaining. And I’m kinda looking forward to the movie (Cedric Diggory as Edward Cullen? Yes, please.).
As if my transformation into a 15 year old wasn’t aided enough by my literary choices of late, I’m starting to look for new music, since, well, I haven’t really bought anything over the past year, and I miss listening to music. A few of my friends have suggested Paramore, and I’m liking what I hear from them. I’ll probably pick one of their CD’s up when I have play money again at the beginning of October. Jeff’s also made a big push for Mae as well, and I’m liking Singularity in particular. On a whim, I picked up Missy Higgins’ second CD, On a Clear Night, and I LOVE it. Love love it. I’m also open for suggestions, so if you have any, fire away.
That’s about it for me lately. What have you guys been up to?