I know – I promised to post more frequently – and I really am thinking of posts, so that’s a start! Several swimming around in my muddled menopausal brain at the moment include, gas station pizza, chaperoning ten year-olds, music that I clean house to (thanks to this post by a HS friend), and my most recent music purchase (because of Mike’s post, but also because it is very ironic and hilarious inside my brain), also—went to one of those free summer concerts in the park last night, not because it was free, not because it was in the park, and not because we were free and could, but because it was the FACE vocal band.
So… I can’t decide whether to go backwards, forwards, or randomly through the list, hmmmm
FACE – wow, always a great show, always amazing me at the clean harmonies, great GREAT arrangements, and of course the beat boxer (he prefers vocal percussionist). Free in the park in the neighboring city of Westminster, very nice park to have a free concert in, and I get the whole it’s free, it’s in the park, it’s NOT theatre etiquette – but, dude, take your crying kid away from the people who are trying to hear the music… he is off key and quite frankly, that’s not even a real cry, he’s just making noise cuz he can – UGH. My kids loved it, and we took little plastic bottles of wine into the park (hey, it’s not some sort of spectacular fermented grape experience, screw top and plastic single servings, but still wine in the park was nice on some level), we were going to take fried chicken and fruit, but the chicken had gone bad (in three days – it was vacuum packed, so I thought it would keep three days in the fridge, my bad) so we ate burritos at home and took the fruit and fermented fruit and set up our ballgame chairs and the kids played tag like little kids and spit sunflower seeds and grapes at each other. Husband and I held hands and smiled at our childish teens and kissed in the rain.
Gas Station Pizza – so we had this finance committee meeting here at the office a couple weeks ago, and because I am the finance person for the foundation, it was MY meeting (well as much as any meeting can be mine, I do have an Executive Director that always says these are not her meetings and then takes them over to some extent, and the Treasurer of course. So, I had to provide lunch, well my boss walks in my office at oh about 15 minutes before the meeting and says “did you order some pizza”… and I “oh crap, I forgot”… so I jump up and look on the bulletin board for the well known national pizza chains phone number, without luck, who knows who took it to their office and didn’t return it, but here’s a coupon from a nearby pizza place, right up the street, and maybe it’s an awesome mom & pop pizza place (you old GM people, I was hoping for Pizza Cassa) – so I call them up, order some pizza and start to prepare a check for them, the woman calls back and says, please don’t make the check payable to Pizza Place, the name on the flyer, but to Amoco instead. Yeah the gas station… suddenly flooding to mind was the day I stopped there for gas and saw the sign, we now have pizza. So I didn’t say a word to anyone, and the pizza arrived, it was alright, not bad, not good, just pizza. Everyone left, and my co-worker says to me (cuz the boxes were all about patriotism and freedom and nothing about the name of the pizzeria) “where did you get this pizza”… and I said “from the gas station” – she about died. I have not heard the end of ordering Gas Station Pizza for the meeting.
Chaperoning Ten-Year Olds… as many of you know, my girls are Job’s Daughters – an organization for 10-20 year old girls with a relationship to a Master Mason. They recently dropped the minimum age from 11 years old to ten years old. I joined (1977) shortly after they changed the minimum age from 12 years old to 11 years old, and I acknowledge that all that I am about to say about 10 year olds could have probably applied to me at 11 years old. My girls are 15 and 17 – I am accustomed to having lots of kids around – but they are generally in this age range. I also chaperone the Job’s Daughters quite a bit, and always thought that all the griping about the ten year olds was unwarranted. Well… this year things changed. I do not want to be misunderstood – the girls I was chaperoning are exceptional, they are smart, funny, respectful, well behaved, wonderful girls. They did NOTHING wrong, they were just simply way more busy than older girls. I felt like I needed a butterfly net to try to keep them corralled. It was like herding ants, as soon as your attention was turned to this small group and you thought you had it all under control the other group would disappear, and you would find them over making friends with the girls from Greeley or Cortez – like I said nothing wrong, actually it was right, they should make friends with girls from around the state – but I could never keep track of all of them. I felt like I was teaching Kindergarten – counting girls all the time. And of course there were those times when I didn’t count someone cuz I thought they were an adult (ya know 19 and 20 years old, does seem like an adult) or I forgot what number I was hoping to come up with. Also, ten-year olds seem to have bladders that shrink in size relative to the boredom being wrought by long dry meetings full of too many speeches and too few moments of movement and entertainment. One meeting when I was on the floor (meaning as an adult I had to participate, not sit on the sidelines (audience)), I heard from the older girls that they counted and the young ones went to the bathroom 8 times -the meeting was two hours long, so they basically went every 15 minutes… giggle.
My recent CD purchase – This could well replace, at least temporarily my play list “house cleaning” – my daughter and I were shopping at Costco the other day, and for whatever reason I had the impulse to stop at that little “kiosk” where you can push the button to hear a little snippet of the songs available on one of the 18 CD’s they are selling there. They are generally “spa music”, “big band classics”, “music for a rainy afternoon” – you know the ones I am talking about. Well this particular one actually had among the Ronco style mix CD sets, some that were specific artists “Sinatra”, and also some more upbeat stuff “Latin Rythms”, as well as stuff that would only interest music weirdos “Opera through the Ages” – I checked, no Mario Lanza, or I would have purchased it probably. Also, the one button I was NOT interested in pushing (beside the spa one, ugh spa music, I mean I’m glad they play it when I’m getting a massage, but I would NEVER want it in my home) was “Cardio Blast” – which looked like a 3 CD set soundtrack for a Denise Austin workout which evoked shudders and pain. My daughter pushed the button, out belted Madonna – then she picked up the box, it is AWESOME… We are Family, I Will Survive, You Should Be Dancing, Best of My Love, Bad Girls, Car Wash, Flashdance… What a Feeling, Holiday, MMM Bop, Lady Marmalade, Express Yourself, Love Shack, Bette Davis Eyes, Take My Breath Away, We Belong, Freeway of Love, Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, Signed Sealed Delivered, Upside-Down, Loco-Motion, Hot Stuff, I’m Every Woman – yeah I know, a little disco, and way pop, not fabulous music, but disco is so much better now than it was in the 70’s and I can clean house like crazy to something like Freeway of Love or Loco-Motion. Not so sure about Take My Breath Away – may skip that one a lot, after all it evokes memories of that assbag who broke up with me ON VALENTINE’S DAY.
Coming Soon (when I am near my iTunes) my housecleaning playlist – or highlights at least.
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