life, the universe, and everything

liliales birthday countdown: 2002

There's so much I'm just blank about from those years. I had a good friend, Yvonne, and we hung out in Red Bank a lot, eventually meeting a strange guy named Russ who ran a very alternative kind of bookstore. He was moody and interesting and we all became friends for several years. Yvonne was pretty much a hippy, and I felt like Donna Reed next to her. But we clicked, and were best friends for a time. 

Simple Minds released Cry that year, and oh! I forgot to mention that in 2001, we saw Depeche Mode at Madison Square Garden. Dave Gahan was at the top of his game, and the whole show was pretty great. In the summer of 2002, I got front row seats to Simple Minds/INXS for the man and oldest daughter, and then we won two lawn seats, so I took the youngest daughter who was 11 at the time, and the middle one stayed home with the boys. After INXS played, we wormed our way down to the front where the others were. Both of us have cherished memories from that; we were right up against the stage, and Jim Kerr squeezed her hand. A few minutes later, he looked right into my eyes as he sang, well. It was a lovely moment. 

I think no one but me likes this song from that album, and it is a bit cheesy and derivative, but I don't care. He sounds super. 

 

liliales birthday countdown: 2000 music memories

I had a 13 year-old then. The other girls were 10 and 9. That influenced a lot of the music we heard and chose to listen to. Not just because of the radio, but whatever was on TV and in the movies, and at friends' houses. 

Not sure anything was bigger than this one...and I'm okay with that.

 

Here's another fun hit from 2000, which, well, kinda makes you think the world is okay, and it'll keep spinning along the way it always has.  

And I am pretty sure I heard this song every time I walked into the little grocery store closest to us, in Fair Haven. 
  

liliales birthday countdown: 1993

In 1993, I was training to ride a century, and was up to about 60 mile rides when I discovered I was pregnant again. I tried to keep it up for awhile, just to be in good shape, but all my pregnancies started with overwhelming nausea and heartburn which lasted for many weeks. 

We lived in a duplex at that time, in Olathe, Kansas. I planted my first tiny flower garden there, a ring of zinnias around a tree in the front yard. And we lived next door to a doctor and his wife and their adorable little girls. I learned a few good things from both of them. Our daughters had an inflatable pool in the backyard, and just around the corner was a little lake stocked with catfish that we would walk to. My oldest daughter was a Daisy Scout that year, and I helped out with the troop. 

The second daughter was chosen to be a "typical" in a preschool for children with developmental delays. We took her to a sort of tryout and were told that all the kids who passed it would be put into a pool, and names would be drawn for the four openings. But when we got home, there was an immediate phone call saying they wanted her especially for it. It was a great program for her to be in, though I hadn't even intended to send her to preschool. So I had mornings with my youngest daughter, who was passing through an odd screaming stage, and it was all fairly peaceful at home, with the man cycling every day to Westport to work at an ad agency.

At that time, and briefly, college rock was modern rock, and this is one of my favorites from that year. More on 1993 at a later time.
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liliales birthday countdown: 1992

That last #lilialesbirthdaycountdown was a bit serious, eh? Oh well, whatever, never mind, on to 1992. ;-)

Some favorite albums from that year, among plenty of other good ones:

The Church: Priest=Aura
Peter Murphy: Holy Smoke
Nirvana: Smells Like Teen Spirit

1989-1992 was so important to me musically, I think I'll compile a "best of" track listing a little later on, sharing a bit more here or there. 

I still enjoy Wish by The Cure, though it isn't one of my favorites. I was going to share "High" or "Open," but really, this is my favorite song from that year, and I still find it dead-sexy after twenty years.

The Sweetest Drop

liliales birthday countdown: 1991

1991 was such a long year. During that year, I got divorced, got married again, and had my third child—almost on the last day of the year. It was a year full of hopes and money pressures and a great chasm of unknowing. A lot of healing didn't get done, and mostly, it never did, mostly, the need for it just sort of expired after many long years of more kinds of more trouble. 

Baby #2 and I watched the Gulf War at night. Kid #1 and I watched Nickelodeon cartoons and Full House. The man and I were very into stand-up comedy on A&E. Sometimes there was a little money for a movie, and sometimes we were digging for change in the couch so I could buy food to cook for dinner. The pregnancy was an actual condom failure, but I found a program that gave me top care at a good hospital for only $800 altogether. He worked nights at a funeral home to pay for it.

At Christmas time we entered a decorating contest to win $50 from the apartment management. We thought we did a great job for no money, but something much glitzier won the prize. We wondered how much they spent winning it...

And right before I had Baby #3, the family car died. My old two-seater was all we had for a little while. But the man gave me (on cassette) my first Frank Sinatra LP—Sinatra Reprise: The Very Good Years—as a gift after I gave birth, and he got me upgraded to a private room so I could listen to it in the hospital. A tax refund paid it off later.  

I've Got You Under My Skin

liliales birthday countdown: 1990

I turned 25 in 1990. Mom wasn't there. Other people were. What else do I remember? So much terror, chaos, fear, uncertainty, and a desperate kind of hopefulness that waxed and waned. 

A little gentleness in visits to Loose Park, driving across the state to see the Arch and the zoo in St. Louis, and hours and hours of listening to music, often in the dark. 

Top Three Favorite LPs of 1990:

Peter Murphy: Deep

The Sundays:  Reading, Writing, Arithmetic

They Might Be Giants: Flood

There isn't a bad song on this record. 

 

liliales birthday countdown: 1989

A year during which I turned 24, met the fickle, fitful and enigmatic other side of an eccentric coin, and watched my mother die with no understanding it had been occurring for at least two years.

But the thing is, 1989 was a great year in music. Four of my favorite albums of all time were released in 1989. Kate Bush: The Sensual World, Depeche Mode: Violator, The Cure: Disintegration, and Tears for Fears: The Seeds of Love. I love all four of those albums as much or more than I did then. There are many other good ones from that year, too. 

1989 was one of the worst years of my life, but I have had at least a good half dozen of those, so it's hard to have clear perspective on it. I remember very little about anything going on outside my own life during that time, just the music. When I do a "soundtrack of my youth" list, which I think will be fun, I'll include several songs from that period of time, because they were profoundly influential, in a positive way. But what I want to share right now is a song from The Seeds of Love, which blew me away the first time I heard it, and I still think it's kind of amazing after all these years. It is eight whole minutes long, but if you like it or love it, consider it a gift. 

The female singer is Oleta Adams, who got her "big start" recording and touring with Tears for Fears. #lilialesbirthdaycountdown

Bad Man's Song

Cause I Want More

 

I think the fierce wind here is a good sign. Is it blowing something away, or ushering something in? Both, perhaps. As it does.

I didn't like last year. I doubt if I like this one so far, after all, they're really exactly the same thing, aren't they? But dividing points, Mr. Last Night Pedant, are good for us because we can stop and say, from time to time, "Let's have no more of that." And, of course, being able to hug some things to ourselves in order to seal them in. 

So, I figure I can name 7 good things about 2011. Here are 6 of them. 

1. my swimming pool

2. Jungle Jim's

3. working on poetry again

4. my new camera

5. two fun book series discoveries:

    Aimée Leduc Investigations by Cara Black

    Gaslight Mysteries by Victoria Thompson

6. bowling regularly again

7? Well, it's fun to have just a bit of mystery in life, isn't it?

My Body

Happy 2012...

that certain feeling

15 minutes in heaven...

I Feel You

Are You Ready

The Sweetest Drop

 

I've Got A Crush On You and this thing about men

Okay, this is Frank singing for Columbia Records in 1948. He was 32ish. This is a little over 3 minutes long.

I've Got A Crush On You

And here he is for his own label, Reprise Records, in 1960. He was 44ish. And it's about a minute shorter, which is too bad, but it's because there's not so much horn action.

I've Got A Crush On You

I mean, you see what I'm saying here? They're both very good. But only one of them sends me. 

Youth is wasted on the wrong people.