Addo

Adwaith – Addo

I discovered this Welsh band sometime earlier this year. They come from Carmarthen, which is just wild to me. When I was in grad school in Wales, Carmarthen was the closest place to get a train, and it was still about an hour away by bus. It wasn’t that far but the roads are all narrow, one lane in each direction, and very twisty and hilly. I’m not sure it’s large enough to be called a city, but it was certainly larger than our tiny little town which had more sheep than people.

Recently we got an email from a friend of ours from Germany who was at the same tiny university with us that year. She and her family have been living in London and took a short vacation out to Wales. She sent us pictures of herself and her teenage daughters on the campus. It was rainy and gray while they were there, which seemed pretty fitting.

We have often thought how fun it would be to go back to Wales and show the kids the place where we met. I think they would be kind of amazed by how remote it is and how small the town is. But part of me would also like to go looking for whatever scene Adwaith is part of. I think my time there would have been really different if there had been music like this I could have checked out.

Beginning to See the Light

Velvet Underground – Beginning to See the Light

We decided what we’re doing for Thanksgiving and it does not involve me driving up to fetch my mom, nor frantically cleaning my house to have it mom ready. I had been feeling a little guilty about it but now that the weekend is here, I am so glad I am not giving up both days to sit in my car.

I also got some good news on the work front and both kids are doing well at the moment, *knock-knock* so things are looking up. Oh! And the Christmas cactus I was sure I had killed has one flower and three buds on it! The world is a shit show but the things I can control are positive and I think that’s worth celebrating.

Not Tonight

Pip Blom – Not Tonight

According to my Fitbit I didn’t even manage to get five hours of sleep last night, so I am too tired to write something of substance. Hopefully I can catch up on sleep a little so tomorrow I will be able to give it a little more thought.

Break My Soul

Beyoncé – Break My Soul

Put aside the hellfire that is the state of the world in 2023 and take a few minutes to focus on yourself. I know that many days, just getting through it is all you can do. But try to find little breaks in all the gloom and look for something that might give you a little boost.

Music can often do that for me. If you are reading my blog I’m sure that it does for you too. I am not really a member of the BeyHive but there’s no denying this song. So this is me telling you, blast some tunes and get out of your head. You’ll be better for it.

Speeding 72

Momma – Speeding 72

I have been trying to remember this song and this band for weeks. The only thing I could remember was that the album cover had a blurry picture of what I swear is the same red Subaru my mom had decades ago. I finally found it again this evening so I am posting it to be sure I don’t lose it.

When I was driving home, in the pitch black at 5:00, I kept having to move my head to avoid being blinded by some giant SUV’s brights. I know these new LED headlights are definitely brighter, and if you are alone on a back road that’s great. But on the highway they are blinding. I feel like it’s actually dangerous. I long for the days when cars had lower profiles, like my mom’s old Subaru, or the Volvo in this video.

Speaking of driving home, we did end up replacing the alternator, serpentine belt, and two tires on my car. Fingers crossed that it is now in great shape for winter and can just have the usual oil changes. New windshield wipers are also due but I have been waiting for the trees in the driveway to stop dropping sap onto the cars. I will just need to keep an eye on the forecast and be sure to swap them out before the first winter storm.

Connection

Elastica – Connection

I woke up early this morning but still was nearly late for this recurring Monday morning meeting at the office. When we were fully remote I was never late for anything, but I am not a morning person and the physical effort involved in all the things one must do to arrive at the office in time for an early meeting, on a Monday no less, is just never going to be easy.

I live along a popular jogging route and every morning I see people out there super early walking their dogs and getting their exercise in before getting ready for work. That will never be me. I can wake up, I can get out of bed, I can move around the house, slowly. But I need to have my coffee and give my body and mind the time they need to actually function.

The best way to get myself to a more conscious state is to sit down with a cup of coffee and hit my usual word games. This gives my brain enough of a little challenge to get those synapses firing. Start with Wordle, then move on to the Spelling Bee, when I hit a wall there I do Connections. Connections sometimes drives me crazy. But when I get it right in the first four guesses, I hear this Elastica song in my head and I make a sneer just like Justine Frischmann. Somewhere in there I am actually awake enough to get ready for work.

If I have to, really have to, I can get showered, dressed and out the door quickly. But my brain is not really working, it’s all muscle memory. I am definitely not firing on all cylinders. And I still need that time for my brain to catch up with my body, so I can be at the office, or airport, or wherever, but without having had that time in the morning I am not really all there, mentally, until about 10:00 a.m.

Occasionally someone will suggest that I can train myself to be up earlier and get moving faster in the morning. To which I say, why? Why is it seen as better, more virtuous, to be an early bird instead of a night owl? My dad once worked for a company that had a policy of flexible work hours with a common block of time from 10:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m. You could work any 8 hour block you wanted to, so long as you were in the office during that common block. Meetings could only take place during that time frame. To me, this is a great idea and one that I wish would really catch on. You can get up at 5 and go for a run and be in the office at 7, meanwhile I will try to get the Connections in four guesses while sipping my coffee.

Deceptacon

Le Tigre – Deceptacon

It is Kathleen Hanna’s birthday, which seemed like a good reason to post this song. I was not that into Bikini Kill (or any of the Riot Grrrl bands really) at the time, I didn’t dislike them but I was kind of on the whole shoegaze kick. Le Tigre came along when I was in what might be described as a holding pattern, where music was concerned.

But it’s never too late to go back and listen to music that you knew but it didn’t grab you at the time. Or maybe you just missed it the first time around. We can’t be aware of every new band that comes along, even if we are trying to keep on top of new releases. I used to think I was actually doing pretty well with that but I follow my favorite venues online and more often than not I’ll look at the shows being announced and think, who?

The show last night was the last one I had planned. It feels a little weird to not have anything on the horizon, but winter is coming and that brings weather complications so maybe it’s just as well. If you have recommendations, though, pass them along!

Save It For Later

The English Beat – Save it For Later

On June 1, 1983, my mother started her new job up in Maine, leaving my oldest sister, who had just graduated from college, in charge of the house and the rest of us kids who were not done with school yet. New York schools ended in late June since there was a week of final exams followed by a week of Regents exams. I don’t remember where my second oldest sister and my brother were, but my little sister was finishing up sixth grade, the last in elementary school, and I was in 10th grade, my other sister was in 11th.

Needless to say, with my mom hundreds of miles away and busy in her new job, our house in New York became party central. My oldest sister had spent her junior year abroad in London and came home with lots of music she’d heard while over there. She made a tape called “Mom Goes to Maine” which featured many of those bands and served as a frequent soundtrack for those last weeks of school. She also had the album Special Beat Service by the English Beat in heavy rotation.

My sister invited this guy she had met in London to come and stay for two or three weeks. Lindsay, this drop-dead gorgeous British guy, tall, curly hair, swoony accent, was just there living it up with us. He wasn’t even my sister’s boyfriend so all of our friends were super eager to come over and hang out. With classes over, they would tell their parents they were coming to our house to study.

I suppose we did do some studying but we did it while sunbathing in the backyard, gin and tonics in hand and music playing out of the window in the den. By night the sunbathing gave way to games of badminton or croquet with the flood light on, music still blaring out the window, gin and tonics still flowing. If it rained, we were inside playing Trivial Pursuit, making Lindsay read the questions so we could listen to his accent. I’m sure it drove our neighbors crazy, but those were fabulous days for not quite 16-year-old me.

So tonight, 40 years later, I went to see the English Beat. It is basically just Dave Wakeling with a backing band at this point, but I was on my feet dancing the whole time. The crowd was all middle-aged people, some gray and bald heads, most of us wider than our younger selves. But if I closed my eyes, I could picture our friends in the backyard, Lindsay looking like he walked out of a movie with a drink in one hand and croquet mallet in the other. Ah, youth.

I Should Have Known Better

Yo La Tengo – I Should Have Known Better

Yesterday I took my car in to have the brakes looked at since they had been feeling spongey. I had read that somewhere and it seemed to fit the way they felt but I don’t know if that’s a real thing car people say. They took off the wheels assessed the situation and said, the rear brakes need new shoes, drums, pads, but mostly the cylinders were leaking and it should all be replaced. $600. What are you going to do, say no, put the wheels back on, charge me $100+ for the time and then what? So I spent $600 and headed home in the evening feeling like I had done a good thing and had put myself and the car in better shape for the winter.

Hahaha! My car decided that those new brakes were just the opening act. About 2/3 of the way home the battery warning light came on. I managed to get home and backed the car into the driveway so we could come have AAA take a look in the morning. They came, looked, and said, you need a new alternator. But also, your battery is a mess and has a bad cell and you should replace it. I had specifically asked for them to send someone with a battery in hopes of that solving the problem but it did not. The AAA driver wasn’t in a tow truck so I couldn’t have it towed, but as the battery needed to be replaced, I told him to go ahead and install it. Consensus from the repair shops I called around was that I shouldn’t try to drive it to them, have it towed.

So now I’ve spent $800 on a car that still isn’t driveable. And it’s likely at least another $600 for the alternator. At this point I need to spend the money on the alternator to get my money’s worth on the previous two fixes. Did I mention it’s got 215,000 miles? It is a Toyota but still. Argh!

And there’s a show on Saturday that I have a ticket for and I’ve been looking forward to it. There is no reselling this ticket since it’s a small independent theater. That money was spent months ago but why not add it to the tally?😵‍💫

I just can’t help but feel like every decision I make when it comes to cars is the wrong one. Then I become paralyzed and don’t want to do anything because inevitably I will have made the wrong choice. I wanted to sell my husband’s car to CarMax or someplace, then get something with fewer miles on it for me to drive and let him have my car. But he felt like it could limp along a while longer. Until the serpentine belt broke a few weeks ago and it turned out it also needed a new compressor. $900.

Wish me luck. I am really not looking forward to blowing more money here but I also think I have run out of options.

Walking at a Downtown Pace

Parquet Courts – Walking at a Downtown Pace

Today was pretty chilly and gray, a little raw. My mom even had some snow this morning. Thankfully we’re not that far north so it was tolerable but when I went out for my lunch time walk with a friend, I had to zip up that coat that used to be my son’s. FYI, coats for young teenage boys are cut pretty straight and I really had to work to get it zipped.

In the summer when we’re walking, we slow down. Faster than a saunter but not fast. Then we take breaks in the shade to cool off. Today, we had our power walk on. No stopping, walking at a downtown pace. It really gets the blood moving and you warm up pretty quickly. I think we have kind of a reputation for our lunch walks. I need that sunlight, and it’s also my only exercise for the most part. I surpassed my 10,000 steps today so people can chuckle if they like, I am not losing my New York walking cred.