Category Archives: Friday Flashback

Friday Flashback: Worlds collide with NKOTB paying tribute to Michael Jackson

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The music of my childhood and the music of my teen years totally collided after seeing this video. Last night New Kids on the Block performed in Detroit and upon hearing the news about Michael Jackson not long before taking the stage, they set up an impromptu tribute with photos of Michael while the crowd sang the words to “Man in the Mirror”. Then they went way back to a time when Joe used to sing “I’ll Be There” and even though they were out of practice, it didn’t matter because the sentiment was there and that was all that mattered.

George and I watched a MuchMoreMusic special today with some of Michael Jackson’s best videos. I’m glad so many people are playing his music today.

(This is why I love Twitter. I never would have even known about this if it wasn’t for the fact that I follow Donnie Wahlberg over there.)

Could it really almost be here?

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This time last year we still had quite a lot of snow, and had even gotten a rather heavy snow storm, the kind that makes you want to just give up on your will to live.

Or maybe that’s just me being dramatic. But really, we got so much snow last year that it was ridiculous and I figured either I may as well move up north and enjoy the tundra because what difference would it make, or I’d better move south. Like Ecuador or something.

This year has been a really good winter in comparison. We had that crazy cold snap where it all but hurt to breathe outside and my hair turned white because it was just that cold, but we didn’t get as much heavy and constant snow. And now, here we are on the Ides of March (beware!) and dare I admit this out loud (so to speak)? It almost looks like SPRING is just around the corner.

Granted, yes, spring really IS just around the corner. On the calendar. But please, I live in Montreal. We don’t necessarily follow the calendar when it comes to our seasons. However, today George and I played the “Divide and Conquer” game where he took Hayley with him, and I took Breanna with me. For Breanna, that meant accompanying me on a nice long walk with Pearl.

Breanna was confused. “Where’s the snow?!” she asked as she plopped her snow-suit-free self down in a tiny remaining pile of snow of questionable cleanliness.

Where's the snow?!

Hey, sorry kid. You’re asking the wrong person for sympathy. Begone, snow! Shoo!

She got over her mourning pretty quickly. As we got closer to home, she noticed some puddle and started picking up random tiny rocks and bits of gravel to throw in the puddles, one of her favorite pastimes. Then she spotted a fairly large puddle. Her eyes got a bit big, and she slowly tiptoed towards it, worried that I might stop her.

You know… So often I have to tell my kids not to splash in the puddles – usually it’s Hayley because she’s on her way to school. Today Breanna had nowhere to go but back home.

So I let her splash to her heart’s content for five minutes.

Day 73: Splish splash

Let me tell you, it’s good for your soul.

What is good for the soul, too, is feeling like maybe, just maybe this winter stuff is done. Tuesday’s forecast is for 11C and that’s just crazy talk for the middle of March. It will be so nice to not have to bitch about the winter anymore.

(Please stay tuned for plenty of bitching about the ridiculous Montreal high humidity!)

Rain, pain, and something awesome

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Day 69: Slippery when wet

It was pouring rain this morning, which is not necessarily the best way to get me to leap out of bed with joy at meeting the a.m. you know? Rainy weather is what usually makes me want to lie in bed with the covers pulled up high, a cup of coffee on the night table, and a good book (or my laptop) in my hands. Unfortunately, it was Wednesday, not Sunday, so there was no lounging to be had.

When we got outside, Hayley at least made me smile. The water was rushing down the streets and gushing loudly into the sewers. She heard the gurgling sound, stopped to listen for a second, umbrella clutched in her hands, and then she grinned and said, “Mommy! The sewers are singing a song with the water!”

I guess rain can’t be all bad if it’s musical, right?

*******
She was less cheery when she came home from school. At lunch recess she was running around and someone bumped into her, knocking her to the ground, and she sprained her ankle. We wrapped it up in a bandage to help her out, but she spent the rest of the afternoon and evening either crawling or sitting on a cushion and scooting herself around the floors. I pointed out that she can’t crawl all over the school tomorrow and eventually managed to get her to walk around by showing her how to put minimal weight on that foot, but good lord.

The DRAMA.

I don’t mean to sound like an uncaring mother, and I know a sprain hurts. But I guarantee, a greater drama queen has never existed. To listen to her moan about it you would think that she had actually shattered every bone in her body.

I think I’ll be sending a note into the school asking them not to make her go out for recess or lunch recess if she doesn’t feel up to it.

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Something awesome happened back in early February, but I was asked to keep it on the down low until everything was formalized. That was HARD because I was excited. However, everything is up and running now so I am free to spread the word.

Catherine of Her Bad Mother contacted me to let me know that the Silicon Valley Moms blog had expanded and was now adding a Canada Moms Blog to its impressive roster. That’s interesting enough, but they wanted me to be one of the writers for it.

I can’t tell you how flattered and honored I was to be asked. Seriously. When I saw the final list of contributing bloggers, there were so many names that I recognized because I read them all the time; the names I didn’t know were immediately added to my Google Reader list and let me tell you, I am in some EXCELLENT company over there.

We’ve been posting for a little while now but I wanted to wait until I had something to add as well. Today I finally got my first post up – please feel free to pop on over to read “All Aboard for Junk Food” and while you’re at it, throw a comment in if you could. Then when you’re done be sure to check out the other incredible bloggers with whom I am sharing the space.

Pretty damn cool!

Friday Flashback #22 – Gloria

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I couldn’t even tell you what made me think of this song, but I loved “Gloria” by Laura Branigan. REALLY loved it. My parents had the album (and that was back in the days of LPs!) and I remember liking it in general but the first time I heard “Gloria” I was hooked. Her powerful vocals were so much fun to listen to and though my teenage self didn’t quite have the pipes to keep up, I loved to sing along too.

Tonight it just popped into my head for no apparent reason and I’ve been singing it ever since. It’s such a shame that she died so young.

Friday Flashback # 21 – Closer

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Oh, Nine Inch Nails. Every time I hear this song, I remember the hours (and hours and HOURS) that I spent at The Sphinx, a goth club in downtown Montreal. No matter what I was doing, no matter how tired I might have been at any given moment, if they played “Closer” there was no way for me to resist getting up and dancing. Occasionally on a speaker.

Now that I’ve listened to this I will inevitably spend the rest of my night listening to NIN songs. And truth be told, my favorite Nine Inch Nails song was actually always this one.

(Blame Andrea, she mentioned it on Twitter and it got stuck in my head!)

Friday Flashback # 20 – She's In Love With the Boy

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I mentioned this in an older entry, but to recap, when I was 16 years old my parents and sister had gone to Vermont for a week-long vacation as we did every summer. The difference was that I had stayed because I “had a job” except really I just didn’t want to be away from my boyfriend for a whole week. I mean, gasp! A week! Seven days! I would have died!

So I stayed. They left. The very first day that they were gone? He dumped me over the phone. So that was, you know, a lot of fun.

When I called my parents, 2.5 hours away, and cried, my dad hopped in his car and drove all the way back home, spent the night and then drove me to Vermont so I wouldn’t be alone. I was utterly miserable, convinced no one would ever date me again and that at 16 years of age I was destined to be a spinster who would die surrounded by my 15 cats. I didn’t know if I could manage a smile, so it was something of a shock that a song made me laugh.

Whenever we got within about a half hour of our vacation spot (a recreational trailer park in Alburg right on Lake Champlain), we’d be able to pick up a local country music station. My parents loved country music. At the time I was a closet country fan (now I shout it from the rooftops). Two songs in, they played a new song from a mostly-unknown at that time singer – Trisha Yearwood. The song was “She’s In Love With the Boy”.

You’d think a broken-hearted girl would rather hear songs about people who have “been done wrong” and mope with a bottle of whiskey with their hound dogs or something, anything other than a song about how much a boy and girl love each other.

However, when the chorus hit the line “her Daddy says that he ain’t worth a lick, when it came to brains he got the short end of the stick” I just started giggling and couldn’t stop.

I was sad most of that vacation but at least I wasn’t alone at home. And that station played that song at least twice per day so I heard it a lot and it never once failed to make me laugh.

See? Not all country music is about sad things!

Friday Flashback # 20 – You're the One That I Want

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Every once in awhile a song I haven’t thought about in ages will suddenly just pop into my head, usually when I’m doing the dishes. I hate dishes because I don’t have a dishwasher, so I pass the time by listening to my iPod or by just singing random songs.

The other night, I suddenly found myself singing “There Are Worse Things I Could Do” from Grease. When I was still taking acting classes and wishing I was brave enough to just GO somewhere like Toronto or New York or L.A., I auditioned for the theater program at one of our local colleges. When I tried out I knew that I couldn’t actually go; I wasn’t living at home anymore and had rent and bills to pay. The theater program is so intensive that you can’t work. I could have applied for financial aid but since the school itself is free, it only would have covered enough to pay for textbooks and student fees. It was utterly impossible. Still, I applied to the program and got an audition date just because I wanted to see if I could get in.

We had to prepare two monologues. One had to be classic (in other words, Shakespeare) and one had to be modern. I hired my acting teacher for a couple of private lessons in order to prepare. For Shakespeare, I pieced together a monologue from Julius Caesar, playing Portia* and for the modern monologue I created one from “I Am A Camera” which was the play that inspired “Cabaret”. I did Sally Bowles, the character later played by Liza Minelli.

We also had to sing a short song (I forget the suggested length now), and I froze in a panic because sing? What, in front of PEOPLE?! I love to sing. I sing a lot. But not in front of PEOPLE. As much as I love a good musical I wouldn’t likely be in one, unfortunately. Unless I could drink a lot of wine before going on stage.

Anyway, it wasn’t because they wanted great singers, apparently it’s a way of seeing how well you can project to the back of the theater. Nervous, I chose “There Are Worse Things I Could Do” from “Grease”. Sandy may be the big part in “Grease” but I always wanted to play Rizzo because she’s more fun.

God, this is turning into the longest flashback ever. So I did my two monologues and then I took a deep breath and belted out my song. A month later I got something in the mail. I totally made it. And then I wondered why I had done that to myself because you have no idea how hard it was to pick up the phone and call them to say that I was very grateful but my “circumstances had changed” and I would not be able to take the course since I needed to work. Heartbreaking. I still wonder what would have happened if I had told my ex I was moving back home with my parents so I could study theater. Ah well.

I chose to sing that song because it wasn’t out of my range and was a solo. But my favorite song from “Grease” is definitely “You’re the One That I Want” by Sandy and Danny.

God. I love “Grease”. I got to play Cha-Cha DeGregario in my high school drama class but I always wanted to be in the full thing. I guess I’ll settle for singing the songs while I wash my dishes.

*I did the whole monologue, on the suggestion of my teacher, in a British accent. I do it quite well, especially when I’ve been practicing. I delivered a very killer “Dwell I but in the suburbs of your good pleasure? If it be no more, Portia is Brutus’ harlot, not his wife.” One of the women holding the audition told me my accent was AWESOME. Blimey.

Friday Flashback # 19 – Keep Me Hanging On

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When Kim Wilde released “Keep Me Hanging On” in 1987 (it went to #1), I was a whopping 13 years old. I had never had a boyfriend, but I had endured endless unrequited crushes over my short life and when I heard this song I thought that surely there was nothing in the entire world that could be more incredibly tragic than having to tell some guy you loved to just “get up, get out of my life” because “you don’t really love me, you just keep me hanging on”.

TRAGIC!

Clearly I had not learned about frivolous things like world hunger, genocide, the blood diamond trade, and whatnot. Oh, to be an innocent boy-crazy 13-year-old self-absorbed girl again. Actually, remembering my distinct lack of fashion sense, inability to do anything remotely decent with my hair, telescope-thick glasses, and confusion over how to properly apply make-up (bright blue eyeliner and bubblegum pink lipstick, woo!), maybe I’d rather not be 13 again.

Also it should be noted that, speaking of hair, I wanted nothing more than to have my hair look like Kim’s did. Or, really to just look like her, period. Now I look at that hair and I laugh at my younger self. But oh, I still love the song.

Time for normal again

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Day 3: Sundown

I can’t decide how I feel about the holidays coming to an end. On the one hand, I am really looking forward to getting back to a routine of some sort. I’ll be taking down the decorations soon, up earlier in the morning, and it will be so nice to have the kids falling asleep earlier (Breanna was awake until 9 pm and Hayley didn’t crash until almost 11!).

On the other hand, I don’t look forward to getting up at 6:20 every weekday morning again to take the dog out before dragging a surly six-year-old from her blankets to get her ready for school. Although the sleeping in has been the primary cause of the later bedtimes, it has been very nice to not be woken up until 9 am or later these past two weeks (with the exception of Christmas day of course). Even Pearl has gotten used to the later mornings since she’s been taken out later at night herself.

At least I don’t have to worry until Tuesday. The teachers took one of the floating ped days on Monday so that they can have a day to come in without the kids and get organized for the new year. Still, I’ll have to get Hayley up no later than 8 am, possibly even 7:30 am, just to make sure that she’ll fall asleep at a reasonable-ish hour on Monday night.

It’s going to hurt.

But I think Breanna will be happy with the return to routines as well. Because of the later bedtimes, she’s been sleeping in. Because of the sleeping in, she hasn’t needed her usual noon-time hour-long nap. She’s been occasionally cranky without the naps but not too often. However, on Friday it finally got the best of her. On Thursday night, George camped out in the living room with the two girls. It was Breanna’s first time doing it and we didn’t think it would really work. She finally fell asleep at about 11:05 pm, right at the end of Horton Hears a Who so I whispered good night and went to bed.

Day 1: Camping in

At 4 am George brought her in because she wanted to make sure I was still here. She then informed me “I want to go camp again” and left. She didn’t fall back to sleep but laid out there very quietly until 6 am. Again, she came to find me, stayed with me for about five minutes, then ran back to the living room and fell asleep for another two or three hours. We were pretty proud of her.

But the late night, plus the two hours of being awake in the middle of the night AND the lack of nap? Too much. At about 5 pm the kids were watching a movie (I think it was Horton again, he’s pretty popular around here) and she got cranky, laid on the couch, asked for her favorite blanket, and next thing I knew she was asleep.

Day 2: When the holidays get to be too much

Alas, I had to wake her after 20 minutes or she would have been up until all hours.

Yes, it’s definitely time to get back to normal. Whatever that is!

Friday Flashback # 18 – Lily Was Here

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I have always loved the saxophone. I may live with a guitarist and I love what he can play with it, but there’s something about the sax that just blows me away. It’s my favorite instrument.

When I was in grade seven, we had one elective that changed every six or eight weeks throughout the year so that we would have an idea as to what we wanted to choose to take the following year. This included Technical Drawing (I was pretty good at that, much to my shock), woodworking (I was even better at that, and that’s what I ended up choosing), Art (nothing killed my creativity quite like a barking Art teacher), and Music. I already knew how to play the recorder, so I probably would have been best suited to the oboe, especially with only having a handful of weeks to play it.

I did not choose the sensible oboe. I chose the sax. The tenor sax. I was so proud to have a shiny albeit banged up saxophone in my grasp with a little package of brand new paper-thin reeds, and wow was I going to have fun practicing.

Have you ever heard an elephant die painfully on the plains of the Savannah? Me neither, but if I did come across such an experience I am willing to bet good money that it would sound exactly like me, playing the sax.

Luckily for me, my own horrid attempts did not destroy my love of the saxophone. Prince put out a song called “Partyman” and Candy Dulfer was featured in it. That sparked my attention, and then I discovered the collaboration between Candy Dulfer and The Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart, “Lily Was Here”.

I loved the song, and I still do.

I thought of her the other day and went YouTube-ing and found a great deal of excellent music that she’s put out since those old days. She is absolutely amazing and no matter how much I loved the sax I never had a chance of sounding like Candy. But that’s okay. Now that I have her most recent album, I’d rather just listen than try to play!

(Duh. Some “Friday” flashback. I wrote it up in advance and saved it as a draft. And then I forgot to publish it. OOPS!)