Music To My Ears

Within my lifetime, what music I have been able to listen to, listen to easily,  has dramatically increased. From records and tapes to CDs and digital. From radio to MTV to videos at your fingertips. From stereos and boom boxes to Walkmans to iPods to music on your phone to Bluetooth.

Debate continues to rage within the music industry over who makes what money now. (Here's a good book about the music industry by David Byrne of the Talking Heads.)

Thanks to my music-geek husband, we listen to a premium streaming service. (We use Google Music: $10 a month and, in addition to listening to the service’s “radio stations,” you can call up pretty much whatever artist, album, song you want whenever you want.)

What we're exposed to has grown dramatically. For instance, my son heard a song, playing through a Google radio station in my car on the way to school, from a group called  Devil Makes Three:

Link: http://youtu.be/yvcggBLbTk0

Now, we listen to them all the time and my son bought an album of theirs through iTunes.

While I was at the gym, songs kept coming on that I really liked. It took me a little while to realize they were all the same guy, Dan Auerbach:

Link: http://youtu.be/9o4l10CtN7g

He's also one of The Black Keys:

 

Link: http://youtu.be/6yCIDkFI7ew

New music doesn’t reach us only through streaming. My husband read a profile of Tinariwen, a group from northern Mali, in The New Yorker:

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=uMUuuW13Fp8

So cool.

We’ve bought their albums, as CDs, on iTunes, and we listen to them on Google Music. And follow them on Facebook.

Not looking to cheat anybody, but this is a great time to listen to music.

When More Is More

Someone has the Christmas spirit.

I tend to be a “less is more” kind of person: restrained, held back, cautious.

However, there are times when less is definitely not more.

One Christmas, early on in our relationship, my husband complained, “Oh, are we always just going to do tasteful, little white lights?” He was right. Since then, our tree has been done up with colored lights, blinking lights, big and small lights, lights, lights, lights. As this fabulous house from our neighborhood shows, when it comes to Christmas lights, more is more.

Same with gift wrap. Shiny paper, tissue, ribbons, glitter, sparkle. More is more here. In fact, generally speaking, more is more in all aspects of gift-giving. You generally feel good about going all out when buying someone a gift, holding back, not so much.



"Derby Racer" by Larry Fuente
Art Car Museum, Houston

Cake frosting and other decorations on cakes and cupcakes: hard to imagine what too much would be. Ditto for things like the options on a make-your-own-sundae bar.

Bedazzling something. Not that I have ever done this, but if you are going to, then go ahead and go all out, like they do on the cars in Houston’s annual Art Car parade.

Flowers. Again, hard to imagine too many. Outside in flower beds, inside in vases. Hell, plants and trees of all types, inside and out. Can’t have too many.

Sometimes, it’s OK to go nuts.

Half-Century Mark

Gee, thanks, AARP.

I turn fifty today.

So far, to mark the occasion, AARP has sent me a membership application and ads for Cologuard, an at-home medical test which involves collecting a sample of your own poop, has been showing up on my Facebook page. Oh, hooray.

And this morning, my gastroenterologist-husband woke me up to tell me "Happy Birthday" and that he had made an appointment with one of his partners for my age-50 screening colonoscopy. Oh, double hooray, he didn’t – and probably won't – forget. (Incidentally, he says you really should get that colonoscopy and not try to depend on a test like Cologuard.)

In his defense, in addition to arranging my colonoscopy (how thoughtful), my husband is taking me on a birthday trip – I do not yet know the destination, though I have grilled our son, whom my husband told, the best way I knew how. He didn’t crack, the poor kid.

A half-century. Doesn’t seem like it.

On the one hand, I have developed the distressing habit of referring to anyone under the age of 35 as “a kid.” I went for a physical the other day and I swear the doctor was a 12-year-old girl trying hard to look serious.

On the other hand, every day, on my way to bring my son to his high school, I pass a senior-living, or "active-adult," apartment building. It’s for ages 55 and up. Wha? Not ready for that.

But I’ve read – in places like this – that people actually become happier as they get older. High point of happiness, according to one study: age 85. Makes sense when you think about it. I watch my kids worry over stuff that I worried over at their ages. I tell them they don’t need to, just like people told me. Guess what? They don’t, or can't, hear it, any more than I did.

Oh, well, live and learn.

Too Much Imagination?

Around our house, when faced with something unpleasant, we don’t simply say, “I’d rather not.”

We say things like:

“I’d rather take a bullet”

or

“I’d rather get my teeth drilled”

or

“I’d rather chew off my own finger”

or

“I’d rather get my eyeball tattooed.”

(Eyeball tattooing is actually a thing. Blech.)

I guess you could say we have vivid imaginations.

Not sure that’s always a good thing.

Some studies show that worriers tend to have higher IQs, also that depressed people are better leaders in difficult times because they are actually more clear-eyed about reality than non-depressed people.

 

Wow, that’s a downer.

Anxious people tend to be more in tune with their bodies, more aware of every sensation … which is why many anxious people have hypochondria. Also, ask any doctor, anxious people can be very difficult to sedate; they fight the medication to stay aware and in control.

It takes an active, perhaps overactive, imagination to look at an innocent mole on your skin and visualize the whole course of terminal melanoma … but (I know) it can be done.

My husband is a big believer in distraction. “If something is worrying you, the best thing is not to think about it,” he says.

Doesn’t that sound a wee bit counter-intuitive to you?

Also impossible?

But when you can manage to do it, it’s true.

A Stereotype Is Born

Image courtesy of Teerapun at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I have a thing against white, late-model SUVs.

They seem to be driven by skinny white women talking on their cell phones who block intersections, go at a four-way stop before it is their turn and double-park.

White SUVs are particularly common in Houston. White is currently the most popular car color globally. Sometimes, in traffic, I will feel like I have stumbled into the middle of a parade of ice-cream trucks. (My car is blue, which this article, at least, makes sound like a sophisticated choice. Ha.)

The popularity of SUVs in Houston may seem piggy, but there are actually some good reasons for it. Houston streets flood. And it’s occurred to me that, here, where most people don’t have bus service to bring their kids to school, parents with SUVs, which can seat 7 or 8 kids at a time, might run car pools that create less emissions overall than a car pool of Priuses (which is what I drive and which can only take 4 kids each).

Be that as it may, I still find myself thinking that white, late-model SUVs are driven by the self-important. Hence, the lack of turn-taking. There may be some proof that drivers of expensive, high-status cars do drive more aggressively … though this linked article points out that people who think their Priuses are high-status cars drive like jerks, too. :o(

(I don’t get how you can think a Prius is impressive. When you blow the horn on my car, it sounds like a doggy chew toy.)

Malcolm Gladwell wrote a fascinating article about why people choose to buy SUVs. They feel safer in them, though they are not.

Then, of course, occasionally a white SUV will nicely let me into a lane or whatever – blowing a hole in my theory.

Why Do You Think I Got A Dog?

Sometimes, when I see dog-training advice, that’s what I want to ask.

Cesar Millan tells you to “assume the dominant position” and “make your dog work for your affection. Before you pet him, make him come to you or sit for you. Don’t go over and pet him out of the blue.”

This article, from Petfinder.com, tells you, “Going out should not be his for the asking.” Oh, great, so I can’t just let my dog tell me when she needs to pee, I have to keep that schedule in my own head so that I can always be in control, the dominant one.

But I didn’t get a dog so I could have a BDSM relationship, thanks.

I like petting my dog.

I like seeing her personality: how excited she gets about walks, where she wants to go (to the shopping street near us, because she wants to be with people), how she loves her treats.

Sure, like kids, there’s a certain level of behavior she has to have. For dogs, they can’t be aggressive and I am very glad to say that Lola does not pee in the house.

She loves coming when she’s called. She’ll come to other people calling their dogs. She sits. She stays. She “leaves it.” She will heel perfectly – IF she knows you have treats. But she is also a lot like this dog, in my opinion, the best one in the whole competition. Lola has a lot of strong opinions, including that whatever she finds in the garbage is fair game.

Do I have a dog so that I get to make her perfectly obedient? No. What an absurd thought.

I like having a dog because I love my dog and she loves me.

Get out of here with that other crap.

Applying to College Without Losing Your Mind

Interviewed college-admissions officers about what they thought of the stress surrounding the college-application process these days.

For The Buzz Magazines here in Houston.