Holly's Music list

Here, through the wonders of html and projectplaylist.com, is the music mentioned by me yesterday and confirmed by Kelli. A couple of days ago Marty was listening to it and he said the list was representative of all the music that my three kids liked. He seemed a bit embarrassed that "lap dance" is there, but I think it's more about politics than sex, if you listen to the lyrics, and he also made reference to This is Your Brain on Music and said there's something attractive and good about it, musically.

Holly's MySpace is restricted, but this blog isn't, and I think if she changes her playlist this one will change automatically, too, but she has stuff from the late 50's to now, and several different styles. She has it set to random. I really REALLY like some of these, and might not have heard them without Holly's intro (and a few I introduced her to, or Marty or Kirby did, or others reading here probably).

WARNING! When I checked to see if this showed up okay, Classico by Tenacious D started. DANGER, DANGER! Rough crazy F-word humor. But there's a "skip track" button on it, and you can scroll up or down and click on a song you want to hear.

Holly-answers

"it's not all that much of a question but there's a hell of an answer"

I keep looking at Holly's MySpace because there's some great music there and I'm waiting for her to post a photo of her newly pinkish purple hair color. But the line above was there, and I like it. Maybe it's a quote, maybe it's a Holly thing. I'll let you know when I know, and I'll bring the hair-color photo here too.

Holly comes home in six days.

the end of the beginning, and vice versa

Kirby is moving to Austin. He had an interview this afternoon and signed a contract. He left wearing a suit. Marty helped him tie his tie. I told him his hair looked great. His hair was wonderful. I wish I had taken a picture.

On August 27 at 10:00 he's to report for work in Austin.

Between now and then lots of things happen, but two are particularly notable to me. On July 29, Kirby turns 21 years old. On that day, I will have been a mom for 21 years.

On August 16, which would have been his last day at work in Albuquerque (the contract ends that day), he and I are flying to Sacramento for the HSC conference. I'm a keynote speaker, and he's doing a workshop on games based on history, and he'll be on a panel, and I'll be on a panel....

I'm hugely relieved that we had planned to do that together, without knowing he might be moving. It's like magic, that I get an out of town trip with a stay in a nice hotel with Kirby at a time that turns out to be one week before he moves away from home. We didn't know, when we planned it, anything about the Austin possibility.

For Kirby as a man, this is the end of the beginning of his life.
For me as a mom, this is the beginning of the end.

Imagine... Holly in Rhode Island

Holly has been in Rhode Island for a few days now, and I'm pretending not to miss her. It's working a little.

Today Holly sent me photos, and I couldn't decide which to put up here. Then on the Always Learning List, Marji wrote
"You could sa-a-a-ay I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one..."

I don't know yet which structure or foundation they were artsifying, but it looks fun.



Below is evidence that Holly is seeing things very unlike what she knows in New Mexico:



I'm grateful to the Trainor family for giving Holly the opportunity to visit a place no one in our family had ever been before! Holly babysat last spring and saved her money for this trip. She paid for her own airfare and it's wonderful that an unschooling family is hosting her.

THANKS! Thanks for everything, and thanks for the photos.

Flowers, compost, patience, trees

I bought twelve of these bulbs, and they doubled in a year.
(Bonus for those who want to hear my voice; apology to any who didn't.)


Potatoes blossomed in the compost pile. They're beautiful flowers they just never sell at the florist's.

They're 3cm/1" or so across, and the middles look like the candy pumpkins they sell at Halloween (only teensy).



Here's my evidence of and recommendation for patience. I bought three bulbs for $5 in 1998. That seemed expensive. Day lilies. Now we have dozens of them and have moved them to several other places in the yard. In the first photo, three spots show—near the road, outside Marty's window, and between those in the back, the original spot in the side yard. The second photo is a close-up of that.

The gate to the right in the top photo is my neighbor's yard. The things hanging in the tree are bird feeders. We get mourning doves, sparrows and finches mostly. We have a finch sack hanging in the back yard, a cool nylon sock we fill with thistle seed. But that's another topic...

So for $5, and waiting nine years, we have many dozens of day lilies. And that big catalpa tree in the second picture (20 feet high now) was a baby seedling a foot high when we brought it here from our friend's front yard ten years ago.

The photo below is from the bottom up a month ago, when the leaves were only half size. It's a full canopy now, and higher than the house.

Eight Things About Me

#1 I cannot tag; that is the humour of it. (to misquote Nym from Henry V)

#2 I love to see the ways my three children are like my husband, and like me. I'm fascinated and embarrassed and impressed and relieved (in different combinations at different moments) by the genetics involved.

#3 My parents' divorce was very painful for me even though I was already 17, and I spent the next few years in college and visiting them on the weekends, watching them do things they regretted even more than the divorce.

#4 My husband is really, really wonderful and he's the sole reason I'm not divorced now, probably. Or the much-bigger part of the shared credit. He's very cool and patient and generous, and his parents are still together after 60 years or so, so maybe it's genetic in his family, which is great for OUR family, then.

#5 The people I love the most are in the SCA, and the people who piss me off the most are also in the SCA, where I've been for over half my life (by the years, not by the hours).

#6 I can't swim. I can spell. I can harmonize with ease in different styles with voice or recorder. I can get words on paper (or into computers and out onto the internet) all kinds of ways, but if swimming is required, someone else has got to do it.

#7 I remember songs I've known since I was very, very young. Things I learned from my two Papaws, and stuff from Captain Kangaroo in the 50's, and songs I learned from my cousins and at church and school and playgrounds. I know dozens of traditional ballads, many with over a dozen verses, and those stay in my head. Numbers generally do not stay in my head.

#8 I was David Bowie's first American fan. This is old news to some, but will be new news to others. I was younger than Holly is now when I wrote to David Bowie and he wrote back and sent me a packet with a newspaper and some photostatic pictures of him and a full-page letter. Check it out: http://sandradodd.com/bowie

Anyone untagged by others who wants to voluntarily claim a tag from this and write eight things should leave a note here saying so, so I can go and read them, but if no one does, I will feel no worse than when I break chain letters, which I have done all my life, and have had very little bad luck of any sort. I have broken my leg twice, but never did a chain letter say "send this or you'll break your leg," so until this very moment I never thought there could be a connection... (Thought another moment; there isn't.)

change, driver's ed and research

Seeing changes in ourselves and our children:

A report by Kerryn in Australia, and a good quote from Pam Sorooshian:
"As we get older and our kids grow up, we eventually come to realize that all the big things in our lives are really the direct result of how we've handled all the little things."
http://sandradodd.com/change

"A Mom's-Eye View of Driver's Ed" written when Holly became a driver, with photos of Kirby, Marty, Holly and of Brett Henry's first truck.
http://sandradodd.com/driversed

Two things have been added at the bottom of this page, about what people want to know and why. (Hard to describe briefly, but worth a read!)
http://sandradodd.com/research

Holly, out and about

Holly set her alarm today so she could take her friend to the mall where they planned to hang out with a boy the friend goes to school with. He didn't show up (or didn't find them) but they had fun anyway. I know this because Holly called, after they were back at the girl's house, to tell me where she was. "Is there a certain time you need me to be home?" "It's Tuesday... we're going to Helena's tomorrow. You need to be back by 1:00 tomorrow." She laughed, but I was serious. She lets me know where she is, I know the family she's with, I trust her, and there's nothing particular happening here tonight. When I was a kid, I had to be home within a few hours of leaving the house, it seemed, all the time; too often. "Be back in an hour." Why!? Just because. On pain of punishment. Cell phones do make the world a safer place in some ways, but what really makes Holly's world safe is the whole package of her honesty and good judgment and awareness. She's pretty cool. I'm glad to be her mom. "Holly's mom." That's not a bad thing to be.