Not Tristram Shandy

It’s been another crazy Saturday here in the Spy household, and I’m starting to get the idea that this is not likely to change before, I don’t know, AJ goes to college. Or perhaps I’d be better off saying if he goes to college, because if the newsletter I got from my college today is any indication, there’s no way we’ll be able to afford it: Tuition, room and board at my alma mater for 2008/09 will exceed $48,000. Ack. Not that he’d be able to go there anyway. He’s chromosomally deficient.

But back to our crazy day.

6:30 a.m.: Mr. Spy goes for a run; Harriet takes a shower

7:00 a.m.: AJ gets up and demands to be fed. The nerve.

7:30 a.m.: Mr. Spy returns and Harriet leaves for yoga.

9:30 a.m.: Harriet goes in search of pastry for her mother-in-law’s birthday. At the French bakery, she waits outside the door boring holes in the glass with her eyes for ten minutes after opening time before the bleary eyed teen behind the counter, who appears to still be wearing her pajamas, bothers to unlock it. There are five beautiful cupcakes. Exactly how many I need! But, no! It is not to be. Bleary eyed teen drops two of them on the floor while removing them from the case, then shows them to me to ask if I still want them. NO, bleary eyed teen! And maybe you should think about another line of work, because I have a feeling you won’t be here long. God only knows what Mr. Spy and AJ are doing at home. I like to think it involves loud music and cigarette lighters, hopefully without need of a fire extinguisher.

9:45 a.m.: Harriet walks back to her car, muttering under her breath (I hope) about the lost cupcakes, and stopping briefly to admire the pink Hello Kitty electric guitar in the window of the music emporium and to wonder if Mr. Spy is still looking for Mother’s Day ideas.

9:55 a.m.: Harriet arrives at the supermarket where she buys the world’s smallest birthday cake, a bottle of buttermilk, 10 cartons of yogurt, a carton of strawberries, and a carton of blackberries.

10:10 a.m.: Harriet arrives home where she meets Mr. Spy and AJ, who are on the way to AJ’s Pokemon club. Harriet puts away the groceries and eats the carton of blackberries and washes them down with a cup of coffee while still thinking about the pink guitar.

10:15 a.m.: Harriet goes into a panicky cleaning frenzy when she remembers that her inlaws will be arriving in an hour. She scours the kitchen, irons the kitchen curtain, which has been hanging in the laundry room “drying” for two weeks, and picks up AJ’s toys in the family room. Meanwhile, Mr. Spy has returned from dropping off AJ and is vacuuming the house. Hooray!

11:00 a.m.: Harriet goes out to collect flowers from the yard for the table and finds a snail. She puts the flowers in a vase and the snail on the counter where she watches it crawl around, leaving slimy trails, until Mr. Spy notices and makes her take it outside. Harriet comes back in and washes the counter. Twice.

11:05 a.m.: Harriet leaves to pick up AJ from Pokemon club, where she secretly snickers once again about how much the guy who runs it looks like Comic Book Guy on the Simpsons. Mr. Spy is still vacuuming.

11:10 a.m.: Harriet and AJ arrive home and AJ eats lunch. Mr. Spy gets dressed for coaching baseball in shorts and a long sleeved t-shirt (this detail will make sense in a minute).

11:15 a.m.: Harriet is just about to stuff half a sandwich in her pie hole when the doorbell rings. The inlaws are here! There is much standing around the kitchen while everyone urges AJ to eat more and eat faster. Poor AJ.

11:45 a.m.: After endless deliberation about logistics, the Spys and the Inlaws end up in two cars and head for the ice rink. Everyone is grumpy.

12:00 p.m.: The Spys arrive at the ice rink. The Inlaws are nowhere to be found. Harriet helps AJ into his gear. Mr. Spy goes on a reconnaissance mission.

12:10 p.m.: AJ hits the ice. Harriet, sitting on the bleachers, wraps a winter scarf around herself and shivers. Mr. Spy is back, but hasn’t found the his family. Remember what he is wearing? He is shivering and starting to look a little blue.

12:15 p.m.: The inlaws arrive! Thank you, Mr. Helpful Policeman, even though you did try to direct them to the roller rink on the other side of town. AJ’s uncle puts on his skates to go skate with AJ and arrives just as AJ’s teacher pulls him aside to test him.

12:25 p.m.: AJ comes running off the ice. He has passed his level exam, despite having missed half the lessons for baseball games. Hooray!

12:30 p.m.: Let the games begin! The Last day of skating session combines all the classes, from the wobbliest toddlers to the ace hockey players for all kinds of games. AJ’s favorite — he’s been looking forward to it for weeks — is Sharks and Minnows. This is a tag variant where a small group of kids are appointed sharks and they have to tag as many minnows (everybody else) as they skate from one end of the rink to the other. Anyone who is tagged turns into a shark too. Pretty soon you have no idea who is a shark and who is a minnow. AJ, though is not a shark. He is still not a shark. He is STILL not a shark. AJ WINS. None of the 50 other students can catch him. Hooray again!

1:00 p.m.: The kids shout a final class-ending “Hockey Rocks!” and AJ gets his certificate and a patch for passing his levels. We sprint to the cars.

1:15 p.m.: Both cars arrive home safely. Phew! We gather my forgotten sunglasses and some sunscreen and then everyone waits for AJ to get out of the bathroom and put on his baseball uniform. Tap, tap, tap go everyone’s feet. From the bathroom comes the sound of AJ singing. Uh-oh. It could be a while.

1:25 p.m.: We return to the cars. This time, I go with the Inlaws to make sure no one gets lost. We are off to the baseball field!

1:30 p.m.: Practice begins. We all sit down and breathe a sigh of relief. Then I remember I’m snack mom today. I make a quick run to the snack bar where I’m mobbed by a girls’ softball team where everyone seems to be named Caitlin.

2:00 p.m.: The game begins. Mother-in-law turns out to be a baseball critic. Who knew? The sister-in-law has brought sandwiches, which is lucky, since no one except AJ has had time to eat lunch. AJ is awesome. His team, which has lost every game so far, is awesome.

2:30 p.m.: It is the beginning of the bottom of the second. We start wondering if the six inning game will be done within the two hour time limit. On the plus side, AJ’s team has scored the maximum allowed 6 runs in both of the first two innings. The other team has scored 1. The in-laws take their leave. AJ’s uncle gifts me with the rest of his popcorn. Score!

4:00 p.m.: The game ends just in the nick of time. AJ scores 3 runs and has numerous RBIs and a couple of good fields. Final score: 28 to 12. Welcome to the high-scoring world of Pinto baseball.

4:15 p.m.: We are still at the field. AJ has finally come through the mob at the snack bar window with a precious bag of Skittles. Mr. Spy is still trying to find an owner for an abandoned cap.

4:25 p.m.: We are home. Mr. Spy is exhausted. AJ is not. I tell AJ I’ll pay him $2.50 if he helps me weed the garden for a half hour. Amazingly, not only does AJ agree, but he does a great job. And works overtime. $3.53 goes in his bank (the extra 3 cents was to make his total savings an even $6). Mr. Spy mows the lawn.

5:30 p.m.: Mr. Spy is still mowing. AJ and I come inside where I make dinner and listen to A Prairie Home Companion and he makes up quiz questions for me from his almanac. “What is the square root of 20, Mommy?” “Uh, something between 4 and 5?” “Good try, Mommy! But what is it really?”

6:30 p.m.: Mr. Spy comes in and we all have dinner, AJ while reading Highlights Magazine, me while typing the beginning of this post. Mr. Spy dines alone on the chilly porch bundled up in a hooded sweatshirt. Hood up. He looks like a kewpie doll with 5 o’clock shadow.

7:00 p.m.: AJ and I send an ecard to my mother for Mother’s Day (don’t worry, we already sent her flowers and a regular card). Mr. Spy and AJ whisper about Mother’s Day plans. All I can hear is that AJ wants to get up early because it is a holiday. “You let me get up early on Christmas!”

7:05 p.m.: AJ gets ready for bed. Harriet washes the dishes and cleans out the stinky cat box, then types some more.

7:40 p.m.: Harriet posts this entry. Everybody else wonders how much more boring it could be. (Hint: the answer is “None more boring.”). But wait! There’s More! Harriet still has promises to keep and miles of laundry before she sleeps. Stay tuned for an exciting update in which Harriet sorts laundry and tries to decide whether the white socks with the grey stripes are “whites” or “colors.” I know, I’m on the edge of my seat too.

Have a great Mother’s Day, everyone! I’m keeping my fingers crossed for that guitar.

Word Up

When I picked AJ up from school yesterday, he stopped on the sidewalk to unzip his backpack show me a package wrapped in red tissue paper.

“Open it now, Mommy!”

“Is that my Mother’s Day present?”

“Yes. But you can open it now. It’s okay.”

“Well, I can’t wait to see it, but if it’s my Mother’s Day present, I’d rather wait until Mother’s Day. I like surprises.”

“But I think you should open it now.”

“Uh-uh. Sunday.”

We headed home and his dad backed me up and then led AJ down to his office where they did some planning.

This morning, AJ tried another tack.

“You know,” he said, trying to sound non-chalant, “you could open it any time between now and Sunday.” He waved his hand in the air like he didn’t care.

“I’m glad to hear it. How about Sunday?”

“How about now?”

“Nope Sunday. You know what I think? I think you should come into my room at 7:00 on Sunday and then we can open it and then we can watch Coyote and Roadrunner.”

He perked up at the thought of Coyote and Roadrunner. “Well, okay.”

I love Mother’s Day.

In the still of the night

“Mommy,”

The small, husky voice appeared at my elbow. My fingers grabbed at the alarm clock and jammed it up to my eyes. 3:15. Mr. Spy was still asleep next to me.

“I had a nightmare. I was on a train and you didn’t get on.”

It is unusual for him to blurt out his dreams in the middle of the night. Usually he does not want to talk about them. I put my arm around him and steered him back to bed.

“I hate dreams like that I said.” I do too. I have that very dream. The one where he gets on a train and I can’t get on behind him Often. and the train leaves and I run and run alongside it to catch it. It’s funny that we have the same dream, that I don’t dream I’m the one on the train. Maybe it’s because I know that I would jump off a moving train before I’d let AJ get left behind. I knew just how to console him. I tucked him under the covers and lay down next to him.

“I know that sounds scary, but I would never let that happen. And even if it did happen, you would get off at the next stop and I would be there to hug you and take you home.”

He rolled over and threw his arms around me in a desperate hug, his fingers tangled in my hair.

“Can you stay here a little while?” he asked.

“Of course.” We lay like that for a while until his fingers began to loosen and his arms and legs went slack, his lips still forming into that reflexive sucking motion that he’s never lost. And for a moment I see every AJ there’s been so far, the tiny baby unable to hold up his own head, the plump and smily baby tearing up and down the hall on his hands and knees before collapsing in sleep, the toddler sleeping with his blankie clutched in his fingers, his long damp curls and plastered to his sleep-pink face, they are all there. I gently got out of the bed and let my lips linger a little too long on his forehead. His arms rushed around me to hold me a minute longer, to make sure I’m real, to make sure I don’t forget him, but not to keep me there. A minute later he relaxes and I slip back into my bed, sure that my heart had burst.

* * * * *
There’s a new, very short and slightly obscene post at AJ’s Clubhouse. But I swear that I am not making it up.

New vocabulary

“Mommy, sometimes, when I’m lying in bed, I can’t tell if it’s going to be stratus clouds or if it’s just the gray light of morning.”

Living with AJ, you never know when there’s going to be poetry at breakfast.

* * * * *

This morning at breakfast, AJ was asking for more Native American symbols. They’ve been learning some in their unit at school and AJ is trying to figure out how to write things using them. He wants more. I’m having trouble finding reliable sources. Few seem to identify symbols with any particular tribe, which makes me suspicious as to whether they are real or not. But AJ doesn’t really care about authenticity. He is just interested in language.

After breakfast and after he finished his chores, I set him up on freerice.com, the vocabulary-building website that donates 20 grains of rice to the UN World Food Program for each word answered correctly. AJ got up to level 9 before he had to go to school. I don’t know why I didn’t think to send him to this site before. It’s a good site for a number of reasons. It gives you the correct answer when you make a mistake, and it asks the missed words again after a while so you can actually learn new words. And it uses a lot of words with common/important roots, so if you learn your Latin/Greek roots, you can often guess correctly. Plus it’s fun. I’m kind of hooked on it myself.

* * * * *

I spent an hour and a half in AJ’s classroom this morning working with three of the more advanced reading groups. I love seeing how the individual personalities play out in these groups. First up was AJ’s group, which has expanded to three kids. The book they’re reading this time is about Jacques Cousteau and had some much more challenging vocabulary than I’ve seen in their books before. It was interesting to see how the addition of the third boy changes the dynamic of the group. They are more competitive with each other, racing to be the first to figure things out. AJ likes to work alone. He writes down his answers fast rather than shouting them out like the other two boys. But all three of them clearly enjoy the social component of reading together. They were very silly and giggly and making a lot of jokes that probably only the three of them would get — word puns and pronunciation jokes that the other classmates aren’t quite up to yet. I’m hoping AJ will be in a class with at least one of these boys next year. I think it would be good for him. In the group, though, AJ doesn’t always know when to stop being silly and when to start working. His teacher assures me that this is a problem that is driven more by my presence than by the group itself. AJ and N have some inside jokes because they’ve been in this group longer, but N and S are in class together, so they have some of their own lingo too. And S is one of those kids that just randomly bursts out with facts about himself on occasion. I find this behavior hilarious. Example:

Harriet: Can anyone tell me what the word “spokesman means?”

AJ: It’s someone who talks about stuff.

N: Yeah! Stuff!

S: It’s like speaking. “SPOKESperson.” I’m part Thai and part Mexican.

A classic first grader non sequitur.

The second group was AJ’s science fair partner O and K, O’s best friend and next door neighbor and the girl he says he’s going to marry when he grows up. They were hilarious because they already act like a married couple, finishing each other’s sentences and needling each other occasionally. K races through things and acts superior because she’s always the fastest. O takes his time, but he’s very rarely wrong. Still, they work out their differences amiably and go off hand in hand when we’re done.

The last group had four students, two boys (AJ’s friend C and Z, a bright boy who complains a lot and usually seems depressed) and two girls (E, who’s a dead ringer for a young Hermione Granger (who, incidentally, she dressed up as for Halloween) with the same tendency towards raising her hand extra high and blurting out the answer, and K2, a very quiet and thoughtful girl. I introduced them to their new book on a subject right up my alley: Louis Armstrong. Z tugged on my sleeve.

“How long are we going to read for?”

“About 15-20 minutes.”

“I only want to read for 10.”

“I’m sorry, but that’s not really up to you. You need to read with the group.”

“I have a headache.”

Last time I worked with Z, the teacher warned me not to listen to his many ailments. “He’s not really sick,” she said.

“I’m sorry to hear it. Lets read about Louis Armstrong.” But Z persisted.

“My sleeve is all wet and I’m not wearing a t-shirt.”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t do anything about that. You need to open your book now.”

Eventually, though, Z got into it. He was the one who made the best observation of the day.

“Hey, this drum says “Dixie” and the picture of the steamboat is called the “Dixie Belle.”

And thus began my first ever lecture on the American Civil War in 100 words or less. I really hope I didn’t say anything egregious.

The house seems so quiet after working with all the busy readers. This was my last volunteer day of the year. I’m so glad I’ve had the chance to do it, and especially to have some many opportunities to tutor reading. I’ve learned a lot about AJ’s class and I’ve loved getting to know the other children both as individual and also the way they work in groups. I’m going to miss them next year.

* * * * *

There’s another new post up at AJ’s clubhouse. Check it out!

School drama

There’s another new post up at AJ’s Clubhouse and quite a few comments on the last two posts. Sorry to be posting over there today, but there’s a lot of drama going on at AJ’s school and we’re trying to prepare for battle even as we hope they’ll call off the war.

I don’t have much else to say here today, except that I should probably direct your attention to the ongoing comments in last week’s entry entitled, Ming the Merciless. It was a small entry responding to a meme request from Mr. Unfocused in which I mentioned Mr. Happy Crack, the mascot of a foundation repair business called The Crack Team. Mr. Happy Crack’s so-called “bodyguard”, Sidney Crackstein responded by graciously offering to avoid suing me and instead give me a t-shirt. But the fun continues! Click on over and see what’s going on in the comments.

And now, back to blue-penciling.

New post at AJ’s clubhouse

There’s a new and sort of angsty post at AJ’s clubhouse about some stuff that’s going on at AJ’s school. Yeah. It’s been that kind of day. I’ll try to be feeling funnier tomorrow.

The good times are killing me

It’s appropriate that on today, the anniversary of Sigmund Freud’s birth, I am suffering from high anxiety. Maybe it was reading about the cyclone in Myanmar. Or maybe it was noticing at the grocery store that oatmeal costs twice as much as it did last year. Or that gas is alarmingly close to four dollars a gallon. Or maybe it was listening to Al Gore on Fresh Air this morning. Or realizing that our health insurance for a healthy but self-employed family of three now costs $12,000 a year. Yes, you read that right. Five years ago, it cost less than half that. And quite frankly, we can no longer afford it.

At one point during his interview, Gore was telling Terry Gross about how he thought that Americans’ fears were becoming more superstitious, prejudiced and generally irrational. But it seems to me that there are plenty of real things to be afraid of. If people are worrying irrationally, maybe it’s a way of avoiding the real fears that they cannot face because they are just too much to process.

By this point in my life, I always thought things were supposed to get easier. But they are getting harder and harder. And one of these months, the bills are not going to get paid. And then what? It’s a question I haven’t figured out how to answer yet.

The alarming thing is that by conventional measures we should be well off. A relatively small percentage of our home is mortgaged. We have plenty of work. We earn well above the national average. We live quite frugally. Which only makes me wonder: if we’re struggling, how much worse has it got to be for everyone else? There is a part of me that is always worrying about money. It wakes me up at night. It exhausts me during the day. It is always there. It never lets me rest. And yet I know that it could be so much worse and that for many it is.

My grandmother never talked about the Depression. It was too painful for her. It separated her from her family, as her divorced mother sent her two children to live with two separate families so she could work day and night to try to earn enough for them all. All her life, she saved everything. There were sugar packets squirreled away in kitchen cupboards and crumbs from restaurant rolls in her purse. Yet she died a millionaire.

This morning I read a blog entry by French Toast France, who is living a “slow” year, where after finding a shortage of organic milk, she looked around at her life and wondered how she could do without all she had. Were there plants she could forage and eat? She’s already using little electricity, but what if there were none? How would it work? How do you prepare? And I nodded my head at my computer in agreement. This is the place where I am today too. Worrying begets worry. But action feels like something. Even if the action itself seems a little irrational, the fear that sets it off is very real.

At the checkout counter at the grocery store, where there was plenty of organic milk to be had but none that I could afford, I realized the bald woman in the baseball cap helping me was the one who’d had the long long hair with goth streaks in it who I haven’t seen in a while. She has a great laugh and always asks about how I cook things. She sounds the same, but clearly has been through more than I can imagine. But still, she laughs as she rings up the produce. At the next register the cashier is consoling a shopper whose best friend died last night. “He was only a month older than I am,” the man said. “Not that it should matter. But it makes you think. Next time it could be me. I could be walking down the street.” The cashier, the one who wears a pendant with the vial of chakra crystals around her neck, touched his shoulder and said, “I know. My father’s in the hospital and I’m just hoping he hangs on until I get off work.” And then she added, “Life is not for the weak,” and the shopper nodded gravely.

Maybe it’s compassion or maybe it’s schadenfreude, or maybe it’s a message from the universe to me, but listening to this, I felt my daily sense of tragedy lift. Because for these people, for most people, things are infinitely worse. And things could change in a second, but why dwell on what could happen? Better to enjoy what we have while we have it. It’s my mantra for the day, one I hope will help me emerge from this funk. If they can survive smiling, so can I.

The chakra pendant woman helped me load my groceries in the cart. “I always like it when you come in,” she said. “You have such a nice smile.” “Thank you,” I replied. “So do you.”

Finally, a new update at AJ’s Clubhouse!

AJ’s getting his brain tested and I’m in a panic. You can read about it at AJ’s Clubhouse.

Geeked

I recently sent a mix CD to Dr. Geek, in response to several he’s made me (I’m a slow and ungrateful mix exchange partner. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.) and he posted about it here. Because I’m longwinded, my response was too long for his comments, so I’m putting it over here instead.

I like to think of mix exchanging as a sort of conversation, although it’s not often these days that I have the kind of time I’d like to put into them. I’ve been dumping tunes in a playlist for Dr. Geek for a while, but haven’t had a chance to do anything about it until recently. Working on my taxes turned out to be a good companion activity to mix-making.

This mix is a direct reply to the mixes Dr. Geek has sent me (the most recent of which I’ve written about here and here. I set out to do a mix of bluegrass and jazz, which tends to be connected at some background level by blues chord changes. As usual, the mix took on its own life and developed some themes I didn’t anticipate.

Dr. Geek has kindly allowed me to include his post below interspersed with my comments (his is in plain text, my response is in italics), because I thought it would be easier to read in one place than by flipping back and forth. But please visit Dr. Geek. He’s an excellent blogger and stand-up guy, and also he’s had a really lousy week. So stop by and say hello.

—–

Nickel Creek: Smoothie Song. I must confess that my initial, first glance reaction to the track list on the mix was completely wrong. I was confusing Nickel Creek (a name I knew I’d heard) with Nickelback, and I was thinking that this was going to be some kind of noisy alt-rock mix. But no, Nickel Creek is an entirely different creature: acoustic, and newgrass-inspired. I knew their name because I’ve been hearing this song on the radio off and on for the last few years. A nice start to the mix.

You are not the first person to whom I’ve sent Nickel Creek who has mixed up the two bands, which really couldn’t be much more different. This is the first son of theirs I heard too, but I liked it enough to go digging. I found a band of CHILDREN who had been produced by one of my all time favorite fiddle players, Alison Krauss. And I did something unheard of for me. The very day I first heard “The Smoothie Song,” I downloaded two of their albums. And I’ve never been sorry. The quality of musicianship is excellent. I do, however, have a particular affinity for their instrumental tracks. It’s not their voices that bother me – far from it – but I’m not always too keen on the lyrics. Still, definitely a group worth exploring.

Zach Brock and the Coffee Achievers: In Thoughts and Dreams. This second track takes the mix in a new direction. It’s a jazzy mediation with a fiddle paired with a wordless vocal in the lead. This track would be great movie soundtrack music. Just hearing it makes me think that I’m watching some kind of heist or caper movie: it’s the end of the second act, the hero has temporarily lost the faith and confidence of the woman in his life, and he’s putting numerous technical details for the big score in motion, all the while hoping that he can get her back

This is another band I discovered on the radio. We have a fantastic local jazz station here (although it’s sufficiently unlocal that I sometimes need to resort to internet listening) and they seem to like this track a lot. I like it too. Also, I have a thing for jazz fiddle players (see Stephane Grappelli below and previous posts (that I’m too lazy to link to) on Johnny Frigo, who played at my wedding). This song makes me want to dance and somehow it works its way onto many of my mixes. . I hadn’t thought of the soundtrack aspect, but I think you’re absolutely right. More and more, lately, I find myself gravitating toward music that somehow conjures up an imaginary narrative. I think that’s actually an unintentional theme of the music on this disk, actually.

R.E.M.: Rotary Ten. My collection of R.E.M. discs runs toward the latter days of the Bill Berry era: Life’s Rich Pageant, Automatic For The People, and Monster. I have little or no acquaintance with their later work as a trio… and this track couldn’t be much more different than I would expect from them. Fusion jazz is the best label I can come up with. A good continuation of the jazzy vibe in the last track, and a good bridge to the next one.

This tune is taken from Dead Letter Office, which is an album of outtakes from REM’s IRS years (1981-87, I think). I was an early adopter of REM – I’ve been listening since the early 80s – and between us Mr. Spy and I own most of their albums (not yet the new one, though, but it’s only a matter of time), some in multiple formats. Despite my relatively wide knowledge, each time this tune cycles up on my iPod, I end up checking to see who it is, because it doesn’t quite sound like them. And yet it does, once you know it. Aesthetically, it seemed like a good fit for this mix and a, I thought, a nice transition to the next selection.

Neko Case: Look for Me (I’ll Be Around). This tune shifts the mix in a dark, luxurious, film noir direction. The closest I can think of is Angelo Badalamenti and the Twin Peaks soundtrack. A beautiful torch song voice.

I avoided Neko Case for quite a while, mainly because I’d heard a little too much about her, which always makes me suspect I won’t like the music. But a couple of tracks have come to me in mixes and I discovered I like her voice and her songwriting. This song, though, is not one of those mix discoveries. I’m pretty sure I heard it in the soundtrack of a movie I was watching, but I no longer remember which movie it was. I didn’t immediately recognize it as Case. This is quite a different style of music than the other style of song I’d heard from her. I’d recently downloaded the next song and its moodiness reminded me a lot of it. And it’s funny you mention Twin Peaks, because I almost used a track from the soundtrack for filler, but I ended up taking it out.

Tom Waits: Jockey Full Of Bourbon. Tom Waits and I have been dancing around each other for quite a while — a roommate in the mid-90’s was a fan of Waits. I need to break down and buy some of his stuff. I’m most familiar with the version of this tune from Wicked Grin, the John Hammond disc that Waits produced of Waits’ songs. I like both versions, now that I’ve heard the original.

Tom Waits is, for me, all over the map. I can love him or hate him but I never find him dull. My favorite music of his is the soundtrack he did for Jim Jarmusch’s film Night on Earth, which is also one of my favorite films for its sheer moodiness. This song captures the same kind of moodiness perfectly. Now if only they’d put the soundtrack to Night on Earth back in print.

Lucinda Williams: Can’t Let Go. This song takes me back to the late 90’s when I was in grad school. Back in those days, I listened to a local indie radio station that pioneered the Americana radio format. It was named in a Rolling Stone article as one of the “Top Ten Independent Radio Stations That Don’t Suck” in America. I got the disc, but I haven’t dug it out in a long time. I think it’s time to dust it off.

Like Tom Waits, Lucinda Williams is, for me, hit or miss. Mr. Spy loves this whole album, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, but this is definitely my favorite track. It’s the perfect song for a road trip. This song came to me via my friend Cranky. I realized I didn’t know any Lucinda Williams and I downloaded a song that had been recommended to me, “Minneapolis.” And I hated it. I asked Cranky what all the fuss was about and she recommended this album. Totally changed my mind about Williams. Her newest album, though, not so much.

Lyle Lovett: I’ve Been To Memphis. This song takes me back even further. It was my first year of grad school, and I was living in an apartment with three other guys. I’d found this record shop downtown, that no longer exists. I got the disc that this song is from (it had just come out), put it in my trusty Sony Discman, and listened to it as I ate some leftover stir-fried chicken for dinner. I spilled a little soy sauce on the liner notes. The disc is an essential in my collection.

I was late to the Lyle Lovett party as well. In fact, Cranky just sent me this album, Joshua Judges Ruth a month or so ago. I had, however, been gradually acquiring it track by track. I believe you contributed a track or two to my collection as well. It is a remarkably well constructed whole with some fabulous individual tunes. One of the best albums in my collection as well.

The Magnetic Fields: A Chicken with Its Head Cut Off. This track is an interesting juxtaposition of styles and ideas. The basic sound is so very 80’s that I keep imagining the final character montage of a John Hughes movie prior to the start of the final credits. The lyrics are so alt-quirky that it cannot help but be a creature of the 90’s (it came out in ‘99). I like it.

This song was recommended to me by one of my illustrious readers, but I no longer remember who. And I totally agree with you about the styles. If there’s another theme to this mix, it’s about how seemingly disjunct styles often have more in common than you think. I like the mellow groove and the bass-leaning melody, which is catchy enough to get stuck in my head, but not so catchy that it drives me insane when it gets there. And the words are definitely quirky.

Nickel Creek: Robin and Marian. Here we return to the opening newgrass feel of the mix with a banjo and fiddle reel from Nickel Creek. That indie radio station I mentioned a few tunes back used to play this eclectic mix of blues, bluegrass, hawaiian slack key, comedy records, and old-timey white gospel on Sunday nights… they’d have loved this tune. (The promo for that show taught me the joke “Q: What do you call perfect pitch? A: That’s when you toss the banjo in the dumpster and it lands on the middle of accordion.”)

I learned that joke with the answer, “when you toss a viola in the dumpster and it doesn’t hit the sides.” This tune has no violas, but there’s mandolin and a very strong Celtic bias. It’s from Nickel Creek’s eponymous first album – still my favorite – which is a little more traditional than This Side, from which “The Smoothie Song” is taken. This song works its way into my Celtic mixes and early music mixes as well.

Great Lakes Myth Society: Summer Bonfire. Part old time call and response work song and power pop, this track has a dense, lovely sound. Some nice, upbeat bounce.

I first heard this song on the radio last summer on a new releases show and went home and downloaded the tune. It’s become a real favorite in the Spy house. It reminds me of the 60s/70s era British folk rock – groups like Steeleye Span and the Fairport Convention. Also, the geek in me likes the way the lyrics leave out the final rhyming word of each verse, leaving it to the audience to apply the appropriate one. I’d like to hear more of this group, but as of now, this is the only song of theirs that I know.

PJ Harvey: Wait. Ms. Harvey is another of those artists that my roomate in the mid-90’s really liked. To be honest, I remember seeing him watch a few of her videos on MTV’s 120 Minutes and thinking that she probably wasn’t my cup of tea. This track may force me to re-assess that feeling. Yes, it’s got a four chord punk sensibility… but I like the melody line and the lyric.

I’ve been a fan of Polly Jean for a long time, but it’s hard to recommend her to others, because she’s so mercurial. This is a bonus track off her latest album, White Chalk. I love the moodiness and the spareness of that album, but this song is absolutely nothing like anything else on it. It’s pretty traditional, straight up voice and guitar, which is fairly unusual for Harvey. But she does this idiom well too, just like she does everything.

XTC: The Man Who Sailed Around His Soul. Oh, if I could just count the times that I’ve considered getting Oranges and Lemons and Skylarking by XTC, not knowing too much about them, but thinking… they should be good, very good. Oh, if only more of late 80’s pop was this good, I might have listened to the radio more.

I listened to a lot of XTC in college, where I was introduced to it by a friend (and later roommate) who was a music fanatic and had a show on the college’s radio station (she’s now a music buyer for that big website for buying books and other stuff). I recently picked up Skylarking, from which this song is taken, in a fit of nostalgia and I’ve been enjoying getting reacquainted with these songs from a 21st century perspective. They wear well. And the jazz-influenced flute line made it fit well on this mix.

Django Reinhardt et al.: The Peanut Vendor. The quality of this recording is lousy… but the performance is stellar. I know that Harri3t must have included it because of all the John Jorgensen I’ve been telling her about. Reinhardt and Grappelli were magic. I listened to this at work and had to get up to go to the printer… I couldn’t help whistling the tune as I walked, without even thinking about it.

Jorgenson is exactly why this song made it onto the CD, and also, it provides some nice historic background for Zach Brock. This is another of my favorite albums, Django in Rome, 1949/1950. Django Reinhardt is, of course, the legendary guitarist and his longtime partner Stephane Grappelli provides the fiddle solo. The recording is not the best, as you note. It’s tinny and old and sounds kind of like someone held a microphone up to a Victrola. But it all works as part of the atmosphere for me. But I’m used to it from listening to the whole album. Perhaps it doesn’t work as well in an album with more contemporary songs. In any case, I think the album is a must have for any jazz aficionado. It’s full of incredible renditions of standards.

Jules Shear: Too Much Between Us. This song reminds of two cherished tracks from nearly 20 years ago: I Don’t Mind At All by Bourgeois Tagg and Don’t Dream It’s Over by Crowded House.

I first heard this song as recorded by Windham Hill pianist George Winston as a bonus track on an album I got for AJ. Although the arrangement was bland, I loved the lyrics and the chord changes, especially that long slow descending sequence. The song was originally written and recorded by Procol Harum of “Whiter Shade of Pale” fame, but I’ve never managed to track down a copy of that version of the song. I love Jules Shear’s take on it, though. I hadn’t thought of the Crowded House song in years, but the melody line is similar in its unexpected combinations of major and minor and its reaching over the top of the line when you expect it to descend.

Bill Fox: My Baby Crying. This song is an interesting combination of interesting 60’s styles: a Dylan-esque lo-fi folk ethic with complex lyrics combined with a lush Beatles-esque melody line. This one bears further investigation.

This song comes from the CD that came with The Believer’s last music issue (The Believer, in case you’re not familiar, is a literary magazine under the aegis of Dave Eggers and McSweeney’s). I know nothing about the artist, but I like the song for all the same reasons you stated.

Nickel Creek: Pastures New. The last of the trio of Nickel Creek songs on the disc, the dark guitar and fiddle combination takes me back to a pair of Indigo Girls tunes: the guitar much like Amy Ray’s playing on a track like Fugitive and the fiddle has the dark lonely quality like the opening of The Wood Song (both off of Swamp Ophelia). Guess I’ve got to get this disc.

This track is another Celtic-inspired tune off Nickel Creek’s first album. I use this in all kinds of mixes, including those I play for yoga and meditation. But I have little patience for most music designed for meditation. This song is peaceful — it calms things down nicely to move into the next track — but the violin gives it enough of an emotional edge. I think it’s lovely. It’s instrumental, but it sounds like it could have words. I find myself wanting to sing along. I haven’t listened to the Indigo Girls since their early days and have never heard Swamp Ophelia. Guess I’ll have to check that one out!

Holly Cole: Waters of March. Holly Cole is an artist I’ve heard of, but never heard before now. This tune is definitely pop in its conception and construction, but is heavily informed by jazz. Again, someone I need to examine more closely.

Holly Cole is another artist who is hit or miss for me. I love her voice, and her musicianship is incredible, but her arrangements are sometimes a little too pop for my taste. I love this one, though, in part for its complete transformation of the original Jobim bossa nova. It sounds like a different song, and yet not. In any case, it made me hear a very familiar song in an entirely new way, which is what covering a song should be all about, in my opinion. I won’t go into too much detail, as I’ve written about this tune elsewhere. But Cole is definitely worth exploring. As a place to start, you might try listening to her interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air, which is where I first heard this song.

Mark Eitzel: Stunned and Frozen. The mix finally winds down… or is it winds up? Mark Eitzel turns in an energetic little ditty in waltz time, drawing the singer/songwriter and Americana threads running through the mix together for one last time.

I absolutely adore Mark Eitzel, one of my all-time favorite singer-songwriters. Great lyrics (many of which work their way into my post titles), great and unexpected tunes. I haven’t heard his more recent stuff (although to be honest, until just now when I looked up the name of the second album, I didn’t know he even had more recent stuff), but you can’t miss with this album, West, or even better, the less succinctly titled Caught in a Trap and I Can’t Back Out ‘Cause I Love You Too Much, Baby. As for winding down or winding up, I’ve always liked the way your mixes loop well, so that if you want to keep it on autorepeat (which I do a lot, especially when I’m getting to know a new disk), there is a smooth transition.

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Have you gone to visit Dr. Geek yet? Then do it now!

Call me call me any anytime

In good spring fashion, the weather has transformed itself again overnight. Although it was cool enough at bedtime that I brought in the pots of plants from the deck for protection, it was warm enough this morning to open the windows (well, perhaps not warm enough for most people, but warm enough for those of us who are starved for fresh air). I am reacquainting myself with my gardening muscles and have been alternating bouts of pulling weeds with bouts of writing with my laptop on my balcony with an excellent view of the flowering plum tree (it’s good to be at a distance because it is currently surrounded by swarms of bees) and next to my beautiful and fragrant jasmine. I try not to get too attached to my plants in pots, because although I’m a reasonably competent gardener, I am not very good with pots. But I’m already very attached to my jasmine. If/when I kill it, I will be traumatized. Even the red-winged blackbird warbling at the top of the still-bare oak tree will not be able to cheer me up.

Besides the plum tree, the quince, Virginia bluebells, hellebores, marsh marigolds and vinca are all blooming. The crabapples should flower very soon and the lilac is just barely starting to open. You can already smell it from the front porch, which is at least 30 yards away.

I have spent most of the morning pulling up garlic mustard in the forested part of the yard. Garlic mustard is invasive and it kills many natives by growing extra-tall and shading them out. Pulling garlic mustard is very satisfying because it almost always comes out easily and because once you get it out, you can find exciting things underneath it that you didn’t know were there. I found I stand of morel mushrooms, some tiny fiddleheads and a grove of trillium grandiflora as big as dinner plates that I never knew were there. The first two of these things are among my favorite things to eat, but I find it difficult to harvest them. Because even more than eating them, I like to see them growing in my yard. Besides, I don’t think I will ever trust my ability to correctly identify mushrooms, even morels, which are supposed to be among the easiest. I will always assume I will keel over dead from eating them. That is just the way things are.

One of the best things about weeding in the woods was that I could eavesdrop on AJ and The Boy Across the Street (TBAS) and his little sister (TBASLS), who are playing town. Currently, the town seems to be experiencing a real estate boom. The two boys are bickering about who gets the office behind the fallen log and who gets the office on the big rock. Meanwhile TBASLS keeps trying to interject in her small voice: “Excuse me! Excuse me! Can we just pretend that I need help finding my house?”

I love to see the kids play in a pack, when they leave their toys and video games behind and get out and explore and make things up. I remember roaming my own neighborhood with a pack of other kids from my street when I was about AJ’s age. Alliances formed and split and reformed. Someone who was on your side one day, might ridicule you in front of everyone the next. It paid to be politic, which meant both staying quiet and also knowing dirt on everyone. I usually tired of their games after a while and would climb the nearest tall tree to hide and watch and maybe read a book. From my balcony I can still hide and read and watch as the children below are pretending to work in their separate offices until one of them decides it’s break time. I wonder what AJ makes of this, the boy with two parents who hardly ever leave the house. When he was little, he thought work meant banging randomly on any available keyboard. I’m sure that’s what it looks like. Now they are calling each other with phones that sound just like the phones of my childhood and not anything like the phones in our house now.

“Ring ring ring! Ring ring ring!”

“Hello?”

“Hello, it’s TBND. I need to ask you some questions.”

“Well make it fast, I’m very busy.”

“Actually, I need some money.”

“What for?”

“I want to buy something.”

“Okay. but we need to go to the bank.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s where you keep money, silly.”

“Oh. Let’s go.”