Monday Miscellany

1. I was going to write a real post, but then I got caught up in reading old blog archives. There's an awful lot of really funny stuff here that I totally would have forgotten about if it hadn't been for the blog.

2. That reminds me, I'm supposed to be working on the next few volumes of my Blurb blog books. I only completed the first two; Juliette hadn't even been born yet.

3. That project will have to wait a bit longer. We close on the house this week, and will be moving within the next three weeks. Today we signed the financing paperwork with the church in preparation for our final closing. Juliette was along, and was being very shy until the very end, when she addressed all the adults in the room in a loud and clear voice: "We're buying a new house!" Indeed.

4. Another Juliette quote from today:

Juliette: "I have a stomach ache."
Mama: "How long have you had a stomach ache?"
Juliette: "Umm... forty minutes."

5. If you are my friend on Facebook or if you have encountered me In Real Life, you know that I've been sick with a respiratory infection for over a week. I started to get better toward the end of last week and then it came back with a vengeance, just in time for Easter. To quote my most recent status update: I cried uncle. Praise the Lord and pass the antibiotics.

6. Juliette and I wandered through the Container Store last week, and I made an impulse purchase: two bottles from Life Factory. They are glass encased in a silicone sleeve. I got a big one for me and a little one for Juliette.Lo and behold, upon visiting their website, I learned that they also make glass baby bottles. Um, sign me up. The plastic baby bottles in the basement are almost certainly not BPA-free. Behold: They make sippy cups, too. I'm smitten. (Now here's hoping kid #2 doesn't reject bottles of breastmilk the way her sister did.)

7. Despite the waves of illnesses crashing through the Pershey household, Juliette managed to look pretty dapper on Easter morning:Yay for hand-me-downs! Erica made the lovely sweater, which we will be carefully returning for permanent safekeeping in Zora's hope chest.

8. Good thing it isn't Tuesday, and I have no contractual requirement to reach 10 items. Goodnight. :)

The Reverend Rocks Playlist

The radio show experience was fantastic. Truly. I didn't say much, but that wasn't the point. I mostly just sat in the glassed-in studio (making sure the computer monitor blocked the horror movie showing in the lounge on the other side of the glass), listening to the songs being piped out over the radio waves. So very cool.

Here's my playlist:

I Don't Wanna Waste Your Time ~ Over The Rhine
Hallelujah ~ Ryan Adams
Words We Never Use ~ Ron Sexsmith
Man In Black ~ Johnny Cash
The Spirit vs. The Kick Drum ~ Derek Webb
Beautiful Change ~ The Innocence Mission
Goodbye California ~ Jolie Holland
State of Mind ~ Matt Thompson
The King Knows How ~ Over the Rhine
If I Can Dream ~ Elvis Presley
Justice Will Roll Down ~ Sandra McCracken
The Weight ~ The Staple Singers
Breathless ~ Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
For The Weary ~ Allison Sattinger
All My Favorite People ~ Over the Rhine
By and By ~ Dan Zanes & Friends

I'm pretty predictable, aren't I? Save for that Elvis Presley song. Bet you didn't see that coming. But it was a perfect follow-up to The King Knows How, and it's a great song.

After By and By, a Bare Naked Ladies song came on next. (Perhaps the clearest possible sign that my hour was over.)

Here's a link to the playlist on iTunes.

The Reverend Rocks

i radio heaven

i get mixed signals
i move the antenna
i switch the channels
i lie in this bed
my satellite dish
is there room in the universe
for one last wish
(i say)

do you read me
over
you wanna come
over

("I Radio Heaven," Over the Rhine)

My radio debut, "The Reverend Rocks," airs live tonight at 7pm Central Time, streaming at wltl.net. I'm equal parts nervous and excited. The whole concept of speaking into a microphone that takes the sound elsewhere, out into the universe, where I can't see who or how many are listening, is terrifying. But the opportunity to craft that perfect playlist is absolutely exhilarating. I've written a few music reviews through the years, and I used to write that blog series called Music Mondays. But really, when it comes down to it, what I want to do even more than write about the music I love is get people to listen to the music I love. And that's what I get to do, for an entire hour. Tune in, won't you?

The Great Meat Pickup of 2011

So, Over the Rhine was in town last night. Great show, of course. Up until the day of I was uncharacteristically planning to sit this one out - you know, save a few bucks for the move and all. But then I started getting twitchy. As it turns out, it takes a much more compelling reason than the desire to save $25 to keep me from an Over the Rhine show. Problem was, I'd waffled so much my potential date (Erica) had understandably made other plans. I am totally fine with many solo activities, from eating out alone to going to movies alone, but I'm not really game for driving to Lincoln Park for a late show alone. Besides, everything is more fun with a friend.

Enter: Heidi. Heidi is my brand new friend. We've seen each other precisely twice, once at a continuing ed thing (she's an Episcopal priest) and then once for lunch. I knew she liked Over the Rhine, and as it turns out she's been listening to them longer than I have, since 1997, when I was still a high school junior rocking out to Tori Amos.

I sent her an email asking if she might be interested in going with me. She responded to say that she'd love to, except that she couldn't. She had to pick up her meat from the CSA at 7pm.

If I didn't know how Community Supported Agriculture works, I would have totally thought she was searching for an excuse slightly better than having to stay home to wash her hair. But I do know how CSAs work, how you have to show up at a particular time and place to get your goods.

I mentioned the conundrum to Ben. He immediately offered to pick up Heidi's meat for her, despite the fairly long round trip it would entail. (How nice is my husband??) A perfect solution: he would drop me at her place, and as we took off for downtown Chicago he'd head over to the meat pickup and deliver it to the freezer in her garage.

Only, as I was starting to write an email to Heidi, my brand new friend, suggesting the plan, Ben noted how incredibly desperate and not a little weird this might sound to Heidi, my brand new friend. I mean, shouldn't I at least attempt to ration the crazy?

But, we're talking about Over the Rhine. I don't really dole out any of my crazy all that slowly, and especially not my Over the Rhine crazy. It just falls out all over the place, despite my best attempts. So I sent the email, all the while laughing so hard I could barely type, and to my delight Heidi was game. The night unfolded without a hitch: the meat made it to Heidi's freezer and we made it to the concert.

Ben did note during dinner tonight that he never actually met Heidi, or even saw her. He suggested the possibility that I might have had a hot date last night and that he unwittingly picked up the hot date's CSA order. But I will soon prove Heidi's existence: assuming I haven't yet scared her away, the plan is that she and her husband are going to have a BBQ with Ben and me. After all, they do have a lot of meat in their freezer.

Stories of Mistreated Royals

I've watched two movies in the last week: The King's Speech and Tangled. (Spoilers ahead.)

I liked them both. I expected to like The King's Speech, given that everybody and their second cousin (plus The Academy) did. I didn't expect to like Tangled quite as much as I did, but that scene in the dive bar where all the tough guys were singing about their dreams was enough to push it from four to five stars. That, and Mandy Moore. I do like me some Mandy Moore.

That said, I also thought there were some disturbing undercurrents in Tangled. As well there should be; it is, after all, a fairy tale, and those fairy tales can be very dark. The evil fake mother, with all her creepy psychological tricks, is absolutely horrifying. The movie references the agony Rapunzel feels when she disobeys her mother through a humorous lens, as she swings between poles of exhilaration and despair. But the movie doesn't address the extremely complicated grief Rapunzel would experience upon realizing that her mother is not her mother, mere moments before the woman simultaneously hyper-ages and plummets to her death. It's not like I expected the movie to do so. Animated Disney movies are supposed to end with the obligatory happily ever after.

In reality, Tangled could have segued right into The King's Speech, a movie in which a royal figure grapples with the consequences of familial mistreatment and abuse. Decidedly not a fairy tale, the disturbing undercurrent in The Kings Speech is the unfolding of World War II. But The King's Speech can inspire where Tangled can (only?) enchant, because The King's Speech puts the wounded royal in the hands of a healer, not a myth. That Lionel Logue and his non-anxious caregiving made me so grateful for all the varied healers - therapists and doctors and nurses and pastors - who help people move toward wholeness.

That said, Tangled inspires in another way, with its story of sacrificial love and resurrection. I just hope that poor girl got some help, too.

Homeowners

Later this month, we close on the purchase of our first home, thanks to financing assistance from the church.

It looks like this:Isn't it charming? It's a Dutch Colonial, built in 1929. It's small; even though it has three bedrooms, it's less square feet than the two bedroom house we're currently renting. We're okay with small. Less to heat, less to clean. And we've learned from having lived in bigger houses that we tend to congregate in the same rooms. We will have to come to terms with the 1929-sized closets, which are so tiny the hangers have to be hung sideways. We will simply have less stuff, and that's just fine. Preferable, really.

The house is within easy walking distance from the train station, the post office, the bakery, the dairy, the meat market, library, the hardware store, the elementary and middle schools, and several parks.

We probably could have bought a bigger house several miles away. But the trade-off wouldn't have been worth it for us. This was an amazing opportunity to discern what matters most to us, and we discerned that living - and walking - in this community was worth tiny closets.

Oh, and a tiny kitchen. (The dishwasher looks like someone ran it through the dryer.) But it's adorable! And I'm daydreaming about all the meals I'm going to cook up in this lovely little space.
So yeah, another move. Another transition in this year of so much change. But it feels good to make a move that is intended to last.

No: great. It feels great.