“El Puma” in my past

Apparently, my personal NaBloPoMo theme is: “Revealing my Embarrassing Musical Taste.” So, here goes…

I don’t remember how this topic came up tonight at dinner, but Laurel mentioned José Luis Rodríguez, a Venezuelan singer I hadn’t thought about in years.

In the early 80s, I was an exchange student in Venezuela for about a month. I lived with a Venezuelan family in the city of Barquisimeto, the capital city of the state of Lara.

While there, my Venezuelan “sister” (Graciela) and most of her girlfriends were swooning over Jose Luis. Her room had two giant posters of him; he had that sort of Latin George Hamilton look: deep tan, thick and wavy hair, and wide, vampire-like shirt collars.

In Venezuela in the 80s, families held big parties usually at least once a week. Everyone was invited, from the yougest kids to the great grandparents. Nearly everyone danced the “salsa,” and, though they played a lot of American music (Kool & The Gang’s “Celebration” was played at every party I attended that month), you can bet Jose Luis was a musical staple.

I didn’t have a lot of room in my suitcase for souvenirs from my trip, but I did bring home two special things: a quatro (the national instrument of Venezuela) and a Jose Luis album.

When we looked up his music tonight, after not listening to him for at least a decade (probably more), I was happily surprised to find him on iTunes. We listened to just the first few seconds of one song and we laughed. How could we possibly have listened to that music?! As sappy and poppy as it is, we still remember every note, and most of the words, even though we’re still not sure what he’s singing about.

Here, for your listening pleasure is the title track of that album, Atrévete.

Okay, now I’ve humiliated myself in front of you. What are your musical guilty pleasures?

I’m a bad mother

The other day, I was feeling down about something I did or didn’t do for Hyla and called myself “a bad mother”. Michael said, “Like this gentleman?”

I just couldn’t stay down about myself after that. Shaft and I have so much in common.

A visual Feast

Today, we’ll be spending Thanksgiving at our friend’s home, so even though I baked a pie and some pecan squares to take with us, our house doesn’t smell like Thanksgiving.

Instead, as an appetizer, I’ve been watching this wonderful video essay by Matt Zoller Seitz: a compilation of food and cooking scenes from movies.

In Big Night, Stanley Tucci and Campbell Scott’s 1996 drama about two chef brothers cooking a one-of-a-kind dinner at their struggling Italian restaurant, there’s a moment where the siblings unveil their prize dish, timpano, a mix of meat, cheese, pasta, tomato sauce, and hardboiled eggs served inside a drum-shaped crust. The unveiling begins with an overhead shot of the brothers carefully lifting the chafing dish to reveal the timpano; at the sight of that buttery crust, the audience I saw it with collectively exhaled in pleasure and envy—a noise that was half sigh, half moan. We all wanted to be in that movie, in that restaurant, sitting at the brothers’ table as honored guests, knife and fork at the ready. Dear Lord, that food looked good.

To you and yours, we wish you a table laden with your favorite foods and surrounded by your favorite people, and all the time in the world to enjoy it all.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The farm down the road

Last Sunday, I took my camera with me and stopped by the farm down the road to look at the piglets again.

While I was there, I took a few more pictures so you could see what we see every day as we drive into town.

Speechless

I’ve been staring at this screen for many minutes now, trying to think of something interesting I want to tell you. But tonight I have nothing interesting in me to say.

I will tell you, though, that I had a nice day. I started by cleaning the piles of paper off my desk, sorting and filing them, and paying the bills.

And then I met a friend in the park and we watched our dogs romp in the spring-like sunshine of this odd November day.

And then we went into town, got a quick lunch, did a grocery run, and parted ways.

And then I picked up my smiling girl at school. And listened to her talk about her day.

And then we went home, and pet the dog and the cats, and played with plastic models of animals and knights and kings and queens.

And then I cooked dinner.

And then we welcomed Michael home from work.

And then we ate. And talked. Sat at the same old wooden table we’ve had for our entire marriage, and noted that it wobbles and needs to be tightened.

And then we cleared the table together.

And then we watched a movie and snuggled together during the scary parts.

And now I’m here with you, thinking over this day, where nothing in particular happened, nothing of note, nothing that needed to be written down.

Reason #137 why we love the Internet, and don’t

This morning, Hyla woke up as a dugong, but by the time I picked her up from school, she was a kangaroo, complete with pouch.

Which got us to wondering, on the way to her violin lesson (picture that!): what sounds do kangaroos make? (Why we didn’t wonder about dugong sounds, I can’t explain.)

Luckily, in this day and age, you don’t have to wonder long about anything if you’re within striking distance of a computer on the Internet. When we got home from violin, I typed “kangaroo sounds” into the search engine and was promptly led to this page, where you can hear the darling little “clucks” that kangaroos make.

Internet, we love you.

Emboldened by this success, I typed in “giraffe sounds”. This time, all I found were a bunch of descriptions of giraffe sounds (everything from bleating and mewing to bellowing and coughing to snorting and hissing and “making strange flutelike sounds”) . Come on. Has no one yet bothered to record and post giraffe sounds to the Internet?

Internet, we may not love you as much as we thought we did.

Feeling wary but hopeful, I decided to give the Internet one more chance and searched for “dugong sounds”.

Internet, I think I love you again.

Sunday night Farewell

It’s been a long, busy, wonderful weekend, and as much as I’d like to write about it all right now, I just can’t. I have to go to sleep.

So, instead of writing, I’ll leave you with this lullaby: Hyla’s violin recital from earlier today. I tried out her little video camera to film her performance and the video quality is pretty poor, but at least the sound comes through okay.

Sweet dreams.

Oink!

It only took a week to remember the camera.

I might go back tomorrow with a zoom lens and try to get some shots of those adorable snouts up close.

Cold and rainy day

Most week days, Michael and Hyla bundle into the car together around 8.15 in the morning and head off for school and then work. Gryfe and I stand at the door and wave to them until the car leaves, then I get my tea and we go downstairs to my office. I sit down at my desk, and Gryfe settles into his dog bed beside me to begin his daily work of chewing on a toy before passing out for his two-hour nap.

This morning started with torrential rain, and then the valley filled with fog and a steady drizzle. It felt dreary and cold and like a good day to stay under the covers with a good book. But I had a lot of work to do.

I tuned the radio to NPR, looked out my window to the bleak November view, and then this StoryCorp story, told by Gregg Korbon and his wife Kathryn, came on the air.

Maybe it was the moody weather, or the fact that Brian was just a little kid, or the detail about the note he left on his door (as the mother of a note writer, this really struck a chord), or just the reminder of how quickly things you think are forever can go away, or my sympathy for his parents. Or all of that.

Whatever it was, it made me so completely sad for a time, and then so overwhelmingly grateful for my family, my healthy little girl, my mug of tea, my work before me, my dreary view of November hills.

Found poetry

I know I’m far from the first to observe this, but sometimes those SPAM email subject lines inadvertently make cool little poems. Here are three lines that just appeared in my SPAM box, in this order:

When asked what he would prefer
There was no possibility of taking a walk that day
She’s in the window seat