...on Wednesday. Whatever. I haven't fallen asleep yet (due to a combination of excess caffeine, thinking too much, and a stomachache) so it's still Tuesday for me.
Music is kind of a big thing in Brenden's and my lives. Not sure if you were aware of this.
I kid.
Anyway, I decided we'd share this aspect of our lives with you a little more by starting this blog thing called Tuesday Tunes. This is both an effort on my part to discover more music and to get Brenden more involved in our blog.
The gist of it is we share a musician, composer, song, or piece that we've been listening to recently. We'll publish these posts on, you guessed it, a Tuesday (except for this post, of course.) We probably won't do this every week but we'll try to do it enough to make it a pretty regular thing.
I'll start with Cat Power's song "Cherokee."
Cat Power (Chan Marshall) released her latest album Sun earlier this month and I've been listening to it basically every day since I purchased it. I listened to her a lot back in high school and into college, particularly her albums You Are Free and The Greatest. But since The Greatest came out in 2006, she hadn't released any new original music until this month's release of Sun.
Sun is different from her previous albums and the direction she's taken it works so well. She's incorporated a lot of electronic sound into this album but her somewhat jazzy voice is the same (though the style in which she sings on Sun is a lot more upbeat than previous albums.)
"Cherokee" (the song I'm sharing with you) is the opening track to Sun and probably my favorite on the whole album.
There's this free magazine published weekly here in Athens called Flagpole. It provides a nice calendar of events for the week, including concerts and shows downtown. I've lived in Athens for over a year now and I just recently discovered this magazine and, with it, the awesome music scene in Athens.
I'd heard of the music scene in Athens but I ignored it because, well, I've kind of become somewhat antisocial since moving to Georgia. (Bad. I know. I'm working on it.) Because of my antisocial tendencies, I generally tend to avoid places where there are a lot of people (duh)-- including downtown and various events. But after discovering Flagpole magazine and their website, I realized I'm not allowed to be a hermit anymore because then I'm going to miss all of these awesome concerts. Just recently I missed concerts by Explosions in the Sky and Azure Ray. It kills me to think of the shows I may have missed this past year I've been living huddled up in my house.
Well, on Thursday last week, Brenden and I grabbed lunch at this awesome burger place called Stuffed Burger where they literally stuff your meat patty with food. It sounds a little gross but is actually really delicious. Anyway, at this burger joint, the latest Flagpole magazine was sitting in a stand near the counter. I grabbed it to flip through while we waited for our food. I quickly discovered that there was going to be an Album Leaf and Tycho concert on Saturday night at the Georgia Theatre. I didn't know who Tycho was but I've loved the Album Leaf since high school and I told Brenden right then and there that we were, in fact, going to a concert on Saturday.
And we did.
We sat on bar stools in the balcony to avoid the bulk of the crowd on the main floor which was standing room only. The music was so good. It was loud and I never really thought about listening to the Album Leaf at such a high volume but now that I have, I'm not sure how else to listen to him. Tycho was pretty good too. The crowd seemed to be more familiar with Tycho than Album Leaf, which okay, I'll admit, I'm really behind in discovering new music. New music for me, lately, has been the most recent albums of artists I liked in high school.
I'm sort of on a quest to rediscover things that once made me really happy but I pushed aside for one reason or another. This concert was a stop on that quest.
I determined I still really love live music shows despite the crowds.
Thank you Album Leaf and Tycho for bringing me back.
Here are two Youtube videos of songs from Tycho and The Album Leaf. The first video is Daydream by Tycho, which they performed at the show and the second is Into the Sea by The Album Leaf, which is a track I just really like (for some reason this video's length is seven minutes but the song is only about four and a half minutes long so the rest of the track is silence.) Enjoy!
It's been two months and two days since my last post here.
Sorry about that.
A lot of things happened during those two months. My parents and my sister came to visit at the end of July and then Brenden's mother and sisters came to visit right after. Brenden started school again and did so well in his auditions that he made both the top band and orchestra for the year. Brenden celebrated his twenty-third year of life. I celebrated my twenty-fourth. I got more blood drawn and an additional diagnosis (what are we on now, like, six?) Some of my hair has started to grow back. We discovered some fun hiking trails on UGA campus. And sadly, Brenden's dear great-grandpa Vern Nelson passed away. We were saddened to hear of his passing but so grateful for the life he lived and the lives he touched, especially our own.
Each of these items deserve posts of their own. And I might get to them some day. But for now I just wanted to say hello. We are here. I'll try to be better about this blog thing.
During these past two months and two days I've been absent, I've thought a lot about what it means to be an adult. I've thought about how much I miss my carefree days of childhood. I've thought about what independence entails. I've thought about the importance of maintaining family relationships across the miles.
And I came to a profound realization: I worry a lot. Probably too much.
I worry so much I literally get sick from worrying. And then I make Brenden sick of my worrying. And then I worry that Brenden isn't worrying enough. And then I worry that our lives are ruined, we'll be poor forever and die alone.
But at least I'm sane enough to recognize this is a problem.
I'm going to work on it. In fact, I'm currently working on it. For my birthday, I got roller blades.
Let me explain how those two previous sentences are related. I miss those carefree days of childhood and while I will never be able to completely return to those days, I can revisit them on occasion. And I will revisit them by rollerblading up and down my block, across park sidewalks and around a roller rink.
I'll revisit those days in jokes with my husband, free sporting events, ice cream scoops, and movies. I'll revisit them by not cleaning the house and saying out loud, "MY HOUSE IS A MESS AND I'M GOING TO BE OKAY WITH IT RIGHT NOW AND NOT FEEL LIKE A FAILURE."
I'll revisit those days by trusting my Heavenly Father has a plan for me and Brenden.
Today Brenden and I were told our car would need close to a thousand dollars in repairs. (We're taking the car to another mechanic tomorrow to see if that quote holds true.) I worried about that all day today while I was at work. The worrying accomplished nothing except giving me an upset stomach.
Would you like to know what I did when I came home? I decided I'd stop worrying about it.
And then I put on my roller blades and skated throughout the house doing laundry and putting away dishes. (Brenden was a little annoyed to learn that I was handling stacks of plates while rollerblading.)
I've learned (and am still learning) that being an adult comes with a lot of responsibilities I never had to deal with as a child. But it also comes with a lot of freedom I never had as a child. Sometimes I feel I would gladly trade this freedom to avoid those responsibilities. I know that's not an option and I suppose when I really think about it, if I did have that option, I still wouldn't choose it. I have a lot to be grateful for right now and I wouldn't trade it for a few more days practicing softball or winning spelling bees (because I always won spelling bees.)
When I think too much about what the future may entail, I get overwhelmed. But, you know, I don't have to figure it out all at once. I can take it step by step, rollerblading glide by glide.
And really, who would want to be a child again when, as an adult, you can rollerblade throughout the house and no one is going to yell at you?
And for some spiritually uplifting words of wisdom I recommend listening to/watching this video. A friend shared it with me a couple days ago and I loved it. It's an audio clip from a devotional Elder F. Enzio Busche gave at BYU in 1996. You can find the talk in its entirety HERE.
