My love of music

AB commented the other day that he had never been to a big rock concert. I immediately jumped on the fact that in fact he had. When we were dating, he went to Seattle to visit his best friend. We were in college and he went for a break. I was jealous. I had never been to Seattle. While there they saw The Beastie Boys in concert. (And he bought me a bottle of wine, but it didn't make its way back to Colorado... likely story, huh?)

This got me to thinking about music.

My first concert was Rick Springfield at the Casper Events Center, followed by (in no particular order) Bon Jovi, Motley Crue and I think we saw Poison too.

When I was in 7th grade I managed to secure tickets at Mile High Stadium in Denver to go see Michael Jackson. He looked about a half centimeter tall from our nosebleed seats. But yes, I saw Michael Jackson in concert.

Once I hit high school my concert list improved.

I scrounged $4 to pay for a ticket to The Red Hot Chili Peppers. My high school years were full of local punk rock shows. Among the best was seeing All - formerly the Descendents.

College improved my concert list substantially more.

Enter Paul Simon, The Grateful Dead (twice), many festivals that included the likes of Mark Cohn, John Hiatt, Michelle Shocked, Nancy Griffith, The Wailers, Hot Tuna, Tuck and Patti, Social Distortion and Little Feat to name a few.

Then my world changed...



I have seen Richard Thompson at least seven times that I can recall and it may have been more. I saw him at the Chataqua Auditorium in Boulder, Colorado for at least five years running (judging from who I went to the concerts with - Scott, Scott, Scott and Michael, Ande, and finally AB). Then twice in Reno. The second time in Reno and last time I saw Richard in concert was a few weeks after September 11th happened and he gave a very heartfelt speech about how special it was for him (a Muslim) to be playing music in front of the American crowd, decrying the acts of terror that had occurred. I remember tears all around.



Favorite artist. And I feel quite confident that this will never change.



The year we got married I stressed and stressed about what RT song I would have played at our wedding. His songs are beautiful... but not the thing that wedding songs are made of. Most are tragedies. I finally gave up and admitted defeat when I couldn't hone in on a song that represented what I wanted. RT didn't make an appearance at my wedding.

AB isn't the Richard Thompson fan that I am, though he has come a long way. He has always liked Thompson, but a favorite? No dice.

Until this song came along.



This would have made it into the wedding.

There are a few more concerts I would like to see someday... would love to see Dave Matthews, Jack Johnson and well... I am quite positive I will frequent RT's concerts many times more.

New resolution as of today... my children will listen to more music. Their horizons WILL reach beyond The Chicken Dance (which I did NOT allow at my wedding - but damn it is cute seeing my kids do it), The Monster Mash and The Yellow Submarine.

Skateaway

Now SHE had it going on.

At least when I was a kid. My sister and I used to watch this video over and over, then go get our metal skates on that strapped over our tennis shoes and we would Skateaway ourselves.

My sister was a far better skater than I ever was, and she had the curls going on too.

I think about the last time I rollerskated was 25 some years ago. I do have rollerblades and both AB and I have hit the pavement (literally and figuratively) on our rollerblades within the last decade.

When I was a kid we frequented the WagonWheel in Mills, Wyoming. It was a sketchy hang out 25 years ago... I can't imagine it has improved much, but apparently it's still in business. I spent many, many "free skates" at that place. We also went there for my dog obediance classes. And they had these horrible round tables that were misery to get in and out of on skates.

And it had this funky smell to it. Really funky.

A funk that must permeate every single Roller Rink because the scent invaded my brain and transported me back 25 year on Saturday.

Leif was invited to a rollerskating party at the local Roller Rink. I recalled back to the Wagon Wheel days and how no one was allowed on the floor during rollerskating with regular shoes on, so I even tossed in a pair of socks to fit me and we headed off to the party.

I entered a time warp. The skates were updated a bit... though the "retro" skates that I remember wearing served as decor around the perimeter. Some people wore rollerblades. And I was happy when the staff encouraged me to go out on the floor in my shoes to help Leif.

I may as well have been in 1982 when the music started playing. And the disco lights came on. And the UV lights came on. And the giant screen showed "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" and "Oh Mickey".

It was a nice enough crowd. I didn't know them at all. The girl is in Leif's class and is one of the "offenders" - i.e., one of the girls always trying to hug and kiss Leif. And he was the only boy (except her brother).

Leif and I walked the perimeter the first time. Ok, so I walked and carried him on jelly legs. By the third time around he was scootching himself along on his skates. About the 5th time around I walked beside him as he held onto the edge and scootched himself around. This was of course the time where I could have gone and got skates for myself. Instead I claimed I needed to stay vertical for Leif's sake. (I was one of the only parents not on skates believe it or not.)

Midway through the party a number of girls came by hoping to skate with Leif as they held their hands out to him. I was quite proud of my boy for not falling prey to their evil ways and instead latching onto me. Just like a good boy should!

When the two hours was up we took of the skates and vacated into the bright sunlight.

"That's where I want to have my party next year," Leif told me.

"Really? We'll see," I replied really thinking to myself 'no way in hell'. I am counting on a short memory for this experience.

"Let's go to the mall!"

Ok, so if you don't watch "How I Met Your Mother" that statement probably doesn't evoke as much imagery... see the gang finds out that their Canadian friend Robin was actually an 80's Canadian pop star...

Tonight we were contemplating dinner out. We ran through the very few options where we would willingly take our kids. Then AB tossed out the mall and added on "I know there have been a few things you have wanted to get there".

Yeah, for probably going on 6 weeks or so now. Just haven't made it there despite living right about a mile from the place.

I haven't been to our mall since reading Shampoo Planet by Douglas Coupland for book club. Shampoo Planet is based in the town we reside in. I really enjoyed the read as for me it was a testimony of reaching that "grown up" stage in the late 80's to early 90's. And what made it more fascinating to me was that the book was set here - in a time when I didn't live here. But was living a somewhat parallel life in a small city in Colorado. So not only could I relate to the characters of the book, but the scenery and that period of time. I have to admit though that reading the portions where they went to the mall evoked a sense of dread in me. A "so been there" dread that was too familiar thinking back to the Foothills Fashion Mall (now closed) as well as the mall I rely on locally.

Walking into the mall I immediately thought about where Tyler's girlfriend (yes, fictional character and all) may have worked and those kids hanging out in the food court.

Remember when it was cool to go to the mall? The security guards, who pretended to be much bigger shots than they actually were would try to exert some authority regarding loitering. I remember being dropped off and picked up at the mall by my parents with $10 (on a good day) in my hand. We might spend some time in the arcade, wander the toy store laughing at the toys we were much too old for now that we could go to the mall by ourselves, buy a big lemonade from Hot Dog on a Stick (giggle about those poor people in those awful outfits), buy some earrings at Claires, browse the music and wind up back at the front of the mall waiting to be picked up while rehashing which boys we saw (but never talked to).

I have become a little of an online shopping fiend in the last decade. It started with books at Amazon and has recently grown to whatever I can find that doesn't cost me much more or charge me a fortune to ship. I know... my city could use the tax income. But my time is short and gas is expensive.

Today it was my Merrell Plaza Mocs that I finally succumbed to along with a pair of Mary Jane Pedipeds for Skadi. I am blaming Rockergirrl because I did not go into work this morning with the intention of buying shoes and I need very little encouragement in this arena. But I got to browsing after she posted some of her favorites, then I got to "needing".

So I buy stuff online. However. I still refuse to buy my makeup online. I know I could order from Clinique somewhere... but if I did that I wouldn't get my Bonus Gifts and I wouldn't find out about new products (like the new powder I bought today).

And there are occasional mistakes I make buying online - particularly with Old Navy. That is about the only place I ever have to return things to. Best to just shop in store. For example, I was glad I actually went in and examined their little girl coats before buying online. We walked out of the mall this evening without a winter coat for Skadi and I am fighting MY need for her to have a cute girly coat when Leif's old Columbia coat and snow pants will do just fine.

We did however score pajamas for both kids, a pair of boots for Skadi (impulse buy), two dresses on sale from Children's Place, a few pairs of sweat pants for Leif, my make-up and dinner from Ivars.

I had thoughts of trying to avoid the mall for the Christmas season, then Leif started mentioning Santa Claus as we walked out.

That may have been the last time HE was at the mall.

Cupcakes flashback

Tonight as I was reading to Leif before bed I recalled back to elementary school. One of my favorite activities that was held a few times a year was "Cupcake Sale Day".

I should ask my mom more about it. But this was long before cupcakes were haute cuisine. Before shops opened carrying only cupcakes. This was kid stuff and so very much fun.

Everyone made and decorated cupcakes and brought their batch in. They were all decorated differently and the parents split the cupcakes out among many tables in the hallways. A cupcake cost a dime. And we saved styrofoam meat trays (washed, but still now I wonder about how wise that was) for us all to carry them home on covered with a big produce baggie that I worked so hard to keep from mucking up my frosting.

I usually bought six - exactly how many would fit on a styrofoam tray - the maximum we were allowed to buy. Though since my mom was a room mother every year for either my sister or I we always ended up with more cupcakes than that - the leftovers. Leftovers were the ones that were an obviously obscure flavor or weren't usually decorated nicely.

Because as elementary school aged kids, we were ALL about the decorations.

Ours were always so nicely decorated that I had to resist buying our own cupcakes. And then there were the boys that you watched when they walked in with their cupcakes (providing their cupcakes made it in one piece), which were theirs. Because some boys had cooties and you wouldn't dare want to buy one of their cupcakes.

Cupcake sale day was great. So the fundraiser only raised 60 cents per child at most - won't go too far in today's schools. But there wasn't any of the door to door sales stuff. I admit though, I am a sucker for the neighborhood kids selling stuff. I will buy anything that comes to my door because they are most often for a good cause - the kids are in sports or working towards something for their school.

So far this school year I have bought a case of water for to help support a soccer team, a bucket of chocolate chocolate chip cookie dough - that not only do I not need, but can't possibly taste as good as my own - to support a gymnastics team. And I am waiting for the annual gift wrap drives to make their way here. Oh and exactly how many car washes do I really need? This is an anomaly here... I have never lived in a place that had so many charity car washes. And I really hope my children aren't involved in any organization that does this because it really reeks of something unpleasant seeing the preteen girls on the sidewalks begging cars to follow them.

Anyways. Bake sales don't always bring in a lot of business. But our cupcake sales were truly fun... and yummy.

The story of a cat

So this post is more for me.

Shortly we are going to go get our new kitten. Leif is thrilled. I am thrilled. Skadi... well she will be thrilled. Winny... hmmm... Winny's world is going to be turned upside down. AB? Not so thrilled, but that's ok. He will grow to love Lucky, I know.

While we bring a new kitten into our home and heart, it makes me think a lot about my cat, Calley. I wrote this up recently and finally decided to post it. Sorry for the length, but you know me by now... wordy. I would split it into parts, but since I have it all penned already, here it is, one big long story of one cat's life.

So here is the story of my cat, who lives on in my heart.

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When I was 11, my friend's cat had kittens. My parents had just seperated and my mom gave me the go ahead to get one of the kittens. I remember going to her house and picking out one. A calico I named Alexandra and we called her Alley for short. She was an outdoor cat (as all our cats were back then) with a little bit of a hard streak to her. She brought home birds and mice and wasn't much of a cuddler.

I was in 6th grade and the first boy I liked came by after school. I remember him saying, "your cat's pregnant". I told him she wasn't. How could a BOY know those things anyway?

About three weeks later my sister was home sick from school. She called my mom at work crying.

"Alley's in my closet and mice are eating her!" she cried to my mom.

My mom was enough concerned about this statement that she went home. Either my sister was really sick and therefore hallucinating, or there was a real problem with the cat.

What she found instead, there in my sister's closet among her stuffed animals was Alley, cleaning up four little kittens she had just birthed.

She was a tough old brod (the cat) even though she was only about 8 months old. That night Alley grabbed the favored cat, the little calico, brought her into my room, onto my bed and nursed her. Left the other kitties in my sister's room. We brought the kittens to her and almost had to force her to stay there and nurse them all. This happened for a few nights. Then eventually she figured out they were all her kittens and that she couldn't just pick and choose her favorite. Or she just got tired of hearing them cry and us eyeing her disapprovingly.

At some point my mom said that we could have two cats. But that they were both getting fixed. It was an easy choice, we were picking Alley's favorite kitty, the one calico I had named Calley. The others (Jojo, Popcorn and Sparky) we would find homes for.

The kitties were about 4-6 weeks old when my mom came in and told us that Alley had been hit by a car that night. The neighbor... "Crazy Rod"... had done it. I am still not sure what the events of the evening were, but I think he had thought he had done my mom a favor (and he probably had) by "cleaning it up" so that my sister and I wouldn't see our dead cat.

For weeks afterwards I scoured the road, curb and sidewalks (there was neighborhood talk, he had hit our cat on the sidewalk) for evidence of this crime.

The kitties were suddenly weaned, they grew older and one of my favorite memories of them was when they would fly across the living room floor simultaneously and up the drapes. You would walk into the living room and see four tiny kittens sitting on top of the drapery rod meowing at you as you walked by.

My mom looked into a procedure called "declawing".

Jojo, a mild mannered black kitten, was accepted by a pet store because black kittens were "easy to move". The two male tabbies, Popcorn and Sparky, were out of luck. My dad took pitty on us and adopted them. Within a few months though my dad's allergies were killing him. The cats slept with him and I even remember a story of him rolling onto one and bringing it back with mouth to mouth resuscitation. The cats went to live on a farm. Quite possibly the proverbial farm. I was old enough to wonder at least...

We kept Calley. She was a tortoiseshell calico with what her Reno vet called a "candy bar personality". She could be as sweet as could be for about 2 minutes. Then when the candybar is gone, you were almost sick to your stomach with her. She was a wild thing.

She would lie in wait as my sister (her prey) would dance across the living room floor. Then Calley would assail her prey with the intent of bringing the nine year old down to her knees. I remember my sister standing on the kitchen chairs crying and my cat eyeing her from below. And she had this death glare in her eyes. She was out for blood.

AB says that he would have had the cat put down after this happened. I asked him how you really take the beloved pet from one child away? I am sure my mom thought the unwarrented vileness towards my sister would end. And it probably did at some point. (My sister would probably insist it never did and that Calley despised her till the day she died.)

Calley, on the other hand, loved me. I was convinced she was my soul mate and told her my every secret. (Since I was just getting to that stage where secrets are real. I am finding out three year olds don't understand secrets so well...)

I took Calley everywhere with me. We went to my dad's house in the summers. We moved to Colorado in junior high. I picked her up from my mom's after my first year in residence hall at college when I had my own apartment. We moved to Boulder and had a few apartments there.

I had a boyfriend I lived with just outside Boulder during early college. Calley used to make him cry too. Then she expressed her discontent at him by peeing on his jumbo bean bag, and then his pillow. He was history soon thereafter.

Then AB came along and there was the now infamous attack to his head by Calley while at my parent's house. He grabbed her and launched her across the room. My step-dad applauded and AB was immediately accepted into our family. I, on the other hand, could not believe my boyfriend had done that to my cat.

AB eventually accepted that I came with a 15 year old psychotic cat and we packed her up and went to Reno where I was going to grad school. I am sure he thought the cat couldn't live *that* much longer.

While in Reno her occasional vomiting spells became routine and I somehow had failed to notice how much weight she had really lost. I took her to the vet and was astonished my healthy 13 lb cat was now 9 lbs.

An ultrasound revealed that she had massive cirrhosis of the liver. Her days of living as a lush had to come to an end.

On a serious note after doing a little reading on liver functions in cats and remembering back to when her vomiting started, I feel strongly that it was the massive ingestion of hundreds of miller moths during a summer invasion in Fort Collins, Colorado. An invasion I will never forget as one of the most gross experiences I have had. She ate moths until she was stuffed and my apartment - actually, the city was infested to epic proportions.

I was happy this cirrhosis was actually treatable. She may never regain her liver function, but with steroids she could maintain what function she had as well as giving her an oral synthetic bile.

We went this route for five years during which time she gained a couple pounds back, quit vomiting and met her new soul mate in life - a rascally Belgian Sheepdog named Winny.

The unlikely pair were inseperable. Calley's life though stable, still hung in the balance and our vet was satisfied with our route of "benevolant disregard". We weren't going to go to heroic lengths to save Calley, no liver transplants or operations, just medication and treating symptoms as they arose. He understood the huge trauma to her for any blood analysis after finding a fang lodged in his arm after one such experience. (It actually broke off IN his arm.)

Calley had good days and bad days. Sometimes she behaved like a spry 15 year old cat, and sometimes like a feeble senior.

She was swinging on the low side when we decided to move to Washington state and our vet warned us that she may very well not survive the move. She had just been diagnosed with early stage kidney failure and diabetes. Her spine had nearly no cartilege left from the longterm steroid use. She was hunched over and unable to groom herself, which was fine since Winny did that for her. (We would go camping with Winny and return after a couple days to our greaseball kitty cat who hadn't been groomed during that time. It was obvious Winny maintained her.)

Not only did she survive the move but lived for another two years in Washington State. We found a vet who was receptive to our desires to "leave her be". This was actually more difficult than it sounds. We went through two vets who thought she needed to have surgery (at age 20) and the second even went so far as to state abuse and attempt to take her away from us when I took her in because her eyelid quit retracting. Finally a friend pointed us to a woman he knew who understood the issues of older pets. She agreed with us that our chosen route to treat her problems was best and added in fluids administration to help with her failing kidneys.

Calley spent most days sleeping in the closet on her heating pad and sitting for her daily bath by the dog.

Then the day came that she didn't bounce back. She kept going downhill and we awoke to her in one of the spare bedrooms (which was odd enough) convulsing. I tearfully held her, knowing what we had to do. She was 22 years old. Death was upon her. Our dog wouldn't come near her. AB and I cried as we called an on-call vet and arranged to take her in to be put down. It stung as the on-call receptionist listed off the rules and fees. I know she didn't know us from the next person, but we weren't just simply annoyed with the animal (as apparently many people are and have pets put down).

We took her in wrapped in a towel as she didn't have control of any faculties anymore. AB and I sobbed. I hadn't seen AB cry that hard about something ever. He had obviously grown to love her as well. Within minutes, she was gone and we said goodbye to her.

We went out to the desk to settle what we were expecting was our massive bill for a Saturday call in and the receptionist told us we were only being charged $50 for the equipment use. (We had been quoted over $300.)

We had Calley cremated and still today her ashes are on my dresser in a small container. I never knew where to lay her to rest because she was an indoor cat. There wasn't any special place - other than in my arms, next to her dog, or on her heating pad.

Dun dun dun dun - dun - dun dun dun dun - dun

Thirty years ago I was five years old and was blessed with a trip to Denver (a nearly 6 hour drive) to see a new movie that was coming out. I remember standing outside the theater on Colorado Blvd., not really knowing what all the hype was about.

I don't remember details of watching the movie, however, I remember loving it. Afterwards I picked out a cassette tape with a book that went with it of the story. We also bought the vinyl soundtrack and I couldn't wait to get home to put it on the turntable.

I wanted my name to be Leia.
I wanted droids.
I wanted my hair to be like big cinnamon rolls on the sides of my head (mine were little cinnamon knots on either side thanks to my very fine hair).
I wanted a wookie - my dachsund (Inga) had to fill the role.
I wanted to be rescued by Han Solo and Luke Skywalker, but to also show them I was just as good as they were.
I wanted the scary Sand People to go away. (I still do.)

I remember uttering the words, "Help me Obi-Wan, you're my only hope" over and over. (My poor parents.)

Guess what's playing tonight at NM and AB's house?