I've been listening to a LOT of 90's stuff lately.  My satellite radio has been stuck on the grunge/alternative station for about 2 weeks, especially since there's a lot of good stuff to crank up on there.  And on Saturday I was out with my oldest friend and there was a 90's cover band, Rollerblades!  So here's a couple songs I've been singing along to lately.

Mighty Mighty Bosstones "The Impression That I Get"...I've been cranking this one up a lot!

Fastball "The Way"

Music Monday # 18 and NaBloPoMo Day 30 - Scars

I know, I know, I owe you guys a post all about how amazing Advocacy Day was, and I promise I'll get there!  But it is Music Monday and the last day of NaBloPoMo covering poetry, and so I want to get a post in to cover those.  I heard this song yesterday on the Christian rock station, and it linked well with the last poem that I had wanted to make sure to share.

Depression

A black cloud descends,
Blue sadness and black fatigue
Swirl
As it tightens around me;
It binds my arms,
Makes me unable
To fight its chafing effects.

My life no longer belongs
To me.
Scars appear,
Tears fall,
Yells come from my throat,
But it is the cloud that does these things,
Not me.

I try to look past the cloud,
Try to remember happiness,
But my memories are blocked
By the force that governs my life;
It censors happy words,
Thoughts, pictures,
But there is one thing it cannot stop...

A high, clear note
Penetrates the darkness.
Music follows
As a flute flirts
With my cloud,
Chasing bits away
Until happiness returns.

Music Monday #17 - Written in the Stars

This song grabbed me from the first time I heard it.  I really love the emotion that comes through in the song.  It struck me in a new light, though, thinking about infertility.  I think all of us have asked the question of why me, why my partner, why us.  I know I sure have.  Whether we believe in God, the Fates, destiny, some combination thereof, it's a question that often comes to my mind.  I've basically (most of the time) gotten past the question of whether we're being punished for something with infertility, but I still wonder about the role of destiny, God's plan, whatever.

Some parts of this song make me wonder if it will fit even better if I have a miscarriage, especially the parts about being given paradise for only a day and about wishing in the darkest days never to have learned what it is to be in love and have that love returned.  I thought about waiting and posting this song only if I had a miscarriage and felt like it fit then.  But then I decided to post it not instead because I didn't want to tempt Fate by having it in the back of my mind.  Silly, I know.  But a lot of us do things to try to sway Fate in one way or another, from fertility socks to saying a specific prayer to creating a fertility ritual.  And I'm trying to not accidentally jinx myself.

Music (Thursday) #16 - Chasing Cars

I've been watching a lot of Grey's Anatomy lately, just starting with disc 1 of season 1 and playing through the series while I do paperwork for work every night (before I got too sick and was told to stop).  I haven't gotten up to the part where this song starts being used, but watching Grey's still makes me think of it.  I had actually misheard part of the lyrics as, "Those three words/are said too much/and not enough."  Even though I now know the third line of that is, "They're not enough," I still like to think of it the other way, because it's so true.  Those three words are said too much by people who don't mean them.  But they're also not said often enough by the people that do mean them, whether to the people we love as family, as friends, or romantically.  We never know when the chances to say them will end.

This is my favorite version of the song.  It wasn't until around when this episode was done that I actually knew Sara Ramirez had been on Broadway before her role on Grey's, but her voice certainly shows the training!

Music Monday # 15 and NaBloPoMo Day 9 - Signs of the Times

Fall 2001 was quite an eventful semester at the University of Maryland, and not just because of 9/11.  Just before Labor Day weekend, DH had to take me to the hospital (despite NOT knowing the area, so I had to navigate) from early week practices of marching band because of an asthma attack.  There was a rash of robberies on campus and in town.  On about September 6, a guy died on the steps of a frat house of GHB.  On September 10, a guy died on the railroad tracks.  Then there was the obvious, made especially frightening there both because of the high New York/New Jersey population concerned about family members and because it turned out that two of the hijackers had stayed at a nearby motel and worked out at the gym at the mall we all went to.  And then, on September 24, a tornado went across the campus and killed two students.

There was definitely good that semester as well.  The most important to me was that my sister Catie was born that year, on October 23.  My cousin got married on September 15.  DH and I were in the first months of being together, in that stage where everything feels perfect despite, in our case, living 8 hours apart.  We even had random snow flurries in September! The football team was under a new coach and was ranked for the first time in a long time.  But even that had a significant downside.  When part of the marching band went down to an away game at Georgia Tech and won by 3 in OT, we had bottles thrown at us and were attacked by students after the game.  Two years before, when we had lost by 3 in OT, there were some guys who tried to grope the flags, and one of our staff members got hit after he told the guy he couldn't cut through the band.  So I had been holding my flag ready to use it on anyone who tried to grope me and trying to make sure the freshmen girls were in the middle of the formation.  But we sure didn't expect what we got!  I'll never forget watching a drum major and a staff member take down a guy that was running through the band throwing punches.

Since that was the semester when I was taking a poetry class (it was on the way to that class when I saw the flurries, actually!), I wrote a sestina about how crazy the semester had been.  I'm pairing it with some REM here because that song really was what that semester felt like.

Fall 2001

What have we come to,
Living in College Park?
Weeks of tornadoes, robberies and death?
Going through our days in fear of what will be next?
And football made the Top 25 polls--
Hell really has frozen over!

At least we're not in Central Park,
In the city of collapsed buildings and death,
Wondering who will get anthrax next.
Bush's approval is rising in the polls,
But where will he be when this is all over?
What will his presidency reduce to?

And now the Afghans are the ones to taste death,
But which military unit will they send next?
Many support a draft, so they say in the polls,
But how will they feel when their sons go over?
How long will this go on?  Will it come down to
The little kids that now play in a park?

Will the band get attacked when next
We go help our team rise in the polls?
Or does the Georgia Tech brawl mean that our trips are over?
The worst that we thought would happen to
Is is that we would get grabbed, then come back to our Park.
At least this incident didn't end in death.

In years, our kids will come back and take polls
Of who knew and who died and who thought it was over
The day our security shattered into
A million ashes spread out on Central Park--
The ashes of buildings and fires and death.
Who knew on that day so much more would come next?

The frightening thing is, it will never be over.
There will always be people who want to
Impose their views onto others, down to where to park,
And don't care if the price is their own children's death.
The only unknown is where will be next,
What country has topped the terrorists' polls.


Whew.  That's the first and only time I've done a full six-stanza sestina.  There was a contest going on BlogHer for writing sestinas.  Actually, it's for a different fixed-form poem every week; this week is a villanelle.  But that is more work and time than I have to devote to poetry right now.  Maybe later in the month, but I doubt it.

Music Monday #14 and NaBloPoMo Day 2 - Walls

This Jimmy Buffett song had struck me a couple of weeks ago with its description of walls: "And the walls that won't come down/We can decorate or climb."  I think, I hope that's what I'm doing with the IVF.  I can't change the wall that is me and DH both being carriers for spinal muscular atrophy.  But I can decorate it through infertility advocacy, and I can try to climb it with the IVF and preimplantation genetic diagnosis. 

The poem is another one I wrote from the poet-in-residence program in high school.  The prompt was to write about dreams and walls, as Langston Hughes did in "As I Grew Older".  I am leaving off the last line because it's clearly about someone else and because it'd not crucial to the poem.

Dreaming of Joy

I dream
Of happiness.

I reach out
Into blackness,
Endlessly searching
For what may never be mine.

In the darkness,
My hands find a wall.
I look for a way around--
There is none.

I punch at the wall,
Trying to break through,
Trying to get out of the eternal night.

It takes years of endless work,
But I finally make it through
And step into sunlight.




I hope that I am able to climb the wall that I've decorated and make it through into sunlight.

Music Monday (OK, Tuesday) #13 - Makeshift Angry Salad

My freshman year of college, I was introduced to a band called Angry Salad by the guy I was dating at the time.  And I do mean introduced...he was friends with the band, so when we went to see them at the 9:30 Club, Bob, Alex, Hale, and Brian Holland (the second bass player Brian), as well as their manager, Jim.  Over the next couple of years (and through a band name change due to record label issues), I would email back and forth mostly with Bob, but also some with Hale and Jim, about everything from them opening for Vertical Horizon to date movies to karaoke and Girl Scouts!  Eventually they moved on in life and the band broke up, but two of their CDs (their self-titled debut and the one they released as *64, called You May Be Beautiful) are among the CDs I play the most.

I was originally going to post a video of their song "Coming to Grips" because of how I've been coming to grips with having to wait for my cycle.  Unfortunately, though, since they were from the days before YouTube, there are very few videos of them online and none of that song.  I will post the lyrics, though, because they're really good!  When he wrote the song, Bob's last two girlfriends had both broken up with him by saying that they were lesbian, and the song is about his reaction to that.  I'm also including the video for one of my other favorite songs of theirs, "The Milkshake Song."

Well, Cindy Oleo - the margarine girl
She says to me, "I don't like boys"
I tell her I don't like them either, she tells me I don't understand
So I stand there and I stand there, yeah, but I guess I didn't know

I didn't know any better, I didn't know she might prefer
I need an answer to my letter, is she really going out with her?

Speaking of, I've got a couple words for the author of the book of love
Never wrote a chapter about this
Now maybe there were pages I missed (I'm not that bright)
I know it was a long time ago
As I stare up at her broken window, I turn my back and I walk home
I didn't know any better, I didn't know she might prefer
I need an answer to my letter, is she really going out with her?

It would be so hard, it would take, take some time, but I've got time

In my mind I go there sometimes, in my mind I go there

All this time alone and I feel fine, I feel fine
All this time alone and I feel fine, I feel fine
In my mind, in my mind, in my mind, oh in my mind, my mind, my mind, my mind, my mind, my mind
Guess I didn't know

I didn't know any better, I didn't know she might prefer
I need an answer to my letter, is she really, really going out with her?
Going out with her?

Music Monday #12 - Why We Tell the Story and March Photo Challenge Day 19 - Numbers

I spend way too much of my radio time on the Broadway channel on my XM, so my picture for the theme of "numbers" is the thumbnail of my Music Monday video, one of the numbers from a favorite musical.

With all the posts people have had about why they blog, as well as the questions raised in the Healing Salons, this song really struck me when I heard it this morning, as another way to show why I blog.

Life is why we tell the story
Pain is why we tell the story
Love is why we tell the story
Grief is why we tell the story
Hope is why we tell the story
Faith is why we tell the story
You are why we tell the story

 So I hope that you will tell this tale tomorrow
It will help your heart remember and relive
It will help you feel the anger and the sorrow
And forgive

For all the ones we leave
And we believe
Our lives become
The stories that we weave

Music Monday #11 - Girl Scouts

As an update from last week, I wasn't exactly a cowboy in the jungle, but I did ride a horse through a tropical dry forest, so I think I still made a good prophetic selection!

Today's theme is Girl Scouts.  One hundred years ago today, Juliette Gordon Low held the first Girl Scout meeting with 18 girls in Savannah, Georgia.  The first video below, "Make New Friends," is so common it might as well be the official Girl Scout song.  The middle video, "White Coral Bells," was my favorite Girl Scout song as a little girl. (Although I did have a soft spot in my heart for one that went, "Black socks, they never get dirty.  The longer you wear them, the blacker they get. Someday maybe I'll launder them; something keeps telling me 'Don't do it yet.'")  I didn't come across the bottom song, "On My Honor," until Cadettes, but I thought it was lovely, and it's been a favorite ever since.

Music Monday #10 - Cowboy in the Jungle

No, people, don't worry, I'm not spending a bunch of time on Blogger when I should be relaxing on the beach, I wrote this before I left!  At the time I'm writing this, I'm still not sure how much jungle there is in Costa Rica or how close the jungle comes to Tamarindo.  Still, I thought it would fit.  I just hope that at the time this posts my skin still is as white as paste and isn't bright red!!  It's actually a good thing I wrote this post, because writing that last sentence reminded me that we hadn't packed sunscreen yet!

Music Monday #9 - Boat Drinks

In honor of my impending trip to Costa Rica, you all get a little Buffett to brighten your day.  I was going to emphasize the line of, "This morning I shot six holes in my freezer; I think I've got cabin fever."  But then I was pushing up my sleeves outside the grocery store tonight in 61-degree weather in February.  Still, I'm very glad to be leaving for a place where the low will be 66-68!!

Music Monday #8 - I'm Not That Girl

OK, so I've been listening to the Wicked and Book of Mormon soundtracks a lot since I got them.  DH calls me obsessed with them, and he may be right, but they're both so good!!  I was listening to Wicked on Friday, and this song caught my ear and my heart more so than usual. 

I'm not that girl, and we're not that couple.  I'm not that girl who can just want a family and make one with her husband.  I'm not that girl who can even know why, beyond believing that God wanted her and DH to find out about the spinal muscular atrophy before having an affected baby.  I'm not that girl who can trust that a scheduled cycle will actually begin, even after starting the BCPs.  I'm not that girl who can trust that she'll get to use the box of meds in the dining room.

The last verse of this song begins, "Don't wish, don't start, wishing only wounds the heart."  That's been my mindset for a year now.  But on an old episode of Private Practice that I finally got to watch tonight, Addison said that the biggest muscle that she had needed to strengthen to take the first step of her first IVF cycle was hope.  I don't know how to do that.

Music Monday #7 - When You Say Nothing At All

I've always thought this was a beautiful song...if for some reason I'm just listening and not singing, I prefer the duet version that I've posted here.  Most of the time, though, I prefer to listen to the Keith Whitley version and sing Alison Krauss' part myself.

The song doesn't entirely apply to me and DH, since he and I are both Words of Affirmation people as well as Physical Touch.  For those who are not familiar with Gary Chapman's book The Five Love Languages, the basic premise is that we as humans express and relieve love in one or two of five different languages: Physical Touch, Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Gifts, and Acts of Service.  I highly recommend the book for anyone who has never read it...I learned a lot about myself and others from it, and the knowledge I gained helped to improve several relationships in my life. 

Music Monday #5 & 6

OK, I just realized a day or two ago that I was bad last week and never did my Music Monday post!  However, an app that I have on Facebook that gives me daily suggestions to improve my life had the suggestion today to listen to 2 of my favorite songs.  So, y'all get to go along on that journey with me, and we'll combine 2 Music Monday posts into one.  The theme for today is what I have and what I want.

The first song is Everything I Do (I Do It For You) by Bryan Adams.  I tried to post the video, but the insert video function wouldn't find the right video on YouTube, and I didn't want to post anything other than the official music video for this one, so you get the link to go watch it in another window.  This song represents what I have, since it is DH's and my song, has been since the first summer we were together.  For those that don't know, when DH and I got together, I lived in Maryland and he lived in Michigan.  That first summer, before I was back on campus with better phone and internet access, we more than maxed out the 180 minutes a month I had on the cell phone my aunt was paying for.  At some point during one of those conversations, I mentioned that this was my favorite song, and DH said it was his, too.  Not that long later, he told me (I think in one of the letters we were also sending, both to keep the phone bills down and because I had time on my hands while lifeguarding) that the night before, he had heard our song on the radio while he was driving.  It's been our song ever since.

This next song covers both what I have and what I want.  It's Little Miss Magic, by Jimmy Buffett, and I thought it was beautiful the first time I heard it.  What really made it special for me, though, was that I was riding in the car with my dad (who got me into Buffett), brother, and baby sister and mentioned that I loved the song, and he pointed at me and Catie and said, "Little Miss Magic 1 and 2."  This was later the song that my dad and I danced to at my wedding.  At the same time as this song represents what I have in terms of my relationship with my dad, it also refers to what I want.  Even as I was looking at YouTube to pick a version to put up here, I didn't even consider clicking on any that had babies in the thumbnails.  I want to have a Little Miss Magic or Little Mister Magic of my own, and I don't know if I ever will.

Music Monday #4 - Shades of Gray

Well, here's a Music Monday that I know my mom will like!  She very definitely raised my brother and me on the Monkees.  I chose this song tonight for a couple of reasons.  One of them is the passing of JoePa.  This article does a very good job of looking at his situation and emphasizing that for many people this is not a black and white situation and that we cannot effectively be defined as people by one decision or set of decisions.

The other reason I chose this song is the verse about how, "It was easy then to know...how much to protect your heart and how much to care."  That's something I've really had to work on and work out at different times in the infertility process, and it's coming up again as we have the potential to be making progress again.  How much do I protect my heart as we hopefully go into IVF?  I won't really know until I get there, but my natural inclination now is to guard myself.  That sure as hell wasn't my inclination 2 years ago, but it has become my MO.  I'm afraid to care because every time I have in this process, I've been crushed by that.  Typing this reminds me of a Bible verse that was given to me when I was going under anesthesia for the first time and was scared: "For the Lord did not give us a spirit of fear, but of faith, love, and a sound mind." 2 Timothy 1:7.  Unfortunately, though, going in with faith, love, and a sound mind (or as sound as mine ever has been!) led to nothing but heartache, so I have to find the shades of gray that work for me at any given time.

For my mom and any other Monkees fanatics, I'm putting in two videos of the same song.  One is from 97 and actually has all four Monkees together, which is why I'm including it.  The other is from 2011 and shows off Peter both singing a solo and breaking out the French Horn.  Since he always played the lovable fool on the show, it's easy to forget that he was one of the musicians, not one of the actors.

Music (Tuesday) #3 - Our God (Is Greater)

Sorry this is late, but I got home too late last night to do anything but go straight to bed.

I caught just the end of this song on the radio Friday morning on my way to the airport and cranked it up.  The middle to end has a great rhythm buildup that makes me want to dance and come as close to headbanging as I'm ever likely to.  The beginning is nice, but it's the second part that really lifts my mood and makes the song for me.  I would have posted it to Facebook as soon as I got to the gate, but I barely made the plane.  So I listened to the whole thing a couple times over the weekend and decided to use it for this post.

Over the weekend, I was doing really well and this song felt empowering.  I was having fun with friends I rarely get to see and making new friends.  I was able to talk about the IF without getting upset, and I was even able to talk about IVF matter-of-factly, just as something that had the potential to affect my schedule and what I would do when.  That ended up being a shorter-term respite than I would have liked, but I'll get into that in another post.

Music Monday #2 - Here Comes the Sun

I haven't gone to bed yet, so as far as I'm concerned, it's still Monday, damnit!

The last couple of days have actually been pretty good, despite the looming issues of the IVF authorization, the PGD clinic issue, and a lingering insurance/billing issue from the last plan year.  Friday night, I got to visit some friends at DH's curling club and then played fun music and watched my Lady Terps come back from 20 points down to beat Georgia Tech.  Saturday, an APO thing that I expected to take about 6 hours was done in 4, and I then got a great deal at WalMart on something for my office and then baked 3 batches of cookies.  Sunday I got a lot of Christmas un-decorating done and also had a great band rehearsal.  Today I got a lot of office organizing done (mostly at work, but some at home), figured out where the above insurance mistake was made, and then came home and made a healthy version of eggplant parmesan.  Little things, overall, but nice.

The real highlights, though, are that twice in the past day or so I've seen that my work and abilities are recognized and valued.  Yesterday afternoon, I got an email asking if I was still interested in helping out with logistics for a quizbowl tournament.  In a follow up email, I found out that he wants to put me in charge of a major aspect of the planning process.  I hadn't heard anything for a while after offering last year to help, since it wasn't planning time for it yet, and it was nice to hear that my efforts were still wanted.  Then tonight I found out from another friend that a project I worked very hard on for my local region of APO (for those who are new to the blog, I still volunteer a lot with my service fraternity, Alpha Phi Omega) was considered good enough to be adopted on a national level with very few adaptations and is about to be published.  Working on this project had been a new and really great experience for me.  I was working outside of my comfort zone, creating something that had not existed before within APO (at least not that I could find) and doing so within an area that I did not feel like I had much experience in.  I was proud of what I created, though, especially when I had passed it on to someone who I thought would find it useful and it then got passed on to and praised by the higher-ups that didn't really know me.  For those that have read The Five Love Languages, my two primary languages are Physical Touch and Words of Affirmation.  Being a Words of Affirmation person, it's important when people I know and care about tell me I did a good job, but it's a whole different level of impact when someone who I respect but who doesn't really know me praises my work.  And now, in addition to that praise, I have the knowledge that I added something of real value to the fraternity as a whole.

As if all that wasn't enough, it snowed today!  Yes, I know it's funny to post about snow given what song I'm highlighting, but I'm a huge kid when it comes to snow, but it brings metaphorical sunshine to my life.

I don't know how long the sunshine is going to last.  But in this moment, I'm able to enjoy the sunshine and not worry about how long it will last.  I'm not sure how long that ability is going to last either, but I'm going to ride it while it does!

Music Monday #1 - Mission: Impossible

One thing that is done every year in the ALI (Adoption, Loss, Infertility) blogging community is Creme de la Creme, a list of personal best posts of each year.  As I was reading through the list for 2011, which was just posted, I came across Tanya's idea of Music Mondays.  Because imitation is the sincerest form of flattery (and because I found this on the first Monday of the new year, which makes it even more fun), I'm snagging her idea.

So far all this IVF thing feels like is Mission: Impossible.  After getting the answer about the out of pocket max last Monday, I haven't been able to make any real progress since thanks to the damned holidays.  So far 2012 has been nothing but more obstacles, except for getting some stuff done at work today.  It's mostly been little things, but it just adds insult to injury, which I really don't need right now!  So far there sure hasn't been anything to give me any reason to believe that 2012 will be any better than 2011 or 2010 or 2009.  So that's my song for today, damnit.  Maybe later I'll have a song that's sunshine and rainbows and unicorns, but that day is not today.