Favourite Songs:

For summer: “Boys of Summer” Don Henley

For cruising in summer: "Summer Time" Will Smith

For getting up and dancing: “Jump” House of Pain

For remembering those favourite exes: “Alex” Punch Brothers

Duran Duran Song: “The Chauffer”

The Cure Song: “A Forest”

Song from a soundtrack: “If you Leave” OMD (from “Pretty in Pink”)

Girl Power: “Bad Reputation” Joan Jett and the Blackhearts

Beach Boys: “In My Room”

From the Grunge Era: “Dirty Boots” Sonic Youth

Song that reminds me of a specific ex: “Crazy for You” Madonna

Theme Song: “Dancing Queen” ABBA

Cover: “Suspicious Minds” Fine Young Cannibals

Break up: “Don’t Speak” and “Ex-Girlfriend” No Doubt

Really Really Really Sad Song: “The Hurting Time” Annie Lennox

Mellow Chill-out: “Fade Into You” Mazzy Star

B-52s: “Dance This Mess Around”

For a specific time in my life: “Grade 9” Barenaked Ladies

Song that makes me think of Halloween: “Heads Will Roll” Yeah Yeah Yeahs

For when my relationship is depressing: “Heavy in Your Arms” Florence + the Machine

Angsty but mellow: “I Wanna Be Adored” Stone Roses

The Smiths: “Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want”

Romantic: “If You Were Here” Thompson Twins

Teen Angst: “Institutionalized” Suicidal Tendencies

When my relationship is good: “Junk of the Heart” The Kooks

Tells an excellent story: “Underwhelmed” Sloan

Song at my wedding: “Love is all Around” Wet Wet Wet

When I’m feeling ‘Woe is Me’: “Only Happy When it Rains” Garbage

That makes me think of the times with my Girls: “Sneakernight” Vanessa Hudgens

Heartbreak: “Sweater Song” Weezer

Depeche Mode: “Somebody”

Coming of Age: “Son of a Preacher Man” Dusty Springfield

Police: “Every Breath You Take” and “Wrapped Around Your Finger”

Sad: “Stay” Shakespear’s Sister

Also sad, but in a different way: “Strange Currencies” R.E.M.

The only time I was serenaded, so it’s a favourite: “Suck My Kiss” Red Hot Chili Peppers

Reminds me of a different specific period of my life: “Take Me on the Floor” The Veronicas

Love Song: “A Thousand Years” Christina Perri

80’s Love Song: “True” Spandau Ballet

Birthday Song: “Happy Birthday” Altered Image

Song that must be danced to every time you hear it: “We Got the Beat” The Go-Go’s

Inspiration for a book I’m writing that I should really get serious about and write it all the way done: “88 Lines About 44 Women” The Nails

Music feeds my inner beast. It speaks to me. It is such an excellent escape. It moves me - most of the time to dance, but in other ways too.

One curious thing: I can't always write while listening to music, it's too distracting. Sometimes, if I'm in the right frame of mind, I can have it on in the background, and at other times it helps to drown out the background noise and makes me focus, but for the most part, I have to separate the activities. EITHER I listen to music and let my mind flow, OR I write and let my mind flow. I think that's weird.

"Take a Shower, You'll Feel Better"

I can hear my mother's voice in my head right now telling me that. Isn't it nice that our mother's voices are in our heads so that when we grow up and move away from them they can still be with us?

I remember whenever I would be feeling in a funk and wandering around the house and whining about whatever, my mum would say "Go take a shower, you'll feel better." I would so totally roll my eyes at her. How boring is that. Take a shower, that's dumb. Okay, I'll take a shower, but it won't help.

Okay, so it totally did help. The warm water, the sound, the smell of my body wash, the starting over feeling.

I used to work really close to where I lived, and if I was having a crappy day, I would go home and take a shower and give myself a do-over.

Sometimes you get up in the morning, and you're just not in the mood or whatever and can't think of anything to wear and you're having a bad hair day and there's nothing good on the radio and the weather was forecasted to be one thing and it's totally not doing that thing, and traffic sucked and you forgot your lunch and nothing sounds good. You know what I'm talking about. So you just wish you could go back to bed and start over, right? Well you can get that feeling if you take a shower.

Sometimes I come home from work and take a shower so I can start over. I should have done that today. I would have felt a lot better about what I did get done versus me brooding over what didn't get done and letting the negative things in my life affect me.

I have somewhere to be early in the morning tomorrow, so my plan is to get up extra early and take that shower and spend extra time getting ready (that ALWAYS makes me feel better). Every time I make this plan I fail at getting up extra early, so we'll see. I am really motivated to make this work for me right now, but we'll see after spending seven and a half hours in my comfy comfy bed.

Melancholy

Today was one of those days.

There were no good songs on the radio. Either they were over-played, or I wasn't in the mood, or they just weren't a good song.

I decided to go through my CDs to gather some good ones to put in my car for times like that, but never got around to it. I wish I had, it probably would have pulled me out of my funk.

I have lots of ideas for things to write about, but I'm not in the mood.

How does that saying go? If you don't feel like doing something you should do it until you feel like doing it? Yeah, I should do that, but I don't feel like it!

Here's a little Liza to feed your melancholy:

I'm sure things will improve.

It just seems like nothing is working right.

I feel like I'm coming down with something.

I need to go take a shower - it'll make me feel better. That was always my mother's advice, and it's really good advice. You can use it, I'll let you. I'm sure she doesn't have a copyright on it or anything.

Good thing I set up this forum to get these things out of my system.



Favourite Places

My front room. It has my favourite chairs of all time, excellent light for reading, feels cozy, is quiet, is usally the cleanest room in the house, and is cool in the summer.

Crescent Beach, B.C. I have been going to this beach since I was a kid. It's family friendly, has a small vacation town feel, and is peaceful. I want to move there and live in a cottage when I retire.

Stanley Park - especially the Sea Wall and Second Beach

The Vancouver Art Gallery

There's this hidden little park just above Robson Square in Vancouver. I may or may not have taken an award winning bass player there to make out.

English Bay

My bed. It is cozy and soft and o so comfortable. It is a struggle to get out of it every morning. My bed is so amazing it deserves its own blog post. It's especially my favourite when I have certain boys that have the same last name as me snuggling in it.

Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii. It's this old whaling town and one of the first "cities" in Hawaii. There's this Banyan tree right by the ferry terminal that takes up a full city block. It's a really pretty place.

The entire island of Kauai. My favourite Hawaiian Island by far. I knew it would be, that's why I saved it for last and celebrated my 40th birthday on it. Plus it starts with 'K'.

Abravanel Hall, Salt Lake City, UT. Home of the Utah Symphony. I have had nothing but beautiful experiences in this building.

San Francisco, CA. I would live there in a second. It's like Vancouver, but in the United States.

Lake Tahoe. So much beauty. So breathtaking. The lake is amazing.

Mueller Park, Bountiful, UT. It's the closest thing to looking like home I can get to in Utah. When I've had a fight with my Darling Husband, and I need to get away, I drive up there and write in my journal and cry and feel homesick.

The Hill above the Bountiful temple. It's a great place to watch the sunset.

The Seattle Temple. So many excellent things have happened to me there.

The neighbourhood surrounding City Hall in Vancouver. This is my old neighbourhood. There are many old homes that are chopped up into apartments and I was living in one of those when I met my husband. It had been my dream to live in that neighbourhood and I'm really glad I did. I was at the corner of 11th and Alberta streets. I could see City Hall out my window. In fact, I always knew what time it was because I had a perfect view of the clock tower.

This is a really great list, but by far not complete. I will have to re-visit this topic, I think.

In Defense of Twilight

On December 3, 2007 our then three-year-old son, Dewey, was diagnosed with Stage IV Neuroblastoma. We spent the next eighteen months in and out of hospital. It sucked.

As cancer treatment takes quite a toll on your body, my feisty short-attention span but in need of a routine three-year-old took to watching the same movies over and over and over.

Because I can only take “A Bug’s Life” so many times before I want to stab myself, and I needed to be in the room to cater to his needs, I rediscovered my love of reading.

For Christmas 2005, my Darling Husband had given me the seven novels of Jane Austen that were bound in one huge book. I had been slowly picking my way thorough “Sense and Sensibility” after completing “Emma”, when I decided to go ahead and read them all. Once I had finished, “Persuasion” being the last, I had remembered how much I love to read. I started researching books and reading a bunch of things that I had been meaning to read but never had the time to. Now I was making the time.

At this horrible time in my life, reading was a wonderful escape. A chance to live someone else’s life and to be in another world and not have to think about CBC’s and blood transfusions and infection and central lines and hand washing and Neupogin injections and all the joys that come with cancer treatment.

I was extolling the joys of my renewed relationship with books to my best-friend/ex-mission companion and was telling her I was desperate for something new to read as I was just finishing “Scar Tissue”, Anthony Kedis’ auto-biography. She told me she had just the books for me, I could borrow hers, and she would leave them on my porch.

They were the “Twilight” books by Stephenie Meyer. I had heard my co-workers talking about these books, and I have had a fascination with vampires since I knew what they were, (hello, the Count was so fabulous!) that I thought that I would enjoy them.

Did I ever enjoy them! First of all, the story takes place in rainy Washington! Stephenie Meyer’s descriptions of the rain and the moss and the “it’s too green” took me home. Her writing style is very descriptive to the point that I could see everything happening in my head with great detail. I lived in the world of Forks and the Cullens in my head. It was a great place to take me away from the day to day real-ness of my life.

I can relate to Bella in that I too am a total klutz and can trip on a bare dry floor. I too like to live in books and keep to myself. I also secretly thought I was just normal and plain and that no one saw anything special in me. I was so thankful for those books.

Dewey was having a particularly awful day one Sunday during his second bone-marrow transplant just after I finished “New Moon”. He was really tired and just wanted to watch “Toy Story” all day and sleep. I put the movie on a loop and read “Eclipse” in one day.

Fortunately, Dewey engrafted soon after and we were out of hospital for awhile. This was in July and “Breaking Dawn” was not released until August. I had a whole month of waiting to find out if Jacob was going to end up with Bella or end up broken-hearted.

“Twilight” came into my life at the perfect moment. It’s easy to read, romantic and full of wonderful characters. I can just live in that world in my head and escape from whatever it is in my life that is getting me down.

There was a time in my life when I became obsessed with all things “Twilight”, as I have been able to pull myself out of the depression I suffered that comes along with having your child go through cancer treatment and the fall-out that results in your regular life because of it, I have moved on from “Twilight”, obtained a library card, and read some perfectly delicious things. I still pick it up and re-read it from time to time.

The “Twilight” series is the only books I have ever read over and over again. I used to be a one and done type of reader. I figured once I read the book I knew what happened and I didn’t need to read it again, but I watch movies over and over because I catch new things every time I see it, and I love to re-live certain scenes. I realized that I can do this with books too, and have since re-read a few of my favourites; Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Pride and Prejudice, Anne of Green Gables, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe to name a few.

I am so grateful to Stephenie Meyer for writing down that dream she had one night.

A Few of My Favourite Things

*Sorry for the earworm

I posted over there about some favourite things and it inspired me to post over here some of my favourite things.

I know that it’s kind of high school girl to post my likes, but in my head I range between the ages of fourteen and seventeen, so nyah!

Colour: Red. Hands down. I love red.

Flavour: Cherry. I can eat pounds and pounds of cherries and not ever get sick. Cherries are my favourite.

Letter: K

Band: INXS

Song: Too hard. Too many to choose from. Too many variables as it depends on the situation and my mood and the time of year and the weather etc. This would be a post all on its’ own.

Song from my favourite band: “Never Tear us Apart”. No question. I could listen to this song every day. Desert Island song. Second runner up is “The Loved One”. I sing this at the top of my lungs every time I hear it. I can do this because it’s not a popular song, so the only time I hear it is when I play it.

Season: Autumn

Place: This one’s hard. There are a lot, but I’m gonna go with Ke’e Beach on Kauai. Baby Beach (also Kauai) is a close second.

Tree: Arbutus (Madrone in the U.S). The bark sheds and the bark underneath is red. They can only survive within 10 kilometers from the ocean. Just like me. Second place is the cherry tree, but only when in bloom or when full of fruit.

Perfume: Calvin Klein “Euphoria”. Close second is “Eternity” also by Calvin Klein.

Flower: Sunflower, Plumeria, Daisy, Tulip, Gladiolia. There are more, but those are my top 5.

Book: I could be all highbrow and say “Sense and Sensibility” by Jane Austen, which is true in that it’s definitely my favourite Austen, but if I’m being honest, the book I’ve read the most and can read over and over and over again is “Twilight” by Stephenie Meyer. Don’t judge me, it’s an excellent escape.

Narnia: “The Last Battle” although it’s a bit of a sophie’s choice between that and “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe”

Harry Potter: “The Prisoner of Azkaban” –finally Harry gets some hope! Unfortunately it’s the last bastion of hope before it all goes to heck.

Star Wars: “A New Hope” –it will always be the first in my mind. The first time I saw it was when I was five years old, we saw it at the drive in, the Storm Troopers terrified me, and I thought Peter Cushing’s Grand Moff Tarkin was more scary than Darth Vader.

TV Show: “The Good Wife” and “Mad Men” total tie.

Movie: “Rebel Without a Cause” –James Dean had me at “you’re tearing me apaaaart!”

Adaptation: “Pride and Prejudice” – the one with Keira Knightley. It’s so beautifully filmed and don’t argue with me: Matthew MacFayden is the best Mr. Darcy EVER.

Fashion Designer: Ralph Lauren

Shoe Designer: John Fluevog

City: Vancouver B.C. (close second is Lahaina, Maui and San Francisco, CA)

Sneaker: Converse Chuck Taylors. It’s like they’re made for my feet. I have owned a pair of classic black high tops since Grade Ten.

Cut of Jean: Straight leg.

Type of Jean: Levi’s 501’s button fly. They are so comfortable!

Dog: Orso, my German Shepherd

Team: The Vancouver Canucks. I don’t follow any other team sport but hockey. I AM Canadian, after all.

Place I want to live when I retire: Crescent Beach, B.C.

Brand of nail polish: O.P.I.

Ice Cream: Baskin Robbins Rocky Road and Cherries Jubilee. (a tie, not to be eaten together… hmmm… I’ve never tried them together… might be good…)

Ice Cream Treat: Haagen Dazs Chocolate/Dark Chocolate bars – the reason I gained 20 lbs when Dewey was in the hospital.

Chocolate Bar: Milky Way

Soda: Dr. Pepper

Guess that’s enough narcissism for now. What are your favourites?

Inspiration

Things/places/activities that inspire me:

• Beauty – sunsets, nature, fabric, a well groomed brow, a pretty dog, a car, art, photography, shoes
• Nail polish
• Walking the dog
• Cleaning the house – I can turn my brain off and just let it flow. Cleaning the house also cleans out my brain. Afterwards I have the peace of mind of having a clean house. 
• Driving
• Good music
• A good song
• Staring out the window
• Weather – I don’t consider sun with no clouds to be “weather”. So this means wind, rain, snow, clouds, etc. When the sky is doing something. Speaking of which:
• The sky
• The change of seasons (except summer. I hate Utah summer)
• Clean sheets
• Flowers – cherry blossoms, daisies, roses, sunflowers, tulips, holly hocks, gladiolas, plumeria, wisteria, magnolia –but not star magnolia…
• Orso
• Writing
• Reading what I have written
• Sitting quietly
• Peace
• Weeding
• The ocean
• The beach
• The smell of the air depending on the time of day and season
• Certain people at certain times
• Memories
• My journal
• Sewing
• Drawing
• Feeling loved

Thought this would be a nice point/counter-point companion piece to the uninspiration post of yesterday.

After I wrote the post about what caused me to be uninspired, it opened up a flood of the things that do inspire me and I thought it would be good/fun/productive/inspiring to write it down and post it.

Maybe these things can inspire you too. Perhaps they already do. Post in the comments what inspires you!

Uninspiration

Haven’t been writing (obviously).

I hate it when bloggers post a post about how they haven’t been posting and explaining why. I don’t care why, just bloody post already! Don’t you know that our lives depend on you entertaining us? Also, I usually will come upon a blog 2 years after a person started their blog and will go back and read all their posts, so I didn’t notice their absence, so their apology for not posting post is moot as far as I am concerned. Also, I realize that they have their reasons, as do I.

So I vowed to never post a “Sorry I haven’t posted in awhile” post because I think they’re dumb.

Then I got this email from my Mother in Law (my only faithful reader – just kidding, Mum):

“Where RU?

I am missing your blog read! I love it. Come on. Take a break and do some of your creative writing...about life today, yesterday or possibly tomorrow.”

I have been meaning to get back in the saddle and write some more, and soccer season ends today, so it was just the boost I needed to sit down and write.

My excuses are many:

• Life
• Soccer
• Scouts
• Messy house
• Too tired
• Dancing with the Stars
• Too in my own head and can’t get out. It’s been feeling a little like the trash compactor in Star Wars. (sad, because writing helps me get out of my head the most, but I’ve been using other less effective and more self destructive escape tactics)
• Blogger changed their format and I have issues with change and was having problems navigating the new pages.
• I’ve been letting Huey have the computer so that he can finish his homework and be all caught up and finish sixth grade with a bang.
• Huey changed the settings on my laptop and now the mouse is an external mouse not the touch pad and it bugs me so I haven’t been using my laptop.
• When I write, I tend to write and write and write and write and write. The only time I have to write uninterrupted is after the boys are in bed and that causes me to stay up way past my bedtime which is very unhealthy for me.
• I’ve been ensconced in the words of others. –meaning, I’ve been going through a reading phase where I borrow a pile of books from the library and read and read and read so that I can return them quickly so that someone else has a chance to read them and I’m not hogging. This distracts me as I am living in their world and not my own, so my inspiration level goes down as I get inspired my me the most.
• The journal I was carrying around with me and writing my inspirations in got filled up and now I’m carrying a new journal. My old inspirations inspire me and I can’t remember them and so I can’t feed off my old inspirations. (Make sense? Probably not – my head is a weird place)
• Not taking the time for me or making myself a priority which depresses me, which causes me to get inside my own head, which causes me to feel uninspired, which causes me to not write and down down down the rabbit hole I go.
• Not very many people read my blog, so I don’t feel a responsibility to keep it up as I make myself the lowest priority. I should be doing this just for me because it is the best for me and I really love it, but since no one else cares, I just let it go, but I should do it for myself, but I definitely don’t care about myself the most.

After I got the email from my mother-in-law, I logged on to Blogger to read my reading list ignoring my own posts, which I have been doing for awhile. Her nagging little voice was in the back of my head so I decided to look at some of my own posts when I discovered that I had a draft saved. I decided to finish up the post and publish it. The process felt so good that I decided to write this too. Now I feel even better.

I am likening my MIL to C3PO hearing my cries for help from the trash compactor and telling R2-D2 to deactivate all the trash compactors.

Thanks for the inspiration, D! (look at that, I gave you a blog nickname)

The wind in my hair

Super Cool Totally Awesome 1964 Ford Falcon

So it's that time of year.

Open windows time.

The time of the year when the sun is out enough to make your car hot, but it's still cool enough that if you roll all your windows down it's sufficient to cool everything off.

There is a small window of this opportunity here in Utah, as it goes from average temps of 60 F to average temps of 80-90 F in a matter of weeks. There's no easing into summer here! Nuh-uh! No way! (I hate it, it's too hot, I'm Canadian)

I love driving with all my windows down because it reminds me of the days that I used to be able to drive with the top down.

A thousand years ago, when I was fifteen and preparing to have a driver's license and dreaming of what kind of car I would like to have, I thought I would like to have a 1960's white convertible. Being as rich as the Simpson's (yes, the cartoon), we didn't have the money for me to have my own car, so I could dream as big as I wanted to.

Red is my favourite colour, but I always liked the look of a white car. I thought it was really classy. I wanted a convertible because they are so awesome. I chose the sixties because that was the best decade in the world. (give me a break, it was 1986, and I was fifteen).

So when I was about 19 or so, I was in the London Drugs parking lot when I saw this BEAUTIFUL white '60's convertible drive up. I stood aghast, in awe. IT. WAS. MY. DREAM. CAR!! While I was gawking, I realized that my friend was driving the car. I ran up to the car, yelling to my friend.

"Where did you get this car? Is this yours?" A guy he worked with that was retiring was getting rid of it and he scooped it up, and yes, it was his. It was a 1964 Ford Falcon - white with red interior. I was deep dark forest hunter green with envy as he was driving the perfect car for me.

At the time I was driving a steel blue 1972 Volvo.

A year later, I was driving up the hill on my way home from work and I saw the car on the side of the road with a "For Sale" sign on it. I sped home and immediately called the owner and told him not to sell the car to anyone else as I was going to buy it. It needed new rings, so the engine was going to have to be taken apart and thus was a very expensive repair, but I didn't care. I. WANTED. THAT. CAR.

I talked to my dad and convinced him to co-sign on a loan, and told Heavenly Father that if He would provide a way for me to have this car, I would sell it to go on a mission.

Yee Haw!! Heavenly Father said yes and so did my dad and I bought the car. I put as much money into fixing it as I did to purchase it, but OH THE TIMES we had in that car!

The trips to the drive-in where we had to bring a boom box in order to hear the sound because the radio didn't work, and we would sit on the hood and lean up against the windscreen and watch the movie.

Cruising Marine Drive in White Rock with my sister. One time we were going so slow that some guys walking by that Mrs. Bowie was flirting with decided to jump in the car and ride with us for awhile.

The tan I had because any time it wasn't raining I had the top down.

The time my muffler fell off and my cousin Craig helped me tie it back on only to have it fall off on the other end, so we put it in the trunk, and then I deafened him when we drove through the Massey Tunnel.

The ease I had getting across the border because I had this long hair in a ponytail tied up with a scarf, the afore mentioned awesome tan, and I was twenty years old.
Border guard: "This your car?"
Me: "Yep!"
BG: "Going to get gas?"
Me: "You bet!"
BG: "Stay out of trouble!"
Me cruising past and waving: "Thanks, I will!"
It was so sweet.

I could go on and on and on...

The first time I went to Disneyland which was the first year I was married, I saw one in the parking lot on the day that we were leaving. (It had blue interior and was a '65) I ran over to it and hugged it.

This other time, my friend who was working for eBay sent me a link to one that was for sale here in Bountiful. It was red with red interior and in perfect condition. Price? $10,000.00. I emailed her back telling her what a jerk she was and where was I going to get ten thousand dollars because I needed that car.

After the Disneyland hugging incident, my DH assured me that I could have another one some day. I can only dream.

O. My. GOSH. I loved that car.

And yes, I sold it to go on a mission. It was the biggest sacrifice I had made in my life at the time.