Please Rock With Me

I really love music, and I've been discovering a lot of wonderful artists lately. many of them are from other countries, and so few people in America have ever heard of them. This must end. Here are a few selections of the music I've found that is endangered in America.

Lisa Mitchell! She was a contestant on Australian Idol, but her CD, Wonder, isn't available except online, as an import. I ordered the CD from Amazon because I couldn't find it anywhere, not even on itunes.

Mika! "Take your girl, multiply her by four/now a whole lot of woman needs a whole lot more!"

"All of the past is finally in back!" I love the beautiful harmonizing combined with the catchy beat and the profound lyrics. Poetry set to music.

I think the thing that first made me want to listen to this song is the title. Love it.

Florence + The Machine is from England. I really love the simple arrangements that often include only percussion, harp, and Florence Welch's amazing voice. Oh, and the poetry in the lyrics. That's the most important part for me.

I first heard Hunting My Dress on the Private Practice TV show, and I knew I had to have it. I googled it, searched it, finally ordered it on Amazon as an import from England.

So cheerful! I admit that I've been listening to a lot of really happy music lately to combat severe depression. This is one song that I really love.

Feist! I love her stage name. This song accompanies to closing credits of an amazing movie called Paris, Je T'aime, which I also recommend.

Lenka is Australian. Why do Australian artists get so overlooked in America? I dunno, but I love her CD. Another import.

"Earth below us, drifting, falling/floating weightless, calling, calling." This song was definitely used in a commercial. It was originally recorded by David Bowie, but I like the Shiny Toy Guns' updated, edgier version better.

Ok, so I'm once again guilty of choosing a song featured in a commercial. I loved it and googled it and searched it, but it was very hard to find. itunes doesn't have it, but luckily, once I ascertained the name of the band, I found mp3s to download on Amazon.

All right, now just one more for the road.

I love this song, and the video too. These things never happen to me at the laundromat.

And this concludes our tour of various obscure/foreign/under-the-radar songs I've been listening to lately. Happy Saturday!

Huzzah!

Woo hoo! My mom and oldest sister came to visit for my birthday, and they camped in a nice place up the canyon. On Monday they were too tired from their drive to do anything, but on Tuesday we went to Olive Garden for my birthday dinner and they presented my with the wheeled cart pictured above. (If you don't understand why I'm excited about this, go here. I've been doing laundry that way since we got to Logan in March.)

I got to hang out with them at their shady campsite, which was cooler than our apartment, and I played with the dogs. My mom has a new dog named Jamie, who is half chihuahua and half dachshund; the designer name for this breed is "chiweenie." He is so cute! He's a teacup-sized shorthair with the most velvety coat ever. He had been abandoned on a busy road in Pahrump and some neighborhood kids brought him to my mom because they knew she had just lost our old husky, Sampson, a week after my dad died. He's a squirmy little puppy who loves to snuggle, and I was really excited to meet him and play with him.

Last night we went out to eat at a Mexican restaurant, and my mom surprised me with a check for $200 to put toward a gas grill of my choice, and guess what? I have chosen. I. Can. Not. Wait. There is gonna be some serious grilling going on! I'll need to go through my Rachael Ray cook books and start making the hamburger recipes, because I can! The tiny George Foreman we have now only actually cooks one burger at a time, even though it says it cooks two. Yeah, if they were sliders! Anyway, now I can make all sorts of wonderful burgers and grilled meats and veggies and fruits. Yay!

So it was kind of like celebrating my birthday all week long. I enjoyed it.

Life Has A Funny Way Of Helping You Out

So, While I was lamenting my inability to fit in here in Logan, I got a friend request on facebook from a girl whose name I didn't recognize. Her profile picture didn't have her in it, so it took me a couple days to figure it out. The name I didn't recognize? It was the married name of one of my oldest friends, who disappeared into the ether years ago. I had searched for her several times on myspace and facebook but had eventually drawn the conclusion that she didn't want to be found. Or maybe she just hated computers. I didn't know.

Anyway, we had a mad texting party and started catching up, and suddenly my life started to seem so adventurous and cool, exactly how I had wanted to script it. I mean, I lived in Seattle for two years just because I wanted to. I got tattoos back in college, I eloped with my husband, I work in a warehouse that processes craft supplies. My husband and I are living on a shoestring and going to grad school, and I come home smelling like perfume every day.

I still stings to have been rejected by the league of mormon housewives. Sorry I can't be precisely like them. God made me such a unique snowflake that when "normal" people look at me all they can see is a bizarre ugliness. This is the first time that mormons have ever come right out and asked me not to be their friend anymore because I don't fit in. Usually they just glare at me and whisper to each other about the color of my lipstick and how inappropriate my hairdo is. Oh, if my father were alive he would have had a heyday. It would have been perfect fodder for his anti-mormon sentiments and his similes with the pharisees. Whited sepulchres and all that.

On the other hand, it's worth noting that when I did ask for help, at least six people popped out of the interwebs, some of them within minutes, to offer comfort. And every last one of them was mormon. So if I'm tempted to ask, 'where are my relief society sisters when I need them? Where is the charity that never faileth?' Now I know. It's right here. Just not where I expected to find it. There are mormon women who aren't threatened by tattoos and a non-lds upbringing.

And for charity that never faileth? I've never known a better example of it than my old friend who put up with me when I was a broken person, before my years of prayer and therapy and careful wiring to fit the pieces back together. If you know how strange and difficult I am now, imagine me without any social skills or life skills at all. She didn't give up.

So I won't either.

Here, I'll Save You Some Money For A Therapist

So the truth is that I've struggled with severe depression for a long time, and every now and then it spins completely out of my control. I manage it, but it flares up. So I was walking around work today trickling tears and wondering how many days (or weeks) it would take me to get out of this blue funk I'm in. Then I was assigned the task pounding buckets of shea butter closed with a sledgehammer, and it was FUN. I kind of freaked my coworkers out a little by how much I enjoyed it. I was in three years of church-sponsored psychotherapy a few years back, but I'm telling you this is the best therapy ever (I still respect your mad therapeutic skillz, Bad Dawg!). By the end of the day I was singing and dancing around. And the best part is, I got paid to do it!

The Dreaded Faucet Nose

Last night I felt as if there might be a sinus infection coming on, so I irrigated my sinuses with a powerful salt solution before bed. I blew my nose repeatedly, and I thought I had gotten all the salt water out.

Nope. This morning as I got down to work, my nose started streaming water while I was talking to one of my coworkers. Right there in front of God and everybody. Embarrassing.

What Do You Do? What Can You Do?

Right now I'm sitting in my living room sobbing and shaking with emotion, and I don't know how to express myself. I have no idea what I did wrong, or why I've just been rejected by the only people I know in this town. I know that I experience tremendous difficulty in making friends, and that I thought I had made friends with the group of people in my book club. For several months these book club meetings have been the light at the end of a very dark tunnel, and it's what pulled me through the months that I was unemployed. I loved the ladies in the group. I felt no indication that they disliked me, or that they didn't want to come to book club because I was there. It's one of those situations where you think everything is going fine, and then you get an email from someone you considered to be a friend, who simply doesn't want to see you any more.

maybe it wouldn't hurt so deeply if I understood what I had done, or why the other ladies didn't like me. The email simply said that I made others in the group feel "uncomfortable," and that since they were older friends than I, I was no longer welcome to join in. The email also suggested that I might wish to start a new book club with "my own friends." There's the problem. I don't know how to make friends, much less keep them. I don't have any other friends here.

Would it hurt me this intensely if this were not the defining aspect of most of the friendships I've had in my life? The majority of my friends, as well as two of my older sisters, have ended things this way. They don't tell me that the problem is, or even that there is a problem. Mostly they just disappear, like one sister who disconnected her phone and moved away with no forwarding address. My other sister told other family members that I only called when I wanted money, which was a misunderstanding. I decided to let her make the next phone call, but she never did. It took me a couple years to even figure out what had happened. I didn't know it was possible to reject people so easily.

What I don't understand is how people let it get to the point where they never want to see me again without ever telling me there's anything wrong. How does this happen? How do you just throw away a person who thinks they're your friend? I don't get it, and I never have. What's worse is that no one ever tells me what I did wrong, so I have no feedback for next time. I keep messing up over and over, with no idea what it is I'm doing wrong.

I'm so upset right now! Those of you who are my friends, may I please have a kind word right now? I really need some encouragement.