Tag: Lydia

The Lydster, Part 139: Random music

She sees a title she recognizes, because Pentatonix had subsequently performed it.

DNAmusic300The Daughter likes to perform, on her own terms.

Over the summer, she arranged an impromptu dance performance, which is not all that unusual, having taken ballet in the past. What was noteworthy was that she danced to Sail On by the Commodores [LISTEN]. She just took a random compact disc from my CD holder, a greatest hits album, and decided on that. She was unfamiliar with the song, and the group. Yet it was a nice routine.

A couple of weeks later, she decided that she and her mother ought to do a fashion show of some of the clothes they bought over a weekend in anticipation of going back to school. Again, she picks a random CD, Hand on the Torch by US3, also a group unknown to her. She sees a title she recognizes, because Pentatonix had subsequently performed it, and she uses that for the show. The song was I Got It Goin’ On [LISTEN]. It fit with the fashion model motif, and at a little more than five minutes, it was just the right length.

It’d be one thing if she’d perused a list of MP3 tracks and glommed onto these titles, but this was some sort of inspired musical alchemy where she takes a random disc, from over a thousand of them, and makes something of it.

(Image from here.)

The Lydster, Part 138: Dining in public with an infant

I have an odd fascination with that story about the mom whose encounter with an angry Maine diner owner went viral.

Without rehashing the whole thing, I was taken by this sentence in the mom’s version: “When the food came, my daughter was still fussing.” After extensive observation, I’ve discovered that parents have very different criteria for what constitutes “fussing,” and moreover, whether to stay or go.

I’ve decided that there are two types of parents of children `who are under two years old: those who don’t think other people would mind a little bit of adorable noise because ADORABLE, and those who are mortified by their child’s disruption. Maybe it’s because we became parents relatively late, but the Wife, and especially I, are most assuredly in the latter category.

The first time The Wife and I decided to go out to dinner after the Daughter was born was when she was six months old, give or take a couple weeks. She had been nursed before we went to a nice Vietnamese restaurant in Albany. She seemed fine in one of those car seat carriers.

Very soon after we were seated, the Daughter began wailing. Maybe it sounded like wailing to us because the stone floor was very echoey, but as it didn’t seem to stop, even as we took turns holding her. We left, leaving an enormous tip for a couple cups of tea.

Seems we went somewhere else to eat – McDonald’s? – and she was cheerful.

I told The Daughter this story about herself fairly recently. She felt badly about it, which was NOT the intent.

We avoided taking a transcontinental trip to Washington state when she was two, because she didn’t travel always well in the car, where we could control the environment. Surely, I didn’t want us to be those parents all the passengers glowered at for hours.

The Lydster, Part 137: The GOP debates

Larry Wilmore, on Comedy Central’s The Nightly Show, asked if he had to explain to Trump Prejudice 101.

"I really don't know if Obama was born in the US"
“I really don’t know if Obama was born in the US”

The morning after the list of candidates who would appear on the Republic Presidential primetime debate on August 6, the Daughter wanted to stop the news broadcast so she could get the names.

I told her she had to get ready for camp, and that I would print out the roster of 10 who made the main stage (Trump, Bush, Walker, Huckabee, Carson, Cruz, Rubio, Paul, Christie, Kasich) and the seven who were relegated to an earlier event (Perry, Santorum, Jindal, Fiorina, Graham, Pataki, Gilmore).

Of course, she didn’t actually WATCH the debates – heck, neither did I – because sanity. Still, of the 17 candidates running, she can name more than half of them, which is more than most people. She’s particularly irritated by three:

3) Bobby Jindal, governor of Louisiana for his debacle of an announcement for President. (No, this is NOT faked.) “He can’t even win his own household!”

2) Chris Christie, governor of New Jersey, who is a bully, and who she believes is more culpable for Bridgegate than he’s acknowledged.

1) Donald Trump, real estate guy, NOT because he said that President Obama was the worst President in history, but because Trump suggested that, as a result, there wouldn’t be another black president for generations.

Larry Wilmore, on Comedy Central’s The Nightly Show, asked if he had to explain to Trump Prejudice 101. Now, The Daughter doesn’t actually watch The Nightly Show, which is on at 11:30 p.m., but she saw the clip on CBS News This Morning.

Still, she has the makings of a political junkie.

The Lydster, Part 136: Award-winning photography

Stormy.20150530This spring, the local Hannaford supermarket had a contest to determine the best pet photos in a variety of categories. The Daughter decided to submit a couple of our felines, taken on The Wife’s iPad, then emailed to me so that I could print them out.

Frankly, I have no idea how many other participants, if any, there were, but the Daughter won with the picture of Stormy, shown above. She received various pet treats, food, cat litter and the like.

BTW, Stormy, who just turned two, has become much more affectionate to me, sitting on my lap – only when she wants to, because she IS a cat, after all – and rubbing her head on my feet.

midnight.20150530I’ll admit I prefer this photo, if only because it’s SO goofy, rather like Midnight, who’s about a half a year older than Stormy. He has always been affectionate to me, but, for a time, it got to be too much.

Quite often, at 4 a.m., he’d come into our bedroom and start licking my arms, and chewing on the hair on the top of my head and even on my mustache. I would get up and usually write. Then I had to get him down from the file cabinet next to the office desk, lest he jump down on the laptop and accidentally screw up some settings; he’s done it before.

But then he started his routine at 3 a.m., and I can’t function on that little sleep. So I would get up, put him in the basement and go back to bed. This seems to have (mostly) broken him of this annoying habit.

For a time, we thought Midnight was becoming too aggressive towards some strangers – he utterly freaked out at the vet’s office – and wondered how we could even go on vacation for more than a day or two.

We got a new child watcher (FKA babysitter) named Maxine and he was very affectionate towards her. Now, SHE can come in, feed the cats, change the litter box, and give them some love.

The Lydster, Part 135: Percussion

He arrived at the afterschool, with a couple wagons filled with castanets, tambourines, cowbwells, and a variety of drums.

Drum-StickThe Wife and The Daughter were in a store a few months ago, when The Daughter found someone’s phone on the floor. The Daughter returned it to the help desk.

A minute later, a guy ran to the desk, hoping against hope that someone had found his device. He thanked the clerk, but she pointed to my family, and The Wife to the Daughter.

In appreciation for her good deed, the guy offered to give The Daughter a free musical performance, for a party or some other occasion of her choosing. He is a percussionist, and does programs for kids and adults in the area and beyond. The Daughter decided to share her gift with her afterschool mates.

The day before her last birthday, he arrived at the afterschool, with a couple of wagons filled with castanets, tambourines, cowbwells, and a variety of drums. We played a bunch of sonic games – yes, The Wife and I attended, too.

You know the game where someone hides an object and you say HOT or COLD, depending on how close the searcher is to the object? You can do the same thing with percussion instruments, playing them louder or more softly, depending on the searcher’s success.

It was all great fun.

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