I’ve had soft rock in my head for the past two weeks, Stephen Bishop’s “On and On,” to be precise. Generally, earworms drive me nuts, but I’m getting into this one. It’s good for dancing through the house, and even though it’s a little bit sad, it’s not tragic. There’s a lot to be said for a good earworm. I told Krissie and she said she’s got “Baby Elephant Walk” stuck in her head. So I’m happy I don’t have that.
What made you happy this week?
(Here. Have an earworm:
You’re welcome.)
It’s funny, at first I thought “hmm, I’m not sure I know that song.” And then when I scrolled down and saw the singer’s face I was like “oh that song!” And it immediately started playing in my head. Without even hearing a note. Ah music. I think of that type of song as a nice napping song. You can kind of drift in and out of sleep with it playing in the background and not get jarred awake at any moment.
This week the youngest one, my husband, and me we all had Eine Kleine Nachtmusik stuck in our head for days. Except it took us a day or so to figure out what it is called b/c we’re all uncultured swine. It’s really funny b/c usually husband and I are both pretty unmusical and can’t identify what the other person is humming. But for this we all immediately could recognize it and hum it without remembering the name. I had to work backwards by remembering Nickelodeon used it as their Looney Tunes jingle in the 90s. Then of course it was easy to find on YouTube.
As for happiness this week, I took the time on Friday to break in my new ice skates I got as a Christmas present. I only started ice skating as an adult and I’m not really interested in figure skating, hockey, etc. I just like skating around in circles not even that far from the wall. When I went to the outdoor rink on Friday it was a nice sunny day and the rink was empty. It felt like meditation. Bliss!
We used the first movement of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (on the piano) as the recessional piece at our wedding. We asked the pianist to weave in a bar or two of Anchors Away and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer while she played it, as a nod to some family inside jokes. The musicians in attendance found it hysterical, and a few of the non-musicians told us they were surprised to realize Rudolph must have been based on the Mozart piece. (Thus my husband had to explain the joke during the reception, lest they spend the rest of their lives believing that.) Such are the things that happen when you marry into a musical family. 🙂
Ooh, I do like that one (although I’ll probably be hearing Baby Elephant Walk in my head for a while).
Happiness is getting back to my previous normal. I’m driving (although it is hard to push in the clutch, especially at the end of the day when I’m tired). I’m also rejoining my music groups – choir and handbells – after a three month hiatus. And yesterday I started back to sewing. I saw a meme with a picture of Mr. Bean making lovey eyes, and the caption said “your eyes when you look at your sewing machine after a long absence.” I really did feel that way yesterday!
Ooh – I forgot the big happy! Celebrating 5 (18) year anniversary with DH. (We’ve been married 5 years, but dated for 13 prior, so I think that counts.)
Happy anniversary! (And it definitely counts.)
Happy Anniversary and Happy sewing!
I went driving and a place had the be of Nelly and so I got Nelly the Elephant in mine. I quite like it.
name* not be. Argh.
Toy Dolls? Love that.
The autocorrect drives me nuts. I once typed “Why?” And as I hit send, I saw it change to “Diego?”
These pocket telegraphs are wondrous and annoying. All wrapped in a sleek space age package.
I feel I am finally fully functional, if not 100% recovered from my killer sinus infection.
I fixed the annoying security warning that started popping up every few minutes on my computer, as well as teh dim/bright/dim/bright problem that appeared immediately afterwards. Mind you, the computer may now be overheating without telling me, but it feels fine sitting on my lap, so I am calling it good for now.
Picked up two books off the shelf at the chiropractor’s office. He saw me with them in my hands and said “take all you like, someone brings them here” so I have two new things to read. and he seems to have fixed my hip issues.
Still applying Jenny’s life plan concept to try to pay attention to what I want to spend my time and energy on. I am finding this to be a good practice.
In a related story, ate some lovely things this week. Going to try to reform from holiday eating starting tomorrow, but today, bacon for breakfast, and cocoa in honor of milk day (one day late).
The milk farmers of Wisconsin want you to know that EVERY day is Milk day. They’ve spent millions on ads to that effect.
This “Milk” Dairy Farmer of WI sure does… I just wish we could sell our cheese outside state lines. What a world we live in.
What?? What a world.
WI won 40% of the world wide cheese awards this year (more than France or any country) and you can’t even find it elsewhere in the country. A friend moved from New York and she’d never had string cheese! I just… I can’t… I don’t know.
I am happy my hubby is recovering nicely from surgery. But it has been an expensive week. The day we bought a new dishwasher and the front glass of the oven shattered. So now we have to buy a new stove. Fortunately no one was in the kitchen when it shattered but it was a pain to clean up.
That’s alarming!
I’m alternating between happy and frustrated as I work on finalizing my planting plan for the garden (finished the one for the allotment).
Was happy to get a follow-on edit from Penguin, so no need to angst about not earning.
It’s really mild, and there are snowdrops on the way to the allotment. They used to start just before Mum’s birthday in mid February when I was a child (I’d pick some for her birthday breakfast in bed).
ETA: I took this morning off work as well, and FINISHED my planting plans! Really happy. Now I’ve got to find suppliers and spend the money. Oh, and prepare the beds . . .
No earworms here, thank goodness.
I’m happy the busy season at the shop I run is over, and the holidays too. Enjoying the slower, quieter pace of January and trying to catch up with All the Things.
Also happy it was 63 degrees here in upstate NY yesterday 60 today. I know it won’t last, and probably means the apocalypse is nigh, but the cold will be back soon enough, so I’m enjoying it while it lasts.
A few months ago PBS and Ken Burns had a documentary on country music so yes country music kept popping up in my head for the longest time. Patsy Cline’s Crazy in particular. Recently CNN and I think PBS again had a documentary on Linda Ronstadt so Blue Bayou ran through my head. This past week we saw Once Upon a Time in Hollywood so California Dreamin’ is the headliner now. And then there is Matthew McConaughey’s whistling the theme from the Andy Griffiths show. It does go on and on.
How funny! I watched the Linda Ronstadt documentary and Blue Bayou has been in my head ever since. 😉
Thanks – I’d never heard that before – really good. My earworm is a song I loathe – Dean Martin’s “That’s Amore”. Which seems to be everywhere. There should be TWs in shops / lifts/ phone lines. “Listening to this song may be injurious to your mental health. Please contact our trained personnel who will administer “The Wheels on the Bus go Round and Round” by way of antidote.”
The wheels on the bus go round and round
Round and round, round and round.
The wheels on the bus go round and round
That’s amore.
I’m blaming you, Sarah Drew.
A long time ago, my husband and I were at an aquarium. I pointed at the eel tank and said “That’s a moray!” He nearly disowned me. And I giggled so hard I couldn’t breathe.
There’s a whole slew of “that’s amore” puns in one of Spider Robinson’s books. I think it’s a game being played in the parlor at Lady Sally’s, if I remember correctly. It’s been at least a decade since I read any of them.
I read that as ‘happiness is a good earthworm’ which was surprising, but a valid viewpoint. Soil health is underrated. Ha!
My current earworm is from a cafe near me that has a different one-liner chalked up on a board outside every day. Saturday’s was, “That Abba tribute band was really loud last night. You could hear the drums in Nando’s”.
It probably helps to know that Nando’s is a popular restaurant chain in the UK.
You now gave me an earworm.
I’m sure you have no regret. And if you had to do the same, you would, my friend.
I’m semi-addicted to those You-tube top ten lists. I saw one on cover songs, and who did them better. Dancing Queen was one, and I thought Abba did it better. Fortunately, there were enough earworms that no single one stuck.
My happy this week is that my Milwaukee brother finally answered my email. Since he has trouble hearing on the phone email is usually the best way to contact him, but this time there was no answer for 6 days. I didn’t know if he was dead or out of the country. Out of the country would have been good, but since my French brother didn’t mention that he was coming for a visit, I figured that there was only a 50 percent chance of that.
He’s really depressed, but when I emailed him a list of questions about Denmark, he eventually responded.
The pity is that all I really needed was an email address so he needn’t have made it into such a big production. I’ll be overjoyed to read whatever other gems he has to offer, but I don’t need any of that for another 2 months.
Maybe I should go to see him and physically drag him out of his cave. I don’t want to, but if I have to, I will. I’m afraid that once it gets cold next week he’ll burrow in for the next 2 or 3 months. Maybe I should call my friends in Milwaukee and ask if they have room on their couch for me.
My current earworm is “You’re Welcome” from Moana. My boys agree with me (even Master Fourteen) that you can’t hear it without singing along.
I love that song.
I love Dwayne The Rock Johnson. The song is fine too.
We saw the new Jumanji movie the other night. The Rock is fabulous in anything, even (especially) when he’s being an irascible Danny DeVito, and the movie was a whole lot of fun.
One of my New Year’s resolutions is to get back to playing the guitar after probably ten years of abstinence, so I need to practice regularly to get my left-hand fingertips hardened and my right hand used to the picking patterns again. Due to that, my current earworm is “Sweet Baby James”. It could be worse. And the idea of playing the guitar again is definitely making me happy.
True story: Bish is from San Diego, as am I (several years older than me, although we had mutual friends through my oldest brother). A local radio station did an album every year (“Homegrown”) with songs by local artists, with San Diego hooks. He submitted a song that started, “Down in La Jolla they got lots of pretty women….” and they rejected him! I’m told by people who know people that when “On and On” came out and charted, the decision-makers kicked themselves quite a lot. 🙂
Moral of this story: Yes, rejection sucks, but sometimes it leads to bigger and better things. 🙂
How’s that for a happy?
I’ve been humming about four bars of “Hallelujah It’s Christmas” by Roger Whittaker for so long my husband is getting a little tetchy about it. 🙂
According to Stephen Colbert, you can get rid of an ear worm (should you wish to) by singing just the first few words of a song and breaking it off. He uses “One Week” by Barenaked Ladies.” All he sings is “It’s been…” and that’s it, ear worm gone!
The other method he mentioned was singing something so short that it won’t turn into an earworm. His example: “By Mennen.”
Three Dog Night has been in heavy rotation. Today it’s their “One Man Band.”
I love figuring out why I’m stuck on a certain song. Usually there’s a pun involved (though not today).
Made me think of Paisley and Urban’s “Start a Band.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9F_FN4ygjTo
No song earwigs here. Happy the rain/snow held off when we flew home on Friday. Spent five days in Santa Barbara, two days watching Marlowe while son/wife met family in Anaheim. He was a good dog for us.
Stayed at a great place, The Goodland Hotel. Ate and drank ourselves happy. Lucky people who live in and around Santa Barbara. We found a restaurant called, “Sama Sama.” The food was so delicious, we ordered doubles of two dishes. So, so, so absolutely tasty and full of flavour. We left very happy. Hope we get to go back again, never been in that part of California. We met some great people too.
Crush said he liked the gift (“awesome”) over text.
Beyond that, I am in January funk from HELL so I don’t really have any happiness to conjure up. I did go to the gym for two hours, cleaned out a good chunk of the junk in my kitchen/hallway area and donated seven boxes and nine bags of yarn and now I am tired and ate a whole carton of ice cream. Sadly, none of that is making me *happy,* mind you, but at least some cleaning is now done.
I have been ear worm free this week, although having read previous posts, I have bits and pieces of various songs running around my head, most of which I like.
Today was the first day since early last week when it wasn’t a) bitterly cold b) raining c) freezing rain so puppy dog and I went for a long walk in the fresh snow. A card making kit that I ordered in November finally arrived – apparently mail between Canada and the US goes easily astray during the holiday period. I finished a set of cards for a colleagues and she was happy with them. DH made chicken cacciatore for supper – my favourite.
No ear worms (except for the Mickey Mouse Club theme song and I stop that one pretty quickly).
Happiness is resuming Sunday lunches with my 2 cousins. We had to stop for a bit because my one cousin had a very nasty fall down some concrete stairs. She broke her jaw, lost a tooth, and worst of all, broke her arm near her wrist. It’s been 2 surgeries and 4 weeks and she’s finally past the initial healing. She’s got another 8 weeks before she really gets use of the hand again. Very happy she looks and sounds so much better.
My sister and BIL got ablack Lab puppy mid-December. They stopped by to show off Harkins (named for one of my sister’s employers) last Saturday. He’s such a love. I’ve been enjoying their FB posts. He goes to work with my BIL most days and is very popular. And has gotten their yellow Lab Wilson out of his funk after losing his big brother Wallace. So that’s good.
A big Happy surprised me this week. A long time contributor — someone whose thoughts I really respect — to the Lois McMaster Bujold blog wrote an incredibly nice comment on a piece of fan fiction I posted on Archive of Our Own back in 2016.
I’m just bouncing along, smiling.
I tend to earworm Puccini opera arias. Which are gorgeous but usually tragic and leave me sad.
The earworm that make me crazy are a bit of a song that I can’t place. Just part of a sentence or few notes that I can’t finish. Argh.
So much. Best. My third grandchild, Eugene Keaton Howard-Corbin was born 1/10/2020 under a full moon. He was born at 8:19 PM weighing 8 lbs and 19” long. How’s that for cool synchronicity?
Also I got a role in a movie the Coen Brothers are producing. I am going to be working with Frances McDormand and she is really nice. It is a small role, but I think I might be in a lot of the movie.
And to celebrate I splurged for a night at The inn at Laguna Beach for my sister and myself. Ocean waves to sleep by and a beautiful sunset. My cup runneth over.
Congratulations! The film role sounds fun, too.
Sweet!
How cool is that! Congratulations.
Oh, congratulations on everything!
Big saf was moving away from husband of 25 yrs, dog, house, garden, workplace.
Big happy was discovering that I love my new mobile home with mountain view, that more than half of my 115 boxes are unpacked, and that my local friends from 15 yrs ago are thrilled to have me back.
Current earworm is Hello by Adele, courtesy of thrift shop stop yesterday. Luckily I like it, unluckily I only know about 7 of the words…
SAD, not saf. Argh!
Maybe it was a big safe move too? Congratulations on the change!
How to break the ear worm curse: think of two very disparate ideas at the same time. It helps if these two ideas or images appeal to the senses.
My favorite: peanut butter … and pine trees.
Just imagining these two images works every time for me – your mileage may vary.
But I’m imagining an interesting sandwich possibility…
It wouldn’t be Argh if I didn’t mention that the urge to sing “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” is never more than a whim away.
I’ll get my coat…
OH GOD NO.
I’m organizing DailyFeb2020, and thinking about what to do for a month is making me happy, and I hope you’ll join me!
https://leethomsonart.com/2020/01/13/dailyfeb2020/
Thinking. Although I really need to focus on getting my structural plants in, so may not make it. Thanks for the opportunity, regardless.
Definitely. Have index cards at the ready; now need to figure out my project boundaries.
I’ve been reading “Personal Geographies: Explorations in Mixed-Media Mapmaking” by Jill Berry, and am noodling with the idea of a daily map.
Looking forward to February!
Oh, I love maps! What an idea.
I told myself I was going to do the small painting a day thing, and I’m obsessing about crochet, but I think what I really need to do is a small drawing every day. So easy to do and I REALLY need practice with that. So that’s my plan.
That and trying to figure out my Instagram password which I have somehow lost.
I did it last year, but this year I must pass. Too much on my plate as it is.
I never want to hear “It’s a Small World After All” because I can’t shake it……….Oh no! What was I thinking??? (fingers in ears) lalalalalalala………drat!
Argh! ..you have RELEASED the KRAKEN!
Sunday afternoon I had my sliders open and upstairs neighbor was serenading his wife while playing guitar. Something ’ Stupid by Nancy Sinatra. She was laughing her head off and he’d break every so often and have a chuckle. I’m still humming it and smiling.
“On and On” which quickly leads to “pina coladas and getting caught in the rain” the joys of yacht rock. Thanks.
Every time I hear “Escape”, the pina colada song, I find myself thinking that there are two sleezes who obviously deserve one another.
It’s one of those songs you wish there wasn’t words to. I love the music just to bop through the house to, but the people are just pond scum.
I just spent good minutes of my life trying to figure out if that last post was grammatical. “One” takes “wasn’t”, right?
I need a life.
I think I’d say ‘weren’t’, because ‘songs’ is the subject. I need a life, too.
AP style seems to indicate using the verb that agrees with the closer subject. But I spent only a few minutes checking, because my life is gear drives.
I’m very late to this, but isn’t the be-verb subjunctive? One of those songs you wish there weren’t words to. A quick google is no help; people on Stack Exchange took up different positions: yes, no and both are right.
British Council (English for learners) has it in a quiz as “wish something was/were” — so that seems to indicate both are OK.
Sorry, something about subjunctive mode mesmerizes me. I’m not quite sure it’s real . . . .
I thought it was subjunctive, too, but I got lost in trying to figure out time (I think, it was awhile ago).
I get round it by rewriting till it feels right to me: It’s a song you wish there weren’t words to. So I think I’m with Micki; I want to make it subjunctive. Not that I can remember what the subjunctive is, but I definitely want to make it “were”, even when it’s clearly singular.