Music Monday: Thanksgiving Leftovers for Birthday Dinner

The title is part of a joke that used to go around my house on my birthday, which sometimes fell on actual American Thanksgiving Day. "What do you want for your birthday meal, Nancy? Ah, well, we're having turkey." I should have made the switch to vegetarian sooner.

Also, I guess, it's my birthday. Hooray. I mean, it is my birthday, but things like baldness and chemo have stolen some of today's joy. But not my niece, Joy. She is still pretty dang awesome.

Anyway!

Last night, as I was driving back from having a late lunch/early dinner with my sister and her family to celebrate my birthday, I got stuck in traffic. I mean, GENIUS move, traveling anywhere further than the postbox on the Sunday after a holiday, but it is what it is. This was 4mph for many miles of traffic, the kind where you think you've made progress only to find it took almost an hour to go 15 miles - and you have less than a quarter of a tank of gas. But as I sat there on the highway surrounded by trucks, I heard this song and knew it was today's Music Monday.

It speaks to a current WIP that will get more attention after Nano is over. Picture two vampires, whose long lives keep intersecting due to a shared destiny, sitting in comfy chairs by a fire sharing a nice bottle of red wine and telling stories about their time apart from each other - when they suddenly realize WHY they keep finding each other. That's what kept me from losing my mind in the car...Connor and Lark, I'm coming for you soon - get ready!

Fix Youby Coldplay, Cody Fry
When you try your best, but you don't succeedWhen you get what you want, but not what you needWhen you feel so tired, but you can't sleepStuck in reverseWhen the tears come streaming down your faceWhen you lose something you can't replaceWhen you love someone, but it goes to wasteCould it be worse?Lights will guide you homeAnd ignite your bonesAnd I will try to fix youTo fix youHigh up above or down belowWhen you're too in love to let it goBut if you never try, you'll never knowJust what you're worthLights will guide you homeAnd ignite your bonesAnd I will try to fix youTears stream down your faceWhen you lose something you cannot replaceTears stream down your face, and ITears stream down your faceI promise you I will learn from my mistakesTears stream down your face, and ILights will guide you homeAnd ignite your bonesI will try to fix you

Music Monday: There's an Uprising

Another Saturday spent playing Dungeons and Dragons. My teenage heart is happy. The word for the day is... SHILLELAGH! ✊

(Original by Muse - Cover by Damned Anthem, lyrics included in the cover are below:)

They will not force us

They will stop degrading us

They will not control us

We will be victorious

They will not force us

They will stop degrading us

They will not control us

We will be victorious

They will not control us

We will be victorious

Victorious

Music Monday: One Big Wolfhound Love

Ciaragh is still on my mind - last night I went to shut the basement door after Bryn and Willow came inside and I swear, I could feel her out there on the patio, lying on the cool tiles and looking up at me like, "five more minutes, please?" I don't regret the decision we made, but I do so miss her - our Ciaragh had one big love for all of her humans and pack mates. So this is for her...and for me. Lest I forget...

One Big Love

by Patty Griffin

Let's take a ride to the seaside

We can go out swimming in the high tide

Just wear your shorts and your long hair

Don't forget the lawn chair

Everybody's gone to the movies

Everybody's gone and its groovy

They went to the one about the big war

I didn't, I'd seen it before

I guess I'm taking my chances

Giving up the ring throwing in the gloves

I guess I'm taking my chances

Trading in my things

A couple wings on a little white dove

And one big love, one big love

Everybody do like a Monkey

If you want to go on and be funky

No need to talk like a hero

Talk a walk count down to zero

No sense defending your honor

Just go on and kiss him if you wanna

Everything before is gone or is going somewhere

I guess I'm taking my chances

Giving up the ring throwing in the gloves

I guess I'm taking my chances

Trading in my things for a couple wings on a

Little white dove

And one big love one big love

I don't know where we are

And I don't care

And now we're out of gas

And riding on air

And one big love, one big love

Stages of Love

I'm going to talk about grief today, and not just because we just lost that gorgeous face there yesterday afternoon to a very aggressive lymphoma. 

It's been a wild ride, these past few years. We lost my father in 2018, my mother in 2019, the world from 2020 to 2022, and now I've lost my youngest wolfhound, my Ciaragh. So much loss. So much hurt. How do we keep going?

Grief is funny. Not funny ha-ha or funny hmmm, but funny insidious and cantankerous and never, ever satisfied. I've heard all the little adages about grief being love you have that you can't give anymore because the object has passed...love that builds up to where it spills out your eyes and down your cheeks... And while those are valid, they don't strike home as much as grief being the flip side of gratitude or maybe even just a level of gratitude.

If I wasn't grateful that I was Hoyt and Martha's daughter, I wouldn't have noticed that they passed out of my mortal life. They wouldn't still be a part of near daily conversation. I wouldn't have thought of them when I saw a cardinal in a tree looking at me as we arrived back home without our Ciaragh.

If I wasn't grateful for the friends I have, the life I had before, the interactions and bus rides to campus and all the thousands of little things that made my life my own prior to 2020, I wouldn't have grieved the loss of the same for going on three years now. I'm an introvert and the pandemic lockdowns and social distancing should have been my time to shine -- and it was, to some extent -- but it was also painfully lonely in other ways. 

If I wasn't grateful that my dear friend Heather rang us to see if we could foster a 14-month-old Irish Wolfhound who needed re-homing through no fault of her own, I wouldn't be missing the wide-eyed, fuzzy head in that photo.

I've said a few times over the past 24 hours that this is just part of having a dog in your life, and it is even more so when the dog is a giant breed with a short life span. But it's more than that. It's learning to open your heart again and again, even though it is only cobbled together from past hurts. As another friend said, it is learning to "hold them with open hands" because you know what is coming.

It is tempting to close off to everything -- friends, experiences, love, laughter -- but that isn't the right choice. If you don't love, you don't grieve. It's the love and the gratitude that makes the pain worth it.

If you are in that dark place with all the grief, I am with you. When you can, turn some of the pain to gratitude. It will help, I promise.

Music Monday: Mean

All I will say about this is that taking the step to remove toxicity from your life/work/heart is always a good idea, and if you are slow about it or give those voices more chances than they deserve that is all part of your own growth, so don't let anyone tell you that you deserve that stuff. You don't. (lyrics in video, thank you Taylor Swift.)