Coconut: I've been taken in

I love me some coconut.

I've got coconut-scented shampoo.

I make a mean macaroon.

One hot day in Rome I ate a slab of coconut (don't really recommend this, btw).

The most refreshing thing to toss down your throat is an iced coconut crio bru.

I got suckered into the coconut-oil craze (via this blog). A few nights a week, I slather my face and neck with this stuff. I was hoping it would smell like island-paradise-pina-colada-gloriousness. It actually makes me smell like a giant macaroon--but I'm cool with that.

Soundtrack Session #31

Found this. Love it. Today is full of good things. NOTHING LIKE YOU AND I -The Perishers

Soundtrack #30 - Why You Wanna?

This song is too cute. I luh-huv it. WHY YA WANNA - Jana Kramer

Midnight train. Almost.

Tonight I drove my sister-in-law and nephew to the train station in Salt Lake. They're on it now, riding through the night to Winnemucca, NV. We sat on a concrete planter and talked about making old wedding dresses into baby blankets and the weird ways that our families communicate.

Some guy kept making hacking noises and spitting his phlegm into the dirt. A beautiful woman with long hair and a service dog flicked ashes away from a too-short cigarette. A man in a purple button-up shirt stood, exhausted, while a woman, also in a purple shirt, swore at him and flicked her hands around like she was slapping a cartoon character.

I wished I was going somewhere, wished I was getting on a train and riding through the night to somewhere else and staying for a while.

A young couple kissed goodbye: she on the train with her hair at her shoulders, he on the platform in a canary-yellow shirt. His hands were on her face and when her train finally left and he had walked away, I wondered, "Does he miss her? Is he missing her right now?"

My nephew, Cash, was so, so tired. He was in his sleeper, his eyes closed, and his blonde hair fluffed up. What is it that makes sleepers so cute? Is it the footies?

After they got on the train, I drove home. I missed my exit by about 8 exits. What does it mean when you're thinking intently enough about someone that you miss the way home by a 15 minute drive? I better cut that out or I'll head to work tomorrow and hours later find myself in Reno instead.

Soundtrack #29

I heard a snippet of this song and had to find the whole thing. Country and bluegrass music have a way of making me feel grounded. This is my soundtrack today.

HALLELUJAH - Reeltime Travelers

Ghost Towns

I know I've posted this song too many times, but it's how I feel today. So here it is.

GHOST TOWN - First Aid Kit


Sometimes I just feel like I spend my days, my long moments, passing through ghost towns.

At Sea Soundtrack #28

Every time this song comes on the radio I've got to dance. And since I only listen to the radio when I'm in the car, this means executing some tricky shimmies while steering, signaling, and shifting gears. In fact, this song has probably improved my coordination.

LIGHTS - Ellie Goulding



And this song? Well, I just love it. That's all.

OURS - Taylor Swift

Let's just take a moment

and talk about how cute Blake Griffin is:



Don't you just want to make that kid a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and then take him bowling or something? I know I do.

Birthday cake for you! ...and me!

Just have a birthday so I can bake you a cake. We can eat it together and wear party hats and blow those idiotic horn blower things. Then I'll make you a friendship bracelet with leftover streamers. For there will be streamers.

Just choose a cake from here: OH HALLELUJAH

Conversation Starters

Charles Barkley has lost weight, hasn't he? No more Taco Bell commercials for that guy.

Midnight in Paris, Soundtrack #27

I watched this movie tonight and I could not stop smiling. This is my kind of cinema. It made me remember how I repeatedly fell in love with literature and art. With the nasal grind of the workday and the acidic taste of things like finances and time management and politics, it's easy to forget the romantic view.

The wealthy, disenchanted Americans, the yearning for another time to ease the cement-and-chain-link-fence-feel of the present, the humanness of it all. I liked very, very much.

The soundtrack!

Owen Wilson was pitch-perfect. Rachel McAdams was utterly believable.

And Marion Cotillard! So lovely. So beautiful!

This film made me want to learn French. Made me want to go back to Europe. Made me want to fall into the sentiment that convinced me English was the only major for me.

A little music from the film:

New Year's... lists... and Soundtrack #26

Every year I make New Year's Resolutions. And every year I break them.

One of my problems is that I make way too many. I remember one year in high school or middle school I wrote them all down on an 8 ½ by 11 and stuck the list to my bathroom mirror. Remember gel pens? Each line alternated between neon orange, lime green, and psychedelic purple. There were so many that I had to write in my smallest print. So many that I didn't notice for several days that my brother, Greg, had written at the very bottom of the list, "Give Greg $20." I think I felt violated. Because someone poking fun at your New Year's resolutions is the kind of thing that feels violating when you're fourteen.

This year I made 7 resolutions. Narrowing it down took some effort. In fact, the only way I could keep the list to a minimum was to then write an additional list titled, "themes for the year." I usually make yet another list with the title, "other things I want to do/change if I have time." You know, in case my 7 official resolutions and themes are total snaps.

This year I considered making super easy resolutions so I could just mark them off: tick tick tick. Instead of "learn Arabic," I could resolve to "eat blueberry pancakes for breakfast tomorrow." I'll keep my 7, but I'll add this one: tomorrow I resolve to go for a walk. Tick.

In another vein...

Let's just take a moment and soak in the sound of Ella Fitzgerald. When I came across this song it made me wish I sounded just like her and could sit on a baby grand in sequins and belt out something jazzy.

I don't drink coffee or smoke, but I love diet coke (almost the same, eh?), so I'll pretend I can relate to this song. But really it's about heartache, and we all know how that feels.

BLACK COFFEE - Ella Fitzgerald

*Also check out the cover by Peggy Lee. Sultry and smooth.

At Sea Soundtrack Session #25

I was rifling through the medical records room at work and a home-mixed CD appeared out of nowhere. In blue Sharpie it's labeled "Blueglass" in handwriting I don't recognize. It must've been jammed between charts and old office supplies. I consider myself a fair fan of bluegrass music, but even if I wasn't, I would deem this semi-magical (I was going to say "miraculous," but that seems more appropriate to describe raising someone from the dead than finding a piece of plastic buried in a shelf of dusty junk). The CD looked scratched up, but I've been listening to it pretty much non-stop for the last several days.

This song in particular has been on repeat:
NOW THAT I'VE FOUND YOU -Alison Krauss


This song isn't on the CD, but I just like it, so...
DREAM A LITTLE DREAM OF ME -Zooey Deschanel (Though I do love the Louis Armstrong version. Classic.)


And how cute/lovely/charming is this?
WHAT ARE YOU DOING NEW YEAR'S EVE? -Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Leavitt

Soundtrack #24

WINTER IS ALL OVER YOU - First Aid Kit



and

POISON AND WINE - The Civil Wars


SAFE AND SOUND -Taylor Swift, featuring The Civil Wars

(I am supa excited to see this movie.)

Soundtrack #23 "You're my sweetheart"

I heard this the other day and it just makes me smile. Can't help it.

Ho HEY - Lumineers

The Portrait of a Lady

Remember back on October 15th when I said I was going to read The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James? I finished it tonight. I know, six weeks seems a little... slow. But I was reading other things at the same time! And Henry James can wax a little verbose. And while I was always interested while reading, it's not exactly action-packed. There doesn't seem to be a lot that actually happens as much as you get to know people's motives and thoughts and complications. That may sound lame, but it's not. (Okay, enough with the excuses.)

I loved this book. The characters came to seem like old friends to me. At first I was annoyed with all of them (except Ralph), but as I got to know them better and knew them longer, they became dear to me. Their mistakes and lapses in judgment felt genuine. I saw myself in them—all of them—at one time or another. When Isabel returns to Gardencourt, I felt like I was returning too.

Anyway. It was good. It's considered a "classic." Read it.

“To live only to suffer—only to feel the injury of life repeated and enlarged—it seemed to her she was too valuable, too capable for that.”

Soundtrack #22, C-c-coldplay

I heard this the other day while driving home and now I'm convinced that it needs to follow me around like theme music. Or something.

PARADISE - Coldplay


Thank you, itunes, for letting this be a free download last week. I've been waiting for this song to come out since Coldplay did that interview with 60 Minutes or whatever it was like a year and a half ago:

CHRISTMAS LIGHTS - Coldplay

Birdy, At Sea Soundtrack #21

I am in love with this album by Birdy. I cannot get enough of it.

I am most especially enamored with this song:
YOUNG BLOOD


And this one too:
PEOPLE HELP THE PEOPLE

Send it post, Soundtrack #20

I love getting mail. Real mail, not junk mail. Today some imported music came that I had ordered a while ago. I love that it came to me from Britain. I love things that come to me from far away.

Just to liven things up:
TIGHTROPE -Janelle Monáe
*YouTube wouldn't let me embed it.

Appendix

I wonder what it's like to have appendicitis, and then get your appendix out. Maybe if it happened to me, I would ask if I could keep my appendix, and then have a memorial service for it, like when our hamsters died when we were children. Too much?