2. Ben by The Jackson Five
This is the one Jackson 5 song I loved more than any other. When I was in 5th grade, I won a radio contest for tickets to see the Jackson 5. It was the only major thing I’ve ever won. My father drove my girlfriend and I and dropped us off, something I would never do now with my own children. I still remember the concert and watching Michael Jackson, who was not much bigger than I was at the time, and still black!

3. Fur Elise
When I was in 5th grade, I played this on the piano in a concert in front of the whole school. I don’t remember that my father didn’t attend, but he does. He says it’s one of his life’s regrets, that he went to a meeting at his own school instead of attending his daughter’s piano solo. I remember that now when I’m working and have evening events of my own to attend that conflict with family activities and know that I will never miss one of my own kids’ events.

4. Hey Jude by The Beatles
It’s on the list because I remember how much my mother loved this song when I was a kid.

5. Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is? By Chicago
This is on the list because my father loved Chicago and we would listen to it all the time in the house when I was a kid.

6. I Think I Love You by The Partridge Family
I had to include this because I was so in love with David Cassidy. I had a poster of him in my room, I used to write Mrs. Cassidy on papers when I was bored at school, and I had to watch the show every week.

7. Come Sail Away With Me by Styx

8. Don’t Fear the Reaper by Blue Oyster Cult
I remember when I asked for their album as a Christmas present, and my grandmother was horrified by the album cover, refused to buy it for me, and complained to my mother about what kind of music I was listening to.

9. Cat Scratch Fever by Ted Nugent
10. Takin’ Care of Business by Bachman Turner Overdrive
11. You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet by Bachman Turner Overdrive

12. Brick House by The Commodores
I still love this song and have to dance to it whenever it’s played. This is the first of a series of songs that represent an era of dancing with my brother. We actually entered dance contests and would practice in the basement to a whole list of songs, including:
13. Saturday Night Fever by Generation Disco
14. Night Fever by the Bee Gees
15. September by Earth Wind and Fire
16. Last Dance by Donna Summer

17. Goodbye Yellow Brick by Elton John
18. Bennie and the Jets by Elton John
19. Someone Saved My Life Tonight by Elton John

20. Afternoon Delight by Starland Vocal Band
This song is on the list because it signifies for me just how naïve I was when I was a preteen. I picture myself (and maybe even my brother too) singing this song in the car with my parents and wonder what they must have been thinking, knowing what the song meant, and knowing that we had no idea what we were singing about. Like I also had no idea YMCA was about gay guys; I didn’t even know there was such a thing. Even in high school, I had no idea what Led Zeppelin meant when he said “I wanna be your back door man” but I sure did song along. I guess it might be a little like that nowadays; I don’t think Lima Bean really knows what Soulja Boy means when he says, “Superman that ho” but I’m sure he’s figured out it has something to do with sex, which is more than crossed my mind when I was twelve.
Speaking of things going over my head…

21. Somebody to Love by Queen
22. Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen
23. You’re My Best Friend by Queen
I still listen to Queen a lot. Lima Bean and I can sing (off-key) the entire Bohemian Rhapsody a cappella in the car while we’re driving around! When I was around 13, a new girl moved into the neighborhood that I had only lived in for about a year. She only stayed during the summers, though, because her parents were divorced. We became best friends and that Queen song was our motto. She would come back every summer until she got a job when she was in high school. I used to like listening to that song during the school year, when I couldn’t see her. It still reminds me of her even though I haven’t seen her in 30 years.

24. Karn Evil 9: 1st Impression by Emerson Lake and Palmer
25. Lucky Man by Emerson Lake and Palmer
The Karn Evil song will always remind me of my friend Gail. She and I both played the flute in the marching band in high school. She was much better than I was and went on to major in music at college. She introduced me to ELP, and one of the things she really loved was this section near the end of the song with eleven drum beats. We would listen to it over and over, counting out all eleven beats. One night when we did that, we looked at the digital clock and the time was 11:11, which really freaked us out. During her first semester at college, there was a fire in her dorm and she died. I still think of her every time I see a clock and the time is 11:11, which happens surprisingly often. I also like to listen to Karn Evil 9 every now and then to remember enjoying music the way we did then, and when I do, I always wonder what she would be doing now if she had lived.

26. Aqualung
27. Cross-Eyed Mary
28. Locomotive Breath
29. Bungle in the Jungle by Jethro Tull
As a flute player, I used to listen to a lot of Jethro Tull in high school, because he made it cool… certainly more cool than what we were playing in the marching band!

30. Stairway to Heaven
31. Paint it Black
32. Immigrant Song
33. Whole Lotta Love by Led Zeppelin
What high school prom in the late 70’s didn’t have Stairway to Heaven as the theme song?? This is the kind of music that I would sit in my room with the headphones on and listen to for hours. I remember Whole Lotta Love sounded so awesome with headphones on. It was probably as close as I was going to get to an acid trip!!

34.Soul Man by Sam and Dave
My friend and I were the Blues Brothers for the Gong Show one year at my high school. We didn’t win, but we didn’t get gonged either, and that’s all that counted. I was the one who had to jump up and down the whole time.

35. Let the Good Times Roll
36.You’re All I’ve Got Tonight
37. Moving in Stereo
The Cars was what we listened to while we drove around looking for parties in high school. That and the Rolling Stones. It reminds me of summertime, pool hopping, skinny-dipping, and field parties.

38. She’s So Cold
39. Start Me Up
40. Shattered by the Rolling Stones
We would all sing along to these songs, especially during senior year. We were all worried about facing real life. “She’s So Cold” was my one friend’s theme song. I remember hiding with her in her bedroom upstairs while she stood up a date, not answering the doorbell when he rang. She was the only girl I ever knew who just decided she was going to pick a guy to “do it with” just to get it over with.

41.The Messiah Hallelujah
We had to go to church every Sunday, so I sang in the church choir. We performed the entire Messiah, and I still can sing along when I hear it performed. And I still love it, even though I don’t believe any of it in a religious sense.

42.Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven
43.Water Music Suites by Handel
I played classical piano from first through twelfth grade. I still love to listen to it and play on the rare occasions that I have time.

44.Maple Leaf Rag by Scott Joplin
My aunt could play the piano by ear, and Scott Joplin was her specialty. Even with all my years of lessons, I couldn’t play this song as well as she did, and she never had a lesson in her life. Every time I hear Scott Joplin, I pictured the summer vacations at her house, where she spoiled us rotten and played any song we hummed for her.

45. Rock Lobster by the B52’s
This song represents my one semester at college out of state, attending frat parties. This was the frat party theme song. They played it at every party.

46. Personal Jesus by Depeche Mode
47.Fight For Your Right by the Beastie Boys
I remember dancing around the house to this song, holding Mensa Child when he was a baby and toddler. My father used to get so angry at me for teaching him such an ‘inappropriate’ song, but I didn’t care. I had been a rebel since high school anyway, which is why he used to watch Animal House as a kid and sing along to this song:

48.Louie Louie

49. In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida by Iron Butterfly
For a while, I hung out in a Fells Point pub called the Wharf Rat. This was way back when the name was appropriate because it was a small dive, but the beer was cheap and the music was good. They had a jukebox and someone always played In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. I met a guy there that I dated for a couple of years, and we continued to hang out there and play the song.

50.Another Brick in the Wall
51.Comfortably Numb

52.Night Swimming
53.Shiny Happy People by REM

54.Ghetto of My Mind by Ricki Lee Jones
55.Ghost Train by Ricki Lee Jones
56.Ghost of a Dog by Eddie Brickell
57. Talkin’ Bout A Revolution by Tracey Chapman
I remember listening to these songs with Jagman on the way to the beach every weekend.

58.Sweet Baby James
59.Shower the People by James Taylor
If it were up to Jagman, all 99 songs would be James Taylor. He filled his old iPod with only James Taylor music. Even though my parents used to listen to him, and there were some songs I liked when I was young, now I associate James Taylor with Jagman. We saw him in concert once and would love to see him again.

60. Pictures of You
61.Fascination Street [Extended mix] by The Cure
I love the Cure. My best ever New Year’s Eve was spent at home with Jagman listening to the Cure upstairs while Mensa Child had friends over downstairs.

62.Light My Fire by The Doors
63.Don’t Stop by Fleetwood Mac
64.Bad to the Bone by George Thoroghgood
65.Sweet Home Alabama
66.Free Bird by Leonard Skynard (I saw them in concert too.)

67.Mr. Jones by Counting Crows
68.Closer by Nine Inch Nails
69.Roxanne by the Police

70.Crash Into Me by Dave Matthews Band

71.Young Americans by David Bowie
72.Luck Be A Lady by Frank Sinatra
73. Fly Me To The Moon by Frank Sinatra

74.The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky
75.Also Sprach Zarathustra by Strauss
76.Symphony No. 2 by Mahler
The last class for my MLA was a music class, and even though I have a musical background, I felt unprepared for this class. The final exam was listening to portions of symphonies and having to identify them. I had never spent so much time listening to music without words… I usually was learning to play it. These three songs were part of the course.

77.I Am Stretched On Your Grave
78.The Emperor’s New Clothes by Sinead O’Connor
79.Silent All These Years by Tori Amos
We saw her in concert in a small opera house, years ago when she was first popular. She was magnificent.

80.You’re Beautiful by James Blunt
81.Jane Says by Jane’s Addiction
82.Your Body is a Wonderland by John Mayer
83.Future Sex Love Sounds by Justin Timberlake
84.Sunday Morning by Maroon Five
85.Hey Ya by Outkast
I made this song my ringtone a couple of years ago. Jagman borrowed my phone and took it to work one day, and then nearly died when it rang and played this song in the middle of a meeting!
86.I Will Remember You by Sarah McLachlan
I always loved this song, but I was glad they chose to play it at Mensa Child’s graduation. I thought it was perfect. Sometimes, depending on the mood I’m in, it can still bring tears to my eyes for no particular reason.

87.Boombastic by Shaggy
88.Welcome to Jamrock by Damien Junior Gong
89.Buffalo Sodier
90. Get Up Stand up by Bob Marley
91. Here I Am (Come and Take Me) by UB40
92. Red Red Wine by UB40
This music reminds me of Jamaica mon. I wish I could go every year.

93.E-Pro by Beck
I could list a ton of Beck songs, because I am a fanatic. Everyone else in my family is sick of Beck!! I have already preordered the next cd.

94. Pump It by Black-Eyed Peas
95. Fix You by Coldplay
96. Float On by Modest Mouse
97. Breathe Me by Sia
98. Freshmen by the Verve Pipe
99. No One by Alicia Keys

But the real reason I decided to do it is because today was the my first day of ‘vacation’ and I am already going stir-crazy.  I even stopped in at work briefly. (How pathetic is that?) I don’t know what to do with myself.  I can’t settle myself down enough to get in the creative zone, so I’m just frustrated that I’m not being ‘productive.’  So I’ll play with my music, create a really cool playlist, try to forget about work, and maybe even win an iPod.  Go visit Rus’s site if you want to play. The contest is open to everyone, even if you don’t have a blog.  Post your list in his comments.

Such were my thoughts as I sat in a two hour bar mitzvah ceremony yesterday. I was impressed with all the preparation the boy had to go through and the poise with which he carried himself. I was impressed with all the activities for kids and families listed in the bulletin, and wondered if Lima Bean was missing out on having a group of friends like that to play with. This boy was only one year older than Lima Bean, but he carried himself with so much more confidence and maturity.

I also wondered what it would be like to have a scheduled time like that to focus on connecting with one’s higher power, because that’s something I don’t have either. I squeeze it in when I can. I don’t know if my children ever do it at all, unless I take Lima Bean for a walk in the Zen Garden or Labyrinth nearby.

I sat watching these two blended families sitting side by side, supporting the bar mitzvah boy, who seemed to have benefited from such a strong religious upbringing, thinking that Lima Bean was at a disadvantage. When the Torah reading was over, the boy read a personal essay. He talked about learning the consequences of his actions after he and his friends threw rocks across a fence into someone’s yard and the police came to his house. And it occurred to me that I didn’t want Lima Bean to learn about responsibility that way; I was thankful once again for not living in a neighborhood with a bunch of kids.

As the day wore on, the conclusions I had made earlier slowly unraveled. The harmonious blended family was an illusion for one day only; the parents fought bitterly and had recently been back in court. The stepson who appeared so mature and responsible had recently been kicked out of the house.

And then I realized that the sermon I had listened to earlier had been chosen for a reason. It was about the importance of only entering into arguments for the sake of furthering good, not for power struggles or egos or money, and that in all arguments, one should be respectful of each other. I wondered if it had made a difference, really, to anyone sitting in the synagogue.

I’ve concluded that as far as organized religions go, the Quakers probably have the best idea: come to a service and sit for an hour in complete silence and figure it out for yourself.

My father-in-law spoke at his 70th birthday party recently, and one of the things he said was that his only regret is that not all of his children and grandchildren attend church regularly. He is a devout Catholic and a genuinely good man; I respect him for following what is good about his faith: compassion, charity, forgiveness. I also realize that I am more spiritual than my brother-in-law who attends church every Sunday but is a greedy, unscrupulous, corrupt businessman, and that my father-in-law will never understand that. So be it.

That’s the beauty of finding one’s own spiritualism, the connection to a higher power through yourself. There is no wrong way to do it. Mine is not better than yours. If you live your life in a holy way, it doesn’t matter whether you need a sermon from a priest, zen meditation, a twenty minute walk in the woods, or a passage from Eckhert Tolle’s book to do it.

What matters is how you live your life, every day.

Write On Wednesday’s Prompt: I think once you’ve found your voice, your theme, your preoccupation, then your writing life becomes a lot simpler. You begin to focus your vision of the world through that lens, and pretty soon you start relating everything you see and everything that happens to you in terms of that focal point. What do you catch yourself thinking about? What experiences and relationships in your life are the most meaningful? What catches your attention when you’re out and about? These are the things you’re going to know, the things you’re going to care about, and that knowledge and caring will resonate in your writing.

This is where you’ll find your line.

How about you? Have you found your line yet? Do you think you have one? How do you go about expressing it?

This was a prompt that was going to require more thought from me than I had to give to it on Wednesday, which is why I’m doing the Write On Wednesday on Friday. In fiction writing, my ideas all center around female search for self journeys, mostly around women who have a false sense of reality. My first nano novel was about a woman who was a wealthy elitist with the ‘perfect’ life, clothes, car and house until her husband dropped dead. Then she found out that he’d been having an affair for many years and was nearly bankrupt. She had to face the reality of who she was and how superficial her life had been. For my next novel idea, I chose a helicopter parent, because they drive me absolutely crazy. I really can’t understand how a woman can have no life beyond her teenager’s social world and think that that’s ok. Denial is a common theme: my child is perfect. So her son winds up dead and she has to face the fact that not only was he NOT perfect, but also that she doesn’t know who she is because her entire world revolved around being at his school activities.

I think I would have enjoyed being a psychiatrist, because I find myself constantly analyzing people. Even at work, I analyze (and sometimes overanalyze) their comments, actions, motives, intentions. I am always trying to figure out what people are going to do or why they behave the way they do. At social gatherings and in restaurants, I am usually listening to at least two conversations at the same time. I am mostly fascinated by women and our roles, the societal masks we wear, trying to be true to ourselves in a society that bombards us with who we should be and leaves us little time to figure out who we really are.

As I thought about this prompt, I realized that while I did have a “line” that I go back to for fiction writing, I really have never found that “line” for my blog. I think that’s why I have struggled so much, periodically, with whether to keep it up or not. And in ruminating over this prompt, I think I may have come to an answer. My fiction ideas focused on the circumstances that cause a woman to begin a search for self journey and portray that unraveling of pretenses. But in real life, my focus for the last couple of years has been my own spiritual growth and creativity and how to balance that with the demands of being a working mother. I spend a lot of time reading blogs and books on those subjects, doing morning pages, gratitude journals, and intentions. Watching the Oprah Monday night series. Nearly all my free time for most of this past year has been focused on staying centered and grounded, making time for first things first, keeping perspective…which is not to say that I was always able to do so.

Two weeks ago I discovered Christine Kane’s blog. Last week, for the second time in two months, I got poison ivy that required steroids. I’ve never really even had poison ivy before, other than a mild patch, even though I’m out in the woods all the time. And I kept trying to figure out why I was now so susceptible to it, so suddenly. On my second day of steroids, I opened her blog and her post was on poison ivy! She related it to spirituality, intentions, the power of the mind over the body… all the things I’d been reading about for the last year and trying to apply to my own life. And it suddenly clicked.

I should be writing about my own search for self journey and how I’ve been trying to link the theoretical, book explanations with the reality of life. Like: if we’re supposed to be able to control things with our mind, why am I getting poison ivy?? Because that’s the kind of crazy stuff I think about all the time. And there might be people interested in crazy stuff like that. Or what I’m reading about in Women Who Run With the Wolves. Or why I can’t get the female characters from The Pillars of the Earth out of my mind.  Or going to the zen garden and not knowing the significance of stacking the rocks.  Or why I don’t watch tv anymore.

I think I’ve always been so aware of writing for an audience, that I’ve censored a lot of my own writing.  And just as I need to find balance between work and personal time, I also need to find a balance between writing for an audience and writing for me.

Be present in the moment. Enjoy the silence.

So if you need to jump start your creativity, it’s a great place to go.  Happy exploring…..

The concept:
1. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
2. Using only the first page of results, pick one image.
3. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into Big Huge Lab’s Mosaic Maker to create a mosaic of the picture answers.

The questions:
1. What is your flickr name?

2. What is one word that describes you?

3. What do you love most in life?

4. What do you want to be when you grow up?

5. What is your favorite dessert?

6. What is your dream vacation?

7. What is your favorite drink?

8. Who is your celebrity crush?

9. What is your favorite color?

10. What high school did you go to?

11. What is your favorite food? right now?

I’m not posting a lot tonight because I’m busy playing with music and photos. I’m buying music and organizing my playlists. I’m uploading photos. This is a (rather blurry) photo of our new covered porch at dusk tonight. It will be screened in by the end of the summer and I’m hoping to be able to blog on it without bugs crawling all over my computer screen!

Five things to do today
Since it’s now 11:25pm when I’m finally getting to this, I’ll do my list for tomorrow, which is Saturday, and therefore more fun anyway!!

First, I have to take my 5 prednisone pills for the horrible poison sumac on my face. I went to the doctor’s today because I looked like I had leprosy when I woke up. And I went to the real doctor’s office, not even the Target Clinic, so you know it was serious. But I digress.

The second thing on my list is to visit a decorator’s store from the local Decorator Show House I went to last month. It’s probably small because it’s on Main Street in this old, quaint town, so I expect to walk through some other stores for an Artist’s Date, so to speak. I’m going to this particular store because they had a rocker with a rush seat and back on the front porch of the show house and I fell in love with it. But it was $200, so I didn’t buy it, and now I’m kicking myself for not buying it because I keep sitting in other rockers and they’re not that comfortable. I’m sure some SMART woman bought the rocker at the Decorator Show House, but I’m going anyway to find out and see if she can get me another one.

The third thing I’m going to do tomorrow is sit by the pool and sunbathe.

The fourth thing I’m going to do is take Lima Bean back to this cool Zen garden we visited tonight. We’re going back because I forgot to take my camera and there were so many cool pictures. We also picked blackberries in the woods nearby. That is a separate blog entry, though, which leads me to…

the fifth thing I will do tomorrow: post a blog entry, maybe even with some photos of the zen garden.

Four places you have lived
I’ve lived my whole life in the same state and most of it in the same county. I switched counties to buy the house we life in now because the school system was the best here. So this could be a boring entry compared to real jet-setters who’ve traveled the country.
My current house will hopefully be my last. It’s a two story colonial on three acres across from a state park; our horses are in the back yard. It is very private and bucolic.

Before this I lived in a townhouse neighborhood, which I thought would be good for Mensa Child to meet friends and run around and play. The world is not like that anymore. There was only boy who was home regularly, and he had negligent parents who weren’t raising him right so Mensa Child couldn’t play with him anyway. All the other neighborhood kids were in scheduled activities during the school year and summer camps all summer long, so there were never any kids to play with after all. That’s why, when we went shopping for the next house, privacy was our priority.

I lived in three apartments before that, one dorm at college, and two houses growing up with my parents and brother.
Overall, as I said, I’m not that exciting in the real estate category.

Five things you would purchase if you were a billionaire
1. The boarding stable and land behind our house so it could never be developed in my life time.
2. A built-in pool with elaborate landscaping and pool house with kitchen.
3. A yearly vacation at an all-inclusive resort in Jamaica for the whole family.
4. College scholarships for deserving children of public school teachers in our area.
5. Louboutin shoes

Six people I want to know more about
1. Georgia O’Keefe
2. Oprah Winfrey (I’d like to shadow her for one month and see how she accomplishes so much while still developing personally)
3. Anyone on TED talks
4-6. My husband and two children

Now I’ll tag…. rusvw, peaches, missmeliss and anyone else who wants to play.

My current writing space is usually the loft attached to my bedroom and overlooking the family room. I usually have to put my earbuds in and listen to music though, because Jagman will be watching tv in the room below and it is distracting. My loft is a rich, deep royal blue with white built-in bookshelves filled to the max. I also put up dry erase boards that currently contain character notes for my second novel. I’m still searching for the artwork to hang on the wall opposite my desk, the one I stare at all the time. I did finally enlarge six of my photos and hang them on the wall of the cathedral ceiling so I can see them from my desk.

I do have a couple “rooms of my own” to write in and have decorated them with gorgeous colors, woodwork and art that I like, but I still do my morning pages mostly in my pilates workout room in the basement. It’s a small room, painted a dark mustard color, and I leave the lights turned on really low, because I’m on my back for most of the workout and I don’t want to stare at overhead lights. Then when I finish my workout, I write in my journal for three pages, there in the dark room sitting on the pilates bench. It is more therapeutic if I play meditation music, but I usually have the tv on in the background. I’ve read that people light candles and even create a type of alter in the space where they write their morning pages, but I never got that far. I really like writing in the dark room first thing in the morning. Then, when I am finished, I head upstairs to the shower and get ready to face my hectic day with a feeling of accomplishment.

I used to do a lot of writing with the laptop in bed, but Jagman complained about the tapping of keys while he was trying to sleep.

When I wrote my first NaNoWriMo novel, I did most of it at home on the sofa in the basement, away from the rest of the family. That room is decorated with about 500 books on built-in bookshelves, too. It’s dark green with mahogany walls and shelving and leather furniture. When I first started blogging, I worked from an extra bedroom that I painted red and lined with bookshelves of dark cherry wood. The walls have white french memo boards filled with photos and notes, and a favorite horse print, large, with a picture light on it. My desk is a door that I stained and mounted on 4 x 4’s. I loved this room because I could shut the door and not hear anything, but my two boys wound up hooking their computers up in there and it was no longer a “room of MY own.”

My favorite and most productive writing space was the classroom I taught in, even though it was the least pleasing aesthetically. When I co-taught with a fellow writer, we would stay after school and write together on our NaNoWriMo novels. We’d both have our headphones on, laptops back to back across desks, minds lost in completely different worlds. At the end of our allotted time, we’d talk about ideas, music we’re listening to, blocks to or bursts of creativity, word counts. I loved having a writing partner. I haven’t had that opportunity since, and it’s one of the reasons I’ve tried sitting in coffee shops.

The coffee shop scene can be weird, I think. Sometimes I’ve been very productive and focused. Other times I am self-conscious and worried that the person sitting behind me can read my screen or the notes on the paper on the table.

I’ve always wished I could get over that and be able to write anywhere and everywhere… to pull a notebook out and write while I’m killing time somewhere, for example, or in front of other people (who aren’t writers). I know a lot of ideas have disappeared because I wait to get to my writing space instead of pulling out paper wherever I am.