Friday, August 13, 2010

Like Rasputin

I got home before Jen and Lily the other night, so I turned on the computer and listened to the Amy Rigby station while starting dinner. I've waxed rhapsodic about Amy Rigby before. She has the platonic ideal of the perfect name. She's also funny. (Asked by her manager if she would not be able to write the same kind of songs after starting a happy relationship, she responded "No problem. I'm still poor", before cranking out a lyric about her beau's ex-wife.)

Until I was in my 20s, I never much liked female vocalists, but I see that more than half of my "favorites" playlist is made of songs by women. I don't know if my tastes are evolving or it's just taken me that long to find songs the songs that were already out there.

Anyways, a song of hers that I had somehow never before heard came on and I've been listening to it ever since.

(Seriously. I'm like a little kid when I first hear a song I like. I've got enough courtesy to listen to it privately. I've just got it on an endless loop on my music player as I'm typing this up.)

I've had lovers and detractors,
but my one governing factor
is that there's nothing they throw at me
that I can't take.

I'm like Rasputin.
I get back up again.
Like Rasputin, I keep coming back,
coming back, coming back to life.


I had miniskirts and lashes,
love reduced this girl to ashes.
Think I'm done? I'm not done.
Time for one more go-around.

I'm like Rasputin. I get back up again.
Like Rasputin, I keep coming back, coming back, coming back to life.


I have a friend going through a very difficult time in her life right now, but this song made me think of her, because she's handling the situation with such incredible strength and grace. More than I'd be able to muster, certainly. Until she tells me otherwise, this is going to be her official theme song.

In less encouraging news, Lily's been extra whiny lately. She went on a trip to the zoo with her little pre-school class and I wanted to hear all about it, but there was no literally no time between when she got home at 6 PM and when she left with Jen at 7 the next morning when she was awake and not whining.

She was at the top of the stairs, and petulantly ordering me to bring up some apple juice up to her room, "I need a drink!"

I was like: "You and me both, kid."

Jen and I are good at tag-team parenting. It's like "Good Cop, Good Cop." One of us will suggest something and the other will support it and offer specific suggestions about how it can be done.

Jen: It's time to get dressed so you can go to Oma's house!
Josh: That sounds like a great idea! You're going to have so much fun there!
Jen: Look, you've got these dresses to choose and you can pick the shoes you want to wear.

We're generally frightfully effective, and it's a little sad that it takes two adults to outwit a three-year-old, it does get the job done.

She did phrase something in a peculiar way. She was being naughty and obstinate and when she asked me if I was angry, I said, "Yes I am, Lily. You've been acting very poorly all night."

With that, she burst into tears and said, "I don't want angry daddy! I want you to be happy daddy!" and I thought it was strange that she seemed to be referring to them as separate identities.

To return to the zoo trip for a moment, I was hoping to hear about that. When I asked her what kind of animals she wanted to see, she answered, "Giraffes!" She must have absorbed the love of giraffes from my friend Karen when we were down visiting a while ago.

Karen doesn't like giraffes. She LOVES giraffes. Or so I'm told. The whole "Karen loves giraffes meme" is really starting to gain momentum. This will be her eventual fate.


Woman Doomed To Years Of Hippo-Themed Gifts


JACKSONVILLE, FL–Remarking, "Oh, I love hippos!" upon receiving a birthday gift of a porcelain hippopotamus, area resident Karen Voldstead doomed herself to a lifetime of hippo-themed gifts Monday. "I don't even know why I said it," said Voldstead, 24, shortly after receiving the small statuette from a coworker. "I don't especially like hippos. I guess I was just trying to find something nice to say since I didn't really like it." The next day at work, Volstead received several "belated" birthday gifts, including a stuffed hippo, a rollerskating-hippo coffee mug, and a hippo-shaped doorstop

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