Today I had to pick up Eden mid-day to go to the orthodontist. I was gearing up to be grumpy about leaving the studio mid-project, when I remember that it’s the very first day of the Free Love Give Away habitude. The anticipation of giving people little surprises every day for a month perked me right up! I immediately started scheming what today’s give away could be. (To read more Free Love Give Away Stories, click on the pink heart in the masthead above.)
After a long Apple vs. Microsoft debate, my hubby the Microserf gave me a Zune for Christmas. I immediately subscribe to the all-you-can-eat monthly service and downloaded approximately 5,300 songs. Last night I spent some precious free time shuffling songs around and creating killer playlists. Thankfully, my car has an mp3 jack built in, so I plugged in and started grooving. When I got to the school it dawned on me that a good Free Love Give Away would be to let Eden pick the music for our cross-town trek. This wasn’t too self-sacrificial as the girls have a pretty killer playlist just for them, and it has some sweet tunes like Better Together, quirky numbers like Stickshifts and Safteybelts, and even some hunkering-down-for-a-good-time riffs like Anything’s Possiblefrom drool-fest Jonny Lang.
Eden opted for none of these. She chose Lisa Loeb.
Now normally, Lisa Loeb would seem like a fine choice. I loved her in grad school and once sat close enough to touch her at a Vancouver concert – seats Kami had scored us by standing in line all day elbowing people out of the way and quite possibly promising the doorman something special if he opened up our side first. At the time my own Lisa Loeb devotion was so severe that Paul would only let Kami and I put on her Tails CD’s if we promised not to sing along. But Eden, well Eden has taken that devotion to a whole new level, listening to The Way It Really Is is on the kind of permanent repeated usually devoted only to preschool obsessions with The Wiggles. On top of this repeat issue is a small problem with the age-appropriateness of the lyrics. I’m just hoping that Eden isn’t picking up that the first song isn’t really about returning a red dress after wearing it once, but is really an extended metaphor for getting used in a dating relationship.
With self-discipline usually reserved for making myself get on the treadmill each morning, I scrolled through my 10,000 adult-bearable song offerings and found Lisa, offering her to Eden with a smile and cranking up the volume.
She sang all the way to the orthodontist.
Chalk on up for the joy of a Free Love Give Away!
P.s. In case anyone is in doubt of Eden’s older-soul tendency toward the melancholy, this is her favorite song. Why couldn’t she have fallen in love with Lisa’s kids album, Catch the Moon? Here a little sample of it here.
Entries
