Music Monday: Toxic

Discovered this gem on Song Pop, how crazy is that? Yael Naim is a killer artist, be sure to check out the rest of music. Including the original to compare, and another cover by my girl Ingrid. When I saw her in 2010-2011, sometime then, she ended the show with this jam, and that’s the only place you could have heard her cover, or at least that I know of.

Simply,
Aimee

Mellow Music Monday: Wherever You Will Go

Pandora score. Check it out. I’m including the video of the original as a refresher .

Simply,
Aimee

Music Monday: Pop some tags

I’ve been meaning to post this for several weeks. This is NOT the radio edit, so there’s lots of cursing and potentially nsfw. Happy Monday!

Fashion Friday!

The Prayer – thinking of Sandy Hook

My primary source of news consumption is via NPR. On Friday, I wasn’t around my computer or radio to realize what had happened until the evening. Friday evening was very busy at home, and I worked very early Saturday. The gravity of what had happened didn’t really hit me until Saturday evening.

J and I where making some Christmas ornaments and listening to holiday music on the radio. The song The Prayer by Celine Dion and Andrea Bocelli came on, and I felt very heavy. Then that evening, I watched my favorite show, SNL. If you don’t watch or haven’t heard how they honored the children, they opened not in humor or profound words, but with a simple and highly appropriate holiday song.

 

I cried for the first time since the news broke.

The next day, I went to church. Our pastor tactfully yet powerfully addressed the tragedy. She talked about our cultures excessive consumption of violence in it’s many forms; graphic and inappropriate 24/7 news coverage, violent movies, violent video games and even extreme veneration of the military (yes, I proudly attend a progressive Christian church). But she had me on the edge of tears when she announced each act of violence and the media’s reporting of it. After each incident was described, she followed by saying “It was wrong. It was not ok.” Such simple words, but filled with such truth. She ended the service by praying for each of the victims by name, bringing me to full tears.

Charlotte
Daniel
Rachel
Olivia
Josephine
Ana
Dylan
Dawn
Madeline
Catherine
Chase
Jesse
James
Grace
Anne
Emilie
Jack
Noah
Caroline
Jessica
Avielle
Lauren
Mary
Victoria
Benjamin
Allison
Nancy

Adam

The past 3 days I keep circling back to the song The Prayer. The song has been very nurturing, and the lyrics are very appropriate for the moment.

 

Because I am a believer, I am fully confident that every single one of those innocent children are at the feet of Jesus Christ. They are well, they are safe, they are loved more fully than we can ever imagine.

I pray that their parents be given divine peace that transcends all understanding.

For the rest of us, I pray that we all find our safe place. Whether that is in our belief of God or by some other means. I say safe place not in the sense of physically safe. There will always be things in this world that are out of our control and we’ll never know when our time is up. Find a safe place in yourself that will free you from anxiety, fear, pain, anger. That is the safe place that will help you cope with not only this tragedy, but all of the toxicity this world will throw at us.

Find a safe place that can’t be taken away by any act of violence.

Lead us to a place
Guide us with your grace
Give us faith so we’ll be safe

Simply,
Aimee

Music Monday – Holiday music

Heya! I realize it’s been FOREVER since I blogged, so I apologize. Now that the wedding is over, and J and The Punk’s birthdays are past, I can get back to this a bit more. Monday’s are the easy part. Enjoy this beautiful holiday song!

Simply,
Aimee

The catastrophic yet phenomenal celebration of the big 3-0

  Well, it happened. I turned 30. To commemorate kissing my 20′s goodbye, I decided to have a birthday party the same weekend that we moved to a brand new townhouse. In hindsight, this was not the wisest idea I’ve ever had. As a fair warning, it’ll start out as a major bummer, but I promise to end with the lovey doveys .

I decided two weeks ago I wanted to celebrate my birthday, because I deserve a party, darn it! So I called our local borough to see if there was a pavilion available the weekend of my birthday. There was, so I booked and paid for it. Then, I started planning what on earth I was going to do for this party. I didn’t really come up with any sort of theme, but eventually I decided to have sort of a favorite things party. My favorite color and favorite foods. Well, that didn’t happen, but more on that later.

Remember that pavilion I rented? Well, I arrived to the park (not as early as I should have) to set everything up, and found a full blown party going on in the pavilion that I paid for. I walked around the pavilion looking for the reserved sign, looked for my receipt, double checked the pavilion number, yep, someone was partying it up in my pavilion! I approached them to tell them that I actually rented that pavilion and paid to use it. They said that there was no sign posted, and that they were sorry. Not sorry, as in, we’ll move for you. It was a “sorry, but we’re not moving”. (The Punk thinks they probably took the reserved sign down!)

Now I was already chock full of family drama and highly stressed to begin with, so this set me over the edge. I was literally shaking when I called The Punk to figure out what to do next, as my guests would be arriving any minute. A few calming words later, I decided to call the police. Petty? Perhaps. But I almost equate it to stealing. So the police advised me to stay at my townhouse until they arrived as to avoid any confrontation. The police did make the offending party leave and filed a report. I guess the group gave them a good bit of trouble because I’m to receive a refund for the pavilion, and they will be charged for it. The officer was very wonderful and wished me a happy birthday and his condolences to The Punk wearing his Penguins t-shirt .

So 10 minutes after the soiree was set to begin, we were scrambling to set everything up. Something simple like putting a tablecloth on was obscenely difficult due to the 100mph winds! Ok, I’m exaggerating, but it was quite bad. The vision of what the party decor would look like in my head was slowly slipping away. Once some of the decorations where set up, food and “beverages” where the next item on the agenda. All my favorite food that I purchased and spent hours preparing was left back at the townhouse, and with guests beginning to arrive, I was no longer able to coordinate things as I wanted to. They eventually made it to the party, but I was disappointed that folks weren’t able to consume the fruits of my labor. That being said, once the “second round” of folks came later in the evening, they dug in, which made me very happy .

While we’re on the subject of food, let’s chat the cake. The Punk’s mother purchased a blank cake for me to decorate that day for the party. I made it purple, and left the rest to them. In my shopping spree at Party City included a sweet candle that said “Oh No, the big 3-0″, which I thought was hilarious and awesome. Those candles never made it on the cake. When I was showing some friends my new townhouse, I came back to it cut and about an 1/8 of it gone. I was devastated, but kept it together as much as I could.

As I stood in the pavilion telling the friends I had there for the beginning of the party goodbye, I was feeling defeated and like my goofy party was a disaster. But just then, more of my favorite people began to arrive. One of my gals that I haven’t seen in probably 3 years arrived, and I was more than ready to give and receive a big huge hug!! Then my favorite docent came, and my friend Dana and her beautiful family, my favorite Nate and my adoring (now former) neighbors. I don’t know if ya’ll read this silly little blog o’mine, but I felt so loved when you guys came! We all sat together, folks who didn’t necessarily know each other, chatting and having fun and eating cold food and shielding themselves from the rain. We talked about silly and serious things, laughed and played with the wee ones, and enjoyed ourselves in the midst of a downpour.

Though my vision of the perfect 30th birthday party was annihilated, I was humbled just enough to receive what was meant to be. A small group of friends who care about The Punk, J and me, and I them, and a whole lot of love. I can’t help but realize there’s a great lesson to think about as I enter into a new decade of my life. Things will be messy, and they won’t go exactly as you plan. Surround yourself with people who genuinely love and care about you, and life will be good.

Oh, and that 30 list? Yeah, I never got that all finished . However, I’m going to try and knock the rest off before 31. I have a few that I did and haven’t posted about yet, so I’ll get right on that!

Love you all, and thanks for an imperfectly catastrophic and phenomenal birthday!

Simply,
Aimee