A Friendly Musical Visit Every Day

Hi Friends, Turns out the reason I've been so sick is that I have Covid. I tested negative two days ago, but this morning the test came back positive. I'm in a lot of pain--especially my throat and my head, at the moment--and the pain in my eyes is making it very hard to look at this screen.  So I'm going to take some time off, here, while I recover. When I can comfortably look at my screen and I have the energy to return, you know I'll be back. I am an author by profession, so at this time when I'm not able to work, I would sincerely appreciate it if you would consider buying my books (most are for adults only!) or check them out from your local library.  Supporting my  AudioErotica  endeavour on  Patreon  would also help me hugely. I'm also an  Amazon Influencer,  so hopefully I can make a little pocket change when you buy stuff by clicking through  my affiliate links . I also recommend subscribing to my newsletter. I generally e-mail subscribers with a we

I'm in pain and seeking out the coziest of cozies. Hetty Wainthropp is way up there. I'm in bed with BritBox, hoping I'll come across an episode I missed on TV, but I'm pretty sure I've seen them all. Rewatching the later ones anyway. No reason not to. I was such a fan of Keeping Up Appearances, and Hetty Wainthropp felt like an odd continuation of that show--like, if Hyacinth were actually nice to Richard, and they took in a stray teenager and opened a detective agency?  It's basically the same show, if you look at it that way. If you're wondering how you can support me in bringing you songs and anecdotes, the easiest thing you can do is buy my books (most are for adults only!) or check them out from your local library.  Supporting my  AudioErotica  endeavour on  Patreon  would also help me hugely. I'm also an  Amazon Influencer,  so hopefully I can make a little pocket change when you buy stuff by clicking through  my affiliate links . I also recomm

Nerene Virgin, who played Jodie on the TVO children's show Today's Special, died last month. If you grew up in Ontario in the 80s, chances are you watched this show. Apparently it was broadcast on other stations later on, but I have no idea what its reach was, ultimately. I heard the guys mention Today's Special on Rifftrax once, and that blew my mind. I really thought Today's Special was an Ontario-only thing. I couldn't believe Americans knew about it. I wish I had something more coherent to say, but my chronic pain is flaring and it's messing with my cognitive function. The person who made this video expresses it best, anyway, by highlighting gratitude. My childhood was full of challenges and trauma, but Today's Special was a balm. It really was. As I was searching for a clip to show you, I came across excerpts from an episode where a friend comes to the store with a flask in his pocket. Throughout the evening, he's drinking in secret, and he beco

I've been watching reruns of Heartbeat again... If you're wondering how you can support me in bringing you songs and anecdotes, the easiest thing you can do is buy my books (most are for adults only!) or check them out from your local library.  Supporting my  AudioErotica  endeavour on  Patreon  would also help me hugely. I'm also an  Amazon Influencer,  so hopefully I can make a little pocket change when you buy stuff by clicking through  my affiliate links . I also recommend subscribing to my newsletter. I generally e-mail subscribers with a weekly update, and I would LOVE to have you on the list.  Click here to sign up:  http://eepurl.com/R4b11 See you soon! Giselle

Not sure why this song is stuck in my head, but I think my partner is getting tired of me singing it around the house. If you're wondering how you can support me in bringing you songs and anecdotes, the easiest thing you can do is buy my books (most are for adults only!) or check them out from your local library.  Supporting my  AudioErotica  endeavour on  Patreon  would also help me hugely. I'm also an  Amazon Influencer,  so hopefully I can make a little pocket change when you buy stuff by clicking through  my affiliate links . I also recommend subscribing to my newsletter. I generally e-mail subscribers with a weekly update, and I would LOVE to have you on the list.  Click here to sign up:  http://eepurl.com/R4b11 See you soon! Giselle

I thought for sure this song was going to be about menopause. If you're wondering how you can support me in bringing you songs and anecdotes, the easiest thing you can do is buy my books (most are for adults only!) or check them out from your local library.  Supporting my  AudioErotica  endeavour on  Patreon  would also help me hugely. I'm also an  Amazon Influencer,  so hopefully I can make a little pocket change when you buy stuff by clicking through  my affiliate links . I also recommend subscribing to my newsletter. I generally e-mail subscribers with a weekly update, and I would LOVE to have you on the list.  Click here to sign up:  http://eepurl.com/R4b11 See you soon! Giselle

After I'd pulled yesterday's song of the day, YouTube decided that traditional Irish music is the only thing I want to listen to. Naturally, this tune was suggested. I had to laugh, because the only time I have ever heard this song, it was performed by my sister and her first-year fiddle class. I kind of couldn't believe it when my sister told me she was taking a fiddle class. She is a classical pianist. She has a degree in music. She knows how to play the violin. I never would have imagined she might have any interest in playing music that wasn't... classical. I want to point out that she was not a child when she took this class. She was in her thirties. Maybe she was trying to break out of her comfort zone. Anyway, it was really entertaining to see my sister, who was once a music teacher, participating in this concert where she was a learner. Despite all her music education and her talent in the classical sphere, I gotta say... she and her fellow adult fiddle learn

We had a Skype session with our granddaughter (who is not yet two years old) the other day. She kept dancing around the room to music we couldn't hear. My step-daughter explained to us that the song was coming out of a book--you could press a button in the book, and a song would play. Apparently it's our granddaughter's favourite song to dance to. Since we couldn't hear it, we asked what the song was. It was this song. This was the song. If you're wondering how you can support me in bringing you songs and anecdotes, the easiest thing you can do is buy my books (most are for adults only!) or check them out from your local library.  Supporting my  AudioErotica  endeavour on  Patreon  would also help me hugely. I'm also an  Amazon Influencer,  so hopefully I can make a little pocket change when you buy stuff by clicking through  my affiliate links . I also recommend subscribing to my newsletter. I generally e-mail subscribers with a weekly update, and I would

My partner is blasting this album in the basement. I think I'm just going to... not ask what that's all about. If you're wondering how you can support me in bringing you songs and anecdotes, the easiest thing you can do is buy my books (most are for adults only!) or check them out from your local library.  Supporting my  AudioErotica  endeavour on  Patreon  would also help me hugely. I'm also an  Amazon Influencer,  so hopefully I can make a little pocket change when you buy stuff by clicking through  my affiliate links . I also recommend subscribing to my newsletter. I generally e-mail subscribers with a weekly update, and I would LOVE to have you on the list.  Click here to sign up:  http://eepurl.com/R4b11 See you soon! Giselle

This year, I've been reviewing old contracts. Specifically, I've been reviewing short story contracts with publishers who placed my work in anthologies. Terms vary, but often publishers asked for an exclusivity period of 1, 3, or 5 years before rights then reverted to me and I could republish those pieces of fiction. Time goes by fast. That's what I've learned. Some of the pieces with the 5-year exclusivity period, I basically forgot about. Five years felt like forever, when I signed those contracts.  Turns out five years goes by in a snap, and I could have published a lot of these stories ages ago. Well, I'm playing catch-up now. I've just come across three novelettes I can now republish. I barely remember writing them. I used to be incredibly productive. I wrote an unfathomable amount of content. So I'm reading through this one little romance story about a woman falling in love with her piano teacher, and the song she's practicing is our song of th

Happy Valentine's Day! If you're wondering how you can support me in bringing you songs and anecdotes, the easiest thing you can do is buy my books (most are for adults only!) or check them out from your local library.  Supporting my  AudioErotica  endeavour on  Patreon  would also help me hugely. I'm also an  Amazon Influencer,  so hopefully I can make a little pocket change when you buy stuff by clicking through  my affiliate links . I also recommend subscribing to my newsletter. I generally e-mail subscribers with a weekly update, and I would LOVE to have you on the list.  Click here to sign up:  http://eepurl.com/R4b11 See you soon! Giselle

A couple years ago, my partner and I were invited to spend a few days at our friends' cottage. Our friends are older than me by nearly twenty years. Everyone I know seems to be older than me. Anyway. They don't have internet service at their cottage, but our one friend told me she'd downloaded some playlists onto her phone. She asked me what I'd like to listen to. I said 80s music. The look she gave me... how do I even describe it? She looked at me as though she had never heard of 80s music. It was a look like: did they even make music in the 80s?  She seemed absolutely confounded. Eventually, she said, "I have 60s music." And that was fine. That's what we listened to. Her husband and I sang along while we washed dishes. It was fun. I later realized she had 60s music on her phone because that was the music she grew up with. Just like 80s music was the music I grew up with. I also listened to music from the 60s in the 80s, so both of those decades are highl

This is the third version of My Toot Toot we're listening to, and I'm not sorry. I am obsessed with this song. I couldn't not play this cover. If you're wondering how you can support me in bringing you songs and anecdotes, the easiest thing you can do is buy my books (most are for adults only!) or check them out from your local library.  Supporting my  AudioErotica  endeavour on  Patreon  would also help me hugely. I'm also an  Amazon Influencer,  so hopefully I can make a little pocket change when you buy stuff by clicking through  my affiliate links . I also recommend subscribing to my newsletter. I generally e-mail subscribers with a weekly update, and I would LOVE to have you on the list.  Click here to sign up:  http://eepurl.com/R4b11 See you soon! Giselle

As I mentioned earlier this week, I recently heard this song for the first time in my life and became instantly obsessed with it. All I want to do, all day long, is listen to it. While Denise LaSalle's cover remains my favourite version, I figured I would play you the original. This is it. I actually got the title wrong when I posted LaSalle's cover, but I blame YouTube for that. Anyway, her version should be titled "My Tutu." From what I've read online, this version can be referred to as My Toot Toot or Don't Mess With My Toot Toot. After listening to this tune sixty million times, I finally tried to figure out what it meant. What's a toot toot? I figured it had to be something dirty, because so many people on the internet remember being scolded, as children, for singing this song. Turns out "toot toot" comes from the French "toute-toute" which is a term I'd never heard, even as a pretty fluent French speaker. The word "to

This song reminds me of the little girl's prayer in Forrest Gump. Did I ever tell you my story of seeing that movie in theatres? My cousin invited me to go with her and her friend. We were young teens at the time. When the movie was over, they both had tears streaming down their faces. They didn't have tissues with them, so we all went into the bathroom and they were ripping off reams of toilet paper, blotting their eyes, blowing their noses. Again and again. They could not stop crying. I was completely dry-eyed through all this, and my cousin looked at me like, "What kind of monster are you? Why are you not crying?" As you probably know, if you've been reading this lil music blog for a while, I experienced a lot of trauma in my childhood. One of the ways I dealt with it was by turning off my emotions, certainly in public. By the time I reached my teenage years, I did not display emotions--at least, not emotions that were tender, like sadness. I wanted people to

Do you remember, when you were a kid, you'd say things like: "When I grow up, I'm gonna eat ice cream for breakfast!" Well, I absolutely grew up into a grown-up who ate... okay, not ice cream for breakfast, but certainly cakes and cookies and pastries. All kinds of sweet things. Not recently, though. As I've very boringly informed you, I very boringly eat oatmeal in the morning to keep from getting sick when I take my big batch of morning pills that cause nausea and stomach cramps. But it was my birthday the other day, and I thought, since it was my birthday, I would have two chocolate chip cookies at breakfast. Wow, was that ever a mistake. I felt instantly ill. I felt like I was going to puke. It wasn't until I ate my big bowl of oatmeal that I felt better. So my birthday lesson, this year, was that I'm too old to eat chocolate for breakfast. Kinda sad. If you're wondering how you can support me in bringing you songs and anecdotes, the easiest thin

I've been falling down some fascinating YouTube rabbit holes lately, and landing on songs I've never heard of. Like this one. The line about "local weed" reminded me of my partner's best friend, who helps out people in her neighbourhood in small but meaningful ways. An old man she knows wanted to grow his own medicinal marijuana (it is legal to do so in our juristiction) but he lived in a small apartment with no balcony, and didn't think he could manage it. You know that old real estate rule about buying the worst house on the best street? That's my partner's best friend's house. It is tiny, but it's got a bit of a yard. So she offered to grow cannabis for this old man, and she did and it worked out just fine. Until the day she walked into her yard to find some fancy-ass woman pulling the plants up by their roots. She was like ummm who the hell are you and why are you destroying my garden? Turned out the fancy-ass woman was a real estate

This song is based on an Astor Piazzolla piece called Libertango. If you've read a novel I wrote called ANONYMOUS , you'll know that the music of Astor Piazzolla figures prominently toward the end. There's a scene at the symphony where the main character and her husband and the man they've welcomed into their home and their bed encounter... well, I'd be spoiling the story if I told you. Guess you'll just have to read the book for yourself to find out.  If you're wondering how you can support me in bringing you songs and anecdotes, the easiest thing you can do is buy my books (most are for adults only!) or check them out from your local library.  Supporting my  AudioErotica  endeavour on  Patreon  would also help me hugely. I'm also an  Amazon Influencer,  so hopefully I can make a little pocket change when you buy stuff by clicking through  my affiliate links . I also recommend subscribing to my newsletter. I generally e-mail subscribers with a week

Despite having listened to the radio 26 hours a day during the 1980s, I don't remember ever hearing this song until 40 seconds ago, and somehow I've listened to it 400 times in the past 5 minutes. Don't try to do the math on that. If you're wondering how you can support me in bringing you songs and anecdotes, the easiest thing you can do is buy my books (most are for adults only!) or check them out from your local library.  Supporting my  AudioErotica  endeavour on  Patreon  would also help me hugely. I'm also an  Amazon Influencer,  so hopefully I can make a little pocket change when you buy stuff by clicking through  my affiliate links . I also recommend subscribing to my newsletter. I generally e-mail subscribers with a weekly update, and I would LOVE to have you on the list.  Click here to sign up:  http://eepurl.com/R4b11 See you soon! Giselle

I remember this song from my childhood, although I never knew what it was called or who it was by, back then.  Yesterday, I realized I haven't listened to new music in maybe three or four years. I haven't listened to contemporary pop music since the 90s, but at some point in the 2000s, I started listening to indie rock as it emerged.  I never intended to stop listening to new music. It definitely wasn't deliberate, on my part. Looking back, it seems like I stopped listening to new music around the time I turned 40. I guess that's when nostalgia became more attractive than novelty, and I switched over to listening to songs that gave me comfort. Like this one. And so many more. If you're wondering how you can support me in bringing you songs and anecdotes, the easiest thing you can do is buy my books (most are for adults only!) or check them out from your local library.  Supporting my  AudioErotica  endeavour on  Patreon  would also help me hugely. I'm also an 

Something woke us at four in the morning. It was the unmistakeable sound of racoons doing acrobatics on the roof. Except we couldn't be sure: roof or attic? Only one way to find out: we got out my bike light (extremely bright) and started doing laps around the house. Sure enough, a racoon was trying to peel open one of the vents. It was on the roof, not in the attic. There's a relief. When we got back indoors, I realized my pyjama pants were covered in mud. I had to change before getting back into bed. But then I couldn't sleep. I just kept listening for the racoon we'd chased off to come back. I finally fell asleep again, and dreamed that my teeth were falling out. This song sounds like the kind of track a person should listen to at four in the morning. Better than an acrobatic racoon. If you're wondering how you can support me in bringing you songs and anecdotes, the easiest thing you can do is buy my books (most are for adults only!) or check them out from your

Until today, I never knew what this song was called or who it was by. YouTube wanted me to listen to it, and I was happy to oblige. Since I happen not to be missing anyone, romantically, at the moment, let's just say this post is brought to you by Wedding Heat Weekend , which is the brand new complete collection of all fifteen novelettes and novellas in my Wedding Heat series. It's available as an ebook from select retailers, as well as in paperback and hardcover formats. A great way to support my daily writing efforts here is to buy my books, and this one is both romantic and super-spicy! If you're wondering how you can support me in bringing you songs and anecdotes, the easiest thing you can do is buy my books (most are for adults only!) or check them out from your local library.  Supporting my  AudioErotica  endeavour on  Patreon  would also help me hugely. I'm also an  Amazon Influencer,  so hopefully I can make a little pocket change when you buy stuff by c

I was listening to a whole bunch of Pet Shop Boys the other day, and when I came across this song it made me think of a story in my little book Dirty Talk Sexy Surprises that came out a couple weeks ago. The story is called Bless Me Father. I wrote it about four thousand years ago. It's really just a monologue: a woman in confession, confessing to her priest about all the lusty, sinful acts she imagines herself committing with him. (I was probably watching a lot of Ballykissangel at the time...) Warning: There is some strobing in this video. If you're wondering how you can support me in bringing you songs and anecdotes, the easiest thing you can do is buy my books (most are for adults only!) or check them out from your local library.  Supporting my  AudioErotica  endeavour on  Patreon  would also help me hugely. I'm also an  Amazon Influencer,  so hopefully I can make a little pocket change when you buy stuff by clicking through  my affiliate links . I also recommend sub

When we were at my apartment last week and I was so, so ill and my partner wasn't home, there was a day when I wanted very badly to go out and get some fresh air. Problem: it was raining hard and I had very little strength or balance, so I knew I would need to use my walker if I wanted to leave the house.  I can't hold onto/push my walker and also hold an umbrella. I would either have to get very wet or just not go outside. So I just didn't go outside. Later on, I was looking out my window and I saw an old man walking with a walker. Just behind him was a younger person holding a big umbrella over his head so he wouldn't get wet.  Honestly, when I saw that scene outside, I felt overwhelmingly sorry for myself. Sometimes I feel like I've fallen through all the cracks. I'm glad that man got to go out in the rain, but I'm sad for myself because I wanted to and I couldn't. Other people get the help they need. I don't.  I feel lucky to have my partner arou