A Friendly Musical Visit Every Day

I've been watching Dutch decluttering videos on YouTube lately. As a result, I've been doing a lot of decluttering. I came across this album when I was going through my CDs. No, I didn't get rid of it. It's not going anywhere. In fact, rather than shoving it back in a box, I created space on my bookshelf for a stack of CDs and that's where The Sticks currently sits. (My boombox takes up one shelf of my bookcase. Yes, I still have a boombox. It is 30 years old, but it still works.) You know, getting my bricks out in the sticks felt like such a good idea until we did it. When we found out what it was actually like to live in a small town, we realized we'd made a big mistake. Which is part of the reason my partner's trying to sell his house right now. The town has certain charms, and in a lot of ways it is like living in a Hallmark movie, but if you aren't a fan of racists and homophobes, it's not the best place to be. Moving is a big deal, but when...

Every time I walk out of the little grocery store in my partner's small town, I'm singing something. Yesterday it was this song, because it was playing over the speakers. They know their audience. While I was shopping, an employee asked if I needed help with anything, and my brain was screaming, "You're new here!" But I didn't scream that with my voice because I'm trying very hard not to freak people out these days.  So I left the store not only singing this song, but also saying to my partner, "That's how you know you live in a very small town: you can name every person who works at the one and only grocery store." (Okay, I can't actually name them by name, but I can definitely describe them--and I sure do notice when they add an employee to the mix.) 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 ...

I got into a bit of an argument with my mother about the way she imposes her excessive frugality on other people. Like, if that's the way you want to live, go for it, but I don't appreciate the snide comments when I choose to spend my money however I do.  And I'm not talking about spending thousands of bucks on... well, anything. I'm talking about buying a handmade handbag for $45 from a local artisan.  Supporting artistic entrepreneurs is important to me because I am also an artistic entrepreneur. But, you know what? It would be important to me even if I wasn't.  But my mom's got to raise her eyebrows and tell me that she got her purse for $3 at Value Village. Well, good for you. That's your choice. I had my first job when I was 8 years old. Let me spend the money I've been working for all my life. Anyway. Sorry. I visited my mother last week, and now I'm full of mom-related rants. The "dentist" verse in this track is so funny. As someon...

Remember the country club people who didn't bring my partner flowers (or anything else) when he was going through cancer treatment? (You can read that post here , if you missed it.) I forgot to tell you about this at the time, but the country club lady--oh, you're not even going to believe this; it sounds like a rich person on a sitcom--the country club lady complained to me that she had to STEP OVER A HOMELESS MAN ON HER WAY TO THE SYMPHONY.  How do you even respond to a complaint like that? From somehow who belongs to an honest-to-god country club? "Well, if you're so concerned about having to step over the unhoused, maybe you should never leave your 3-million dollar mansion"? I wish I'd said that. I was too shocked to speak. I just stared at her until she backtracked on that thought in an attempt to not sound like an awful human being. But the damage was done. So the next time you have to step over a homeless man on your way to the symphony, why not g...

I remember singing this piece by Canadian choral composer Ruth Watson-Henderson when I was in choir in the early 90s. At the time I either didn't realize or it didn't register that it was brand new music. We sang so many Ruth Watson-Henderson pieces that I assumed she was some lady from the 1800s who wrote a bunch of choral works and then ceased to be. I was way off.  According to the internet, she's still alive today.  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 ...

Today I feel like that kid who tries to help their parents clean, but ends up making the house way messier than it started out. (I'm thinking of the video my stepdaughter sent us, of our granddaughter sweeping Cheerios into a dustpan and then not noticing as she spilled those same Cheerios out of the dustpan, spraying them around the room like confetti.) My messy kid-feelings started when my partner told me he was going to walk to the grocery store in town to buy lettuce. It's strawberry season, so I asked him to pick up strawberries too. When he got home, the tote bag he'd carried the produce in had not only leaked but also ground strawberry juice into his very light-coloured khaki shorts. They were smeared red in multiple places. I felt like this was my fault, even though he kept assuring me it was not, because I had requested the strawberries. So I told him to take off his shorts and I would wash out the strawberry before it stained. After I'd scrubbed the short...

I had this really odd experience, the other day, of opening a drawer in our bathroom and feeling like I'd walked into the wrong house.  The drawer was full of drugs--pharmaceuticals.  Prescriptions.  My prescriptions.  But when I first saw that this drawer was full of drugs I thought the drawer must belong to someone else. How could I have so many drugs? Like... so, so many drugs? Last month I was talking to a girl who has the same chronic illness I do. She was saying one of the things she hates the most about it is having to be her own doctor, always on the job, always deciding how she needed to medicate herself at every hour of the day. I knew exactly what she meant. Of course, I have a doctor who has prescribed me pills, but she's not constantly at my side. She's not constantly asking me what my symptoms are, currently, and gauging what to do about it. I'm the one who is with me constantly. I'm the one making those decisions: this symptom means take this drug, ...

This is a rehearsal session from a fun production of The Barber of Seville that my partner and I saw together. It came to mind today because we drove past a barber shop called The Barber of Seville (better than the hair salon I used to walk by called Sweeny Todd's...) and about five seconds later we arrived at a lift bridge that was... ummm... lifted? There was a huge ship going through, so we had to wait for a while, but that was okay because it gave me an opportunity to sing this aria at my partner. You know how much he loves being sung at by me--I talk about it all the time. And, of course, there's very little of this aria I actually know, so I was basically just singing the "della citta" (sp?) part at the end over and over. It was great. While we're on the topic of the Canadian Opera Company, one year at Toronto Pride they were handing out rainbow buttons that said I Love COC. I think I still have mine. If you're wondering how you can support me in br...

During our recent illness, my partner and I relearned a hard lesson: we can only rely on each other. Family, friends--we told them all we were too sick to function. We couldn't leave the house. We could barely get out of bed.  Nobody helped us. Nobody brought us casseroles or Gatorade. Even the people who live on the same bus route as me. Even the people I brought food to when they were sick.  Why do people thank me for my thoughtfulness but never, ever reciprocate? It's the same lesson I learned when my partner went through his cancer treatment: we're alone. But we're alone together.  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...

For Easter, my partner gave me a chocolate bunny. But you know what else he gave me that's even better than chocolate? No, not that. Well, yes, that too, but that's not what I'm talking about. He bought me some of the supplements my doctor put me on. They're pretty expensive (to me--I don't know what qualifies as expensive to other people anymore) but once I started buying a better brand instead of store brand, I noticed a dramatic reduction in the frequency and severity of attacks (when my chronic illness flares up, it's called an "attack" in the literature--how's that for frightening?). So I'd been talking to my partner about how the better supplements really seem to be making a difference, but BOY are they ever pricy and, sure enough, he goes out and buys them for me as a gift. How's that for thoughtful? If you're wondering how you can support me in bringing you songs and anecdotes, the easiest thing you can do is buy my book...

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...

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...

It's amazing how drastically my perspective on certain life things changed while my partner was undergoing cancer treatment. Suddenly, so many things that used to matter just didn't anymore. I used to get really jealous. Like... really, really jealous. Super ultra mega jealous.  Now that we've been through his radiation process (and all that entails... which is A LOT), jealousy seems to have abandoned me. Which is great. Which is WONDERFUL. I do not miss that poisonous little asp. I could tell you a thousand stories of my own jealousy, but most of them are way too humiliating for pubic dissemination. Here's a stupid one, though: When my partner was looking for a new apartment, we arrived at a big building with retail on the ground level.  A new take-out restaurant had just opened.  The restaurant's name contained... my partner's ex's name. I got that itchy sensation in my chest. Neither of us acknowledged seeing his ex's name in huge letters at the b...

I woke up with this song in my head. Not sure why. It isn't a song of my generation. I think it might be from my baby sister's generation. I seem to recall her wearing a lot of Roxy clothing and having skateboarding posters on her bedroom wall when she was a teenager. These are very vague memories, though, because I moved out of the family home years before my baby sister hit her teens. It's kind of funny to think that this would be a nostalgic song for my sister, when it just falls into the category of "new music" (ie. music that came out this millennium) in my mind. 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...

Yesterday I mentioned that I was trying to remember which song mentioned Marty McSorley. It's this song. This is the song. Maybe there are others, but this is the song I was thinking of. 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

Yesterday I mentioned that my partner named a teddy bear after a hockey player. That hockey player was Auston Matthews. But it reminded me that my uncle once named a dog after Marty McSorley. (I've had to look up how to spell every name in this post. I am NOT well-versed in hockey player names.) Anyway, my partner and I were talking about this dog the other day, and I said to him, "There used to be a song that mentioned Marty McSorley." I thought it might be this one. It's not. I'll bring you the one I was thinking of tomorrow, but for now... there's this. (It's been probably a decade since I last heard this track, and I still love it.) 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, ...

 I spent this morning with my head in a bucket. There's a migraine medication my doctor prescribed for me. These pills are extremely expensive, so I don't take them very often. I only had one left, and I couldn't remember if I had side effects from them. Turns out I do.  This morning, rather than staying in bed with a migraine, I stayed in bed feeling like I was going to puke, shaking uncontrollably, feeling horribly dizzy even though I was lying down. Imagine paying money to feel like that. Eventually, I fell asleep. When I woke up (with my head in a bucket), I was parched.  It's noon as I'm writing this. I'm still in bed. Yesterday my mother said to me, "It's like you don't even WANT to get better!" I was livid.  First off, I'm living with chronic illness. You don't just "get better" from that. There ain't no cure for love, and there ain't no cure for what I've got. Secondly, I have seen my family doctor 4 times ...

This piece came on the radio the other night while I was doing the dishes, and I said to my partner, "This is one of my favourite songs!"  We both laughed because a) I had no idea what it was called or who it was composed by and b) it's not a song.  My partner was able to easily find out everything about it, since we were streaming the radio through his computer, but it still isn't a song. The funny thing about this lil music blog of mine is that our songs of the day are hardly ever classical pieces, even though the vast majority of the time I spend listening to music, I'm listening to classical pieces. My partner and I put on our classical station while we're making dinner, we listen to it while we eat, we have it on in the background while we enjoy our postprandial crossword and while we do the dishes. Last night, that was three hours of classical, and that's pretty typical. I used to listen to music while I worked, but I don't anymore. I find it...

I'm just about done proofreading my book "Sharing the Nanny." There's a character in this series ( The Boss and the Nanny ) named Mira, so, naturally, this song is stuck in my head. Not complaining, because I have such a nostalgic love of the piece. When I was a kid, I sang in a choir. Our accompanist was a Cape Bretoner, and she was the one who pushed for us to perform Song for the Mira. I'm pretty sure she knew the composer, Allister MacGillivray. It was practically written for her, as someone who'd moved away from home and experienced that deepseated longing to return to the place she'd grown up. Our choir actually did record this lovely piece, but that was long before the days of the internet, so it's not available anywhere online (trust me--I've checked!). 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 you...