A Friendly Musical Visit Every Day

Considering I've been watching Midsomer Murders since it premiered in the late 90s, it's hard to believe this has never been our song of the day. Wow, I just realized this show has been on the air for nearly 30 years.  The new episodes I can take or leave, to be honest with you. The original (by which I mean the John Nettles) episodes are the ones I come back to again and again. There are episodes I've probably seen a dozen times. That is a lot of hours of my life.  I think Season 4 is the set I've seen the most, not because those episodes are necessarily my favourites, but because my local library has the box set on its shelves, so I've checked it out a million times. If there's nothing else that sparks my interest, I know I can't go wrong with old Midsomer. 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....

My partner brought The Shape of Water home from the library the other day. Neither of us had seen it. He'd never even heard of it. I said, "Isn't that the movie about a woman having sex with some kind of sea creature?" His eyes sort of widened, like he didn't realize what he'd gotten us into. Anyway, we watched it and it was surprisingly lovely. All I'd heard about it was the sex with a sea creature bit, but gosh it had a lot (more) going for it. I never would have picked up that DVD, but I'm glad my partner did. The film really surprised me. It's dreamy and fairy-tale-ish but also suspenseful and gruesome (I had to close my eyes a lot toward the end). 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.  See you soon! Giselle

My partner and I watched Back to the Future recently. He'd never seen it before. We got a DVD box set out from the library and I said to him, "Oh, this set has all three movies in it." He came home from the library the day after we'd watched the first one and told me, "I was about to return this when I realized all three movies are in here." I was so proud of myself for not saying, "Yeah, I told you that! Don't you ever listen to me?" heh. Life goes more smoothly when I don't lash out about things that really do not matter. 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 link...

I've been feeling so sick the past few days that I've barely had the energy to watch TV--and that's saying something. Watching TV isn't exactly a gruelling task. But one of my meds has been making me sick to my stomach, and after days of this I am just so weak. It's times like this when I realize how much my partner does to take care of me and to take care of our surroundings when I'm unwell. I'm noticing how much he does because he's not here. He's at his house; I'm at my place. And my place is a mess because I don't have the energy to clean it properly. Now I'm realizing that usually, when I'm sick, he does the dishes, he dries them and puts them away so we don't have a kitchen full of dirty dishes. Normally when I'm sick to my stomach, he runs to the bathroom with me and holds my hair. If my hair is pulled back, he pets my head because he says he doesn't know what else to do. But clearly he does know what to do, beca...

If I'm going to mention The Twilight Zone (as I did yesterday), I should tell you this story: a couple weeks ago my partner and I were at my apartment. I've got a bunch of Twilight Zone episodes on the PVR, so I picked one to watch before bed. It was the episode where William Shatner takes advice from a napkin holder. My partner isn't interested in paranormal stuff (although I would argue that this particular episode is more psychological than paranormal) and at the end he said, "It was interesting to see William Shatner so young. I've never seen that before." I thought he was talking about the episode--he'd never seen that episode before. But no. He had never seen The Twilight Zone! Like, what? Shocking. There are a bunch of different openings for this show, but... here's one. 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 t...

Okay, I mentioned I Dream of Jeannie yesterday, and since it's one of my earliest childhood memories, let's listen to the theme music. I was going to say that Dick York was in one of my favourite episodes of The Twilight Zone, but he was on Bewitched, not Jeannie. My brain is very hurting and foggy today, and I'm having trouble typing, so let's leave it at 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:...

My partner put in an offer on a condo in his hometown. Housing prices there are way cheaper than we're used to, but it means you're living in... well, I won't say where, but it wouldn't be my first choice. Anyway, a big part of the reason he wanted to move back to his hometown was so that he could spend more time with a friend he's known since they were babies. This friend is seriously ill. Moments after my partner put in the purchase offer, he got an email from the friend's wife. The friend has stopped eating and taking vital medications. He is likely to die in the coming days. 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 ...

Yesterday I told you a story about being pushed around while walking with a cane. That was a bad day. But that bad day had one bright spot, thanks to a lady in red. On my way home to the doctor's office, I was entering the not-accessible subway station I mentioned to you yesterday . In addition to boarded-up elevators, this station has the heaviest doors I've ever encountered. Even on a good day, I find them hard to open. And, on a good day (even on a bad one, to be honest), I go out of my way to hold these doors for seniors. They are so, so difficult to open. Ahead of me, there was a beautiful Black woman wearing a stunning red dress. She noticed me. She noticed I was having difficulties. And she held the door for me. And that was the nicest thing anyone had done for me the whole wretched day. And it made so happy I smiled and I said, "Thank you so much!" And she smiled back, and she went to the next door and she held that one for me too. I told her, "Y...

The last time I posted the Super Mario theme as our song of the day (last week, maybe?) hardly anybody looked at the post. Auto-tweet was broken at the time, so I'm blaming that and doubling down on the Mario Bros. Here they are again, this time in the guise of six different composers. Really cute 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 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'd completely forgotten this song existed until I heard an ice cream truck playing it the other day. Okay, so the ice cream truck wasn't actually playing this song. It was playing some other song that reminded me of this song, but close enough. I read an article about something called a Death Cafe, which is a hosted event for people who are close to death. They can attend to talk about death in an open way. A lot of people find it easier to talk to strangers about their own impending death, because talking to family or friends is so fraught with emotion. One of the topics they discussed at the death cafe was: what sounds would you like to hear while you are dying? (reminds me of Soylent Green...)  Most people said: birds, nature, children's laughter. While my partner and I were very ill recently, we were lying on my bed in the city with the window wide open. I live across from a park, so the sounds we get through the window are primarily bird songs and children's lau...

So, look... I have a very bad habit of giving myself food poisoning. This almost always involves eggs. The first time I poisoned myself with eggs was after that big east coast blackout that happened in the early 2000s. 2003? I'm too lazy to look it up right now. If you lived through it you probably remember it because power was out for days, which is pretty unusual in major cities. Anyway, I had a carton of eggs in my fridge that was already 6 months expired and then it lived through this blackout. I can't say for sure why I ate those eggs, except that I was very poor and also stupid, but that was my first experience with egg-related food poisoning. A couple years ago I poisoned myself with homemade mayonnaise. This week I poisoned myself by eating raw meringue while making my partner a pie. He told me not to eat raw meringue, but by then it was too late.  The salmonella is a part of me now. It's been with me for days. If you're wondering how you can support me...

I've been re-watching the British TV show Rosemary and Thyme again, even though I re-watched every episode a month ago. There are only three seasons, but I like repetition.  I always say the appeal of this show is the fantasy of having a friend and doing gardening and solving murders, but I re-watched the first episode last night (I don't usually watch the first episode--not sure why), and I realized that the biggest appeal of this show, for me, is probably the fantasy of making a new friend later in life.  The idea that I could meet someone new and form an instant bond and we could be besties and run a business together... it actually seems beyond impossible when I say it out loud. I find it so, so hard to make friends. But maybe that's why so many of us love this little show? I don't know. There's a lot to love about 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 ...

Often I forget that I once made an album of... ummm... music. I almost feel like there should be a question mark, there: ummm... music? Yes, it's music. Let's have some confidence, shall we? It is definitely music and I definitely made it. I'm just not sure how to classify this music. I think I created most of it more than a decade ago, although I only released the album a couples years back. It hasn't exactly made me a household name. Probably doesn't help that I hardly ever tell anyone about it. The trouble is, I'm very self-effacing and I have difficulty taking pride in anything I create. That's a pretty sucky place to come from when you create things for a living. But here we are. And here's some music I made. I picked this song to play because I wanted to well you about the weird background sound. I don't know what you call it because I no longer have a brain--thank you, menopause. Anyway, let's call it the background sound. To create i...

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...

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...

I'm on Day Two of a migraine that won't let up, even with the help of every medication my doctor has prescribed me. Days like this, when I can't stand, can't sit, can't look at a screen (this post will be brief), I tend to have dark thoughts. Weather is my biggest migraine trigger, and travel never helps. Driving into the city during a snow/slush/rainstorm yesterday tipped me over the edge and I have not recovered yet. We listened to the classical radio station as we drove, and this was played during our drive. That's why it's our song of the day. (Starts soft, but doesn't stay soft. There's a joke in there somewhere, but I'm in too much pain to find 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 a...

I mentioned the other day that I've been watching all the shows my partner usually leaves the room when I put on, since we've been apart for reasons of contagion. So I watched every episode of Doc Martin I had on my PVR, and I kept thinking: this doctor's got more patients in his tiny village waiting room than I've ever seen in the waiting room of my family practice, which is located in the heart of a city of millions. Yesterday I had an appointment at my doctor's office and, sure enough, the waiting room was packed. First time I'd ever seen that, and I've had more appointments with my doctor this year than I've had in all the 15+ years I've been her patient put together. That's an indication of poor health, my willingness to finally take action about my poor health, and nothing working to make my poor health any better. I'm getting pretty sick of doctor's appointments, but at least my GP is compassionate, kind, and friendly. Though,...

I've had a lot of bad pain days recently, and the depression sets in pretty fast. I start thinking about death, and I try to keep it to myself, because if I think about death aloud, my partner tends to spiral with me. It doesn't take much to get him mentally swirling toward the drain. I guess that's why I'm telling you this stuff instead of telling him. I've been thinking of a family friend who died a couple years ago. He died in that "perfect" way: he died in his sleep. He wasn't sick or anything. One night he just went to bed and he didn't wake up. But you know who did wake up? His wife, who was sleeping beside him. She woke up next to a man who wouldn't wake up. I really can't imagine. Dying in your sleep might be the perfect way of dying for the person who actually dies, but for the person who doesn't? It sounds both sad and terrifying. If you're wondering how you can support me in bringing you songs and anecdotes, the ...

People leave all sorts of things in the laundry room of my apartment building. If one tenant doesn't want or need something, they leave it there for other tenants to take. Today it was cat food. One time I found an entire watermelon down there. A couple weeks ago, it was DVDs. New DVDs of old movies. One of those movies was the 1944 film noir classic, "Laura." I love films of that era, but I'd never seen this particular one. Neither had my partner, so we watched it the other night. We both enjoyed it. Kept us guessing, since it's a murder mystery. Did its job. And it did its job in only an hour and twenty-eight minutes. I think that's one reason I like old movies. They tend to be shorter than the films of today. I've got menopause brain and pain brain. I do not have much of an attention span. My partner used to tell me I could probably build up my attention span, if I worked at it. Then he started cancer treatment. Now he understands the no attenti...

I will always associate this piece with the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, which was one of my favourite movies of the 80s. It came out at the absolute perfect time, for me. I'm sure I've mentioned in the past that I wanted to be an animator when I was young. Part of that was because I loved drawing, and part of that was because I loved cartoons. Have I told you this story before? I can't remember. I've talked about it on Twitter, but I can't recall if I ever mentioned it here on the blog: when I was a kid, there was a lot of domestic violence in my household. I had a Smurfs blanket on my bed, and at night I would hide underneath it and pretend I was in Cartoon World, where I could play with the characters I loved from Saturday morning cartoons. When Roger Rabbit came out, it affirmed my escapist desires by presenting a world in which cartoons and humans coexisted. That's where I wanted to live. I haven't seen Who Framed Roger Rabbit? in... oh, 30 years, ...