how i know it’s summer:

i accidently knocked off my alarm clock roughly four weeks ago and it’s still lying under my nightstand

i get to “sleep in” until 7:30 when ella wakes up

i share a nap schedule with ella

i live in my chaco’s

i actually have lost my flourescent glow

i’ve read and enjoyed a book without annotating it

i’m house painting and decorating again

tony stops doing the dishes

fargo stares at me and hovers until i take him on a walk

i go to bed later than tony

going out on the weekends is an actual possibility

i have to remind tony that all the shopping i do is to make up for what i don’t do during the school year

when i was in high school, i had great taste in music.  i had a lot of guidance from my friend jason, but regardless, i listened to all kinds of uberhip bands that my parents hated and I went to see concerts at all the grimy little venues hosted.  my favorite moshing memory is when i spent ten minutes pasted to the sweaty back of a rather large shirtless man at an Urge concert at Mississippi Nights.  good times.  i saw concrete blonde at the same place.  that was a great show.  she came out in the glow in the dark paint looking like a skeleton.  how cool is that?

those days of music appreciation are so over.

i’m not really in charge of the music in my car anymore; my two year old is.  she barks her orders like a seasoned drill sargeant.  “monkey music!  monkey music!”  that means, “mommy, may we please listen to the Curious George soundtrack?  thank you.”   then there’s, “say hi to the lions!  hi to the lions! lions!”  this means, “can we hear the children’s music medley you downloaded from iTunes, mommy?  my favorite song is ‘hi to the lions.’”  that cd is actually decent; there’s some they might be giants, barenaked ladies, and laurie berkner.   “victor vito” by laurie berkner and “the letter l” song from bnl are two of my favorites.

the only problem, like her father, ella likes to beat her favorite songs into the ground to create a slow and painful death to any possible joy you might have developed by listening to the song the first 150 times.  but every time into the car and hearing the screams of “monkey music” until i press ‘play’ can get a little grating.  so i went to the library and got some more cds.  now we have the grateful dead and raffi.  the raffi actually wasn’t bad until she got hooked on the “banana phone” song.  guess what song i’ve heard 238 times in the past three weeks?  and guess what song plays a continuous loop in my head 24 hours a day?  and refuses to go away, for the love of all that is good and right in the universe?  it’s catchy and funny and once you hear it, it never leaves your head.  ever.  and it’s the first song on the cd and car rides are never that long, so guess what gets played the most?

so until the indigo girls put out a children’s cd or kids bop covers the cure (ha!), i’ll be in music hell with raffi leading the band.