Okay, so I haven’t been writing lately cause of the bloody pony and squirrel.  If you’re new, you may not have been introduced.  First there is Sad Pony.  He might look like a picture, but he’s very real.  He enjoys sitting on me and acting sarcastic to hide his deep, dark pain.

Deep dark pain.  Check it.

Next up is Squirrel.  He is also not just a picture, but a real anxiety attack in fuzzy form.

Oh woooowwww omg you haven’t used me in forever I’m here I’m still here what are you doing will you do something now omg I think the world is gonna end better take hold of my nuts wait did that sound bad hey where are you going?

So right, as Merbear, whose post I just stole, said, music can help tame these bad boys here, at least for a little while.  At the moment I am looking into new treatments for them because they’re cute and all but I want them kept at bay.  I want an actual life.  When you can look at your blog posts, giggle a little cause gosh you’re funny, but then realize that crap, you’ve sort of gone downhill over the years, it’s time to do something.  Anything.  But before I take up drunk hunting, I figured I’d try to write a few posts.  Just to say I did.  And why music?  Cause I can’t think of anything else right now!  Awesome!

So I had a record player when I was really little.  It was a Winnie the Pooh record player.  And I played it quite a bit.  I also used the record player in the living room.  Sometimes you had to put one of those little circular things inside the single disks, cause they had a bigger hole.  I don’t know why they had a bigger hole, they just did.  Also you had to play them on a higher speed.  This was also a fun thing to do to regular records, so they would song like Chipmunks.  Where was I?  Right, so I played records, like Ghostbusters.  I remember that one, especially on high speed.   Also “Bad Boys” by Miami Sound Machine now known as Gloria Estefan.  I am dating myself.  I’m a great date.

This brings back memories. I was so cool as a kid.

I also had cassette tapes (all you cute little millennials – google this stuff) and the first one I remember was Hall and Oates.  My brother gave it to me, because back then he gave me stuff he wanted.  Come to think of it, he still kind of does this.  I was around eight I think?  That was also when my parents gave me my first phone in my room (pink!), so they wouldn’t have to hear me yammer any longer.  My parents were progressive that way.   My brother and I both got Sony Walkmans, because my parents liked us also shutting up on trips.  I would often listen to my player, especially when I needed to cover up my father’s twang Country music.  I was pleased to find out that Thing Two was trying to drown out Hakuna Matata the other day while Thing One and I sang at the tops of our lungs.  Apparently Disney doesn’t go well with My Chemical Romance.  We felt sads about this – haha, no we didn’t.

I can remember thinking I was sooo much older listening to music.  I walked home one day and the speakers at the baseball field were playing Cyndi Lauper’s She-Bop and I danced and sang like the bad nine-year-old I was, having blissfully no idea what Cyndi was actually singing about (thank you Cracked for clearing up that mystery).  There are other songs that bring back memories of roller skating rinks (look it up) and amusement parks (ours was called Wonderland, for reals).  Now that I’m older, I listen to other music, but I still love the 80s.  They are the best.  I like some of today’s music – some of which I will embarrassingly admit to later, and the oldies too, though not as much as Merbear.  We still have this weird ability to finish songs the other one starts, no matter what the time or genre.  Sometimes we don’t both like a song and we have to take a breather and say, it’s okay, everyone has faults.  But mostly we enjoy the same stuff.  While there are songs that you love, there are also songs you hate with equal passion.  I’ll talk about that too, maybe.

For example, here is a song I hate. I HATE IT.

Music has a magical ability to change your mood. It doesn’t work on everyone – I had tone deaf English students.  I asked them how all different genres of music felt, what it made them think of, from classical to modern day, from fast to slow.  They said “your music sucks.”.  I was 22, they were at least 18.  I really don’t think four years should have made a difference.  But wow, it can.  For me, though, music is powerful.  I can feel my heart swell when I hear it, and my soul soar.  Like movies, music can take you places.  It can actually heal you, and slow down your anxiety (lots of youtube videos are good for this).  I even saw a video about this old man with Alzheimer’s who was non responsive – until they put headphones on him with his favorite music from his younger years.  He literally came alive.

So yeah, I think I’ll talk about music.  Here’s hoping, anyway.

~Alice