Sickness, Cleaning and Music...

There has been some kind of NASTY bug going around here and it has arrived at my house, uninvited!  NASTY just barged right in, took his shoes off and decided to stay awhile.   I work at a preschool and the saying our pediatrician has, "All children are sick unless proven otherwise", has proven to be true  this time of year.  We have had several kiddos out with the flu and other croupy crap, and now, my precious little diva daughter has the croupy crap.  She has been running fever since Friday =(  SADNESS!!!   I hate when my babies are sick!!!  So, I've been cleaning.  And cleaning.  And CLEANING!!!!   I seem to have it embedded in my head that I can clean the bug out of our house...of course, this has some truth to it, but it seems NASTY is just going to have to run his course.
Speaking of cleaning, I have really been driving myself crazy over the past few years.  Let me explain:  Growing up, my mom used to DRIVE ME CRAZY cleaning with bleach.  Seriously, the woman doesn't think something is cleaned unless it has been thoroughly scrubbed with bleach.  I can not tell you the countless number of shirts of mine that have been ruined by leaning up against a counter that my mother had just cleaned...AND WITH HER, you never knew when she would be cleaning...  This, as you can imagine, drove me NUTS!!  I mean, some of those shirts were favorites!!!
Well, fast forward to today and guess who has to clean with bleach now....  You guessed it.  ME!!!!  What the heck!!!  I know!!!  I just really don't feel something is totally clean unless I have thoroughly scrubbed it with bleach.  Sound familiar?  Why oh why did this trait get passed to me?!  I already feel the need to apologize to my children for the countless number of favorite shirts that will be ruined on account of my mother's cleaning gene that has been pasted down to me....
So, our house pretty much smells like bleach... AND Lysol, because, well, you know it kills 99.9% of germs...says so right on the bottle ;)
Speaking of cleaning makes me think of music.  But to tell you the truth, just about anything in my life can make me think of music...  I LOVE MUSIC.  Simple and to the point.  But, I was also thinking how soothing music is.  When my daughter has been so sick and her fever had spiked, after I had given the appropriate amount of Tylenol, she seemed to be so content to just sit in my lap, let me rock her and sing.  It seems that even me humming was more soothing to her than any medicine that I could give her... This made me smile.  I hope music is one of those things I can pass down to my daughter.... INSTEAD of the need to clean with bleach!!

Pomplamoose

My new obsession!! I LOVE THIS BAND! They are amazing. I stumbled onto them by chance, actually. Someone posted one of their videos on Twitter today and when I checked it out it was love at first sight/sound. That post that I checked out was a YouTube video of Pomplamoose's rendition of Beyonce's "Single Ladies"... and I LOVED IT... I wasn't impressed at all with the original by Beyonce, but that is just because that is not the style of music I like.
Here is that YouTube video for you to enjoy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIr8-f2OWhs
Their sound is just so smooth and the talent there is just outstanding!!!! I am so bored with artist (and I use that term loosely) today... I am really not seeing any talent that makes me want to stop and listen. So, you have to understand that when I heard this extremely talented duo doing their thing, I stopped AND listened!
Pomplamoose (which means grapefruit in French) is made up of Nataly Dawn and Jack Conte. They do all of the vocals and instruments! Everything... And they are so REAL!!! Its fresh! And, after seeing all the dressed up, made up, fake, showbiz type "artist" in the music world today, they are like a drink of cool water to a parched throat who is tired of drinking the dry dust that is actually passed off as music today.
So, check them out!! You'll love them... And by the way, you can buy their mp3's (some are even free) from their myspace page: www.myspace.com/pomplamoosemusic
yeah, I'm shamelessly promoting talent here (: Enjoy!

death and the past

Death is such hard thing to explain to a child. We had my uncle's wife's funeral today and Kaiden has asked a thousand questions. He doesn't look at death as something permanent which I suppose is good... He just says, "Jesus already gave her a new body". I guess he is brighter than I give him credit for. He doesn't really understand the "sadness" of death yet. He hasn't experienced this feeling of loss. But it is refreshing to see death through the eyes of a child.
I am very careful about how I explain things to him. And I don't really correct him if he is off a little. Sometimes the way he looks at something such as death is much healthier than I do.

I have been in an incredibly nostalgic mood today. We found some of my old music cds in our shed while we were cleaning it out. Its amazing how a song can take you back to a time and a place and you're there! For that moment, you're there.
So sad that things have to change so much as you "grow up". The older you get, the further you go and the more things change. Sometimes its at an uncontrollably fast rate and you reach out and try to grab tiny little snippets of your past before they are entirely out of reach. Its hard to stop straining your eyes looking back and turn and walk forward into the unknown of the future. I'm very thankful that my past gives me "warm fuzzies". Such good times. I am also thankful that those tiny snippets of my past that I managed to grab are still close to my heart where I will keep them safely stored forever.