Songs and Apples

I spend a lot of time in my Jeep, rolling backwards on steep hills and praying vehemently that I won't teeter into the shiny BMW behind me, pleading with a shrieking toddler that I cannot get that flung fire-truck until we get to a stop light, for the love of all things holy, or we shall all perish.  It's infinitely easier dealing with N's millisecond attention span while he's secured snugly into his carseat than it is in a house full of plants, refridgerators, and desktops pleading to be messed with by banana-encrusted fingertips.  And so we roll, to farmer's markets, bookstores, tolerant coffee shops.

I keep the radio tuned to an old-school talk station, primary target demographic: forty-something divorcees with clicky fingertips and rouge cheeks.  It's not that I love Dr. Laura or the weekend infomercials, it's that I haven't been able to listen to music since the fracture of the last year.

Music brings me back in a startling, passionate way: a tangible reminder of emotions I'm not sure I want to feel, and so I soak myself in bad commentary, turning up the volume on benign chatter.

Even music I don't love evokes a running commentary of memories, pin pricks to my eyes.

A thousand miles seems pretty far
But they've got planes and trains and cars
I'd walk to you if I had no other way
Our friends would all make fun of us
and we'll just laugh along because we know
That none of them have felt this way

The goddamned Delilah song is everywhere, on every station I flip to when I try to escape the financial advisor advertorial and it  brings back the fiery memory of new love, of certainty in being able to conquer all with our stubborn knowledge that we had discovered a secret no one else knew.  The night we escaped from our friends on a snowy snowboarding getaway, embracing in a lit pool of blue, unable to stop smiling through the kissing, legs entwined under the water.

I can exist, I can coast, I have a great job and a fiery disposition and a son with eyes that compel me to fight, flourish.  But that ghostly longing for an impassioned soul mate follows me even to the most banal of daily activities, when I'm flipping my radio dial on a non-descript Sunday afternoon.  I often wonder if I'll be able to listen to music again without feeling that my reception is fuzzy, broken, jaded.  I ponder if Dr. Laura and I will be together forever.

***

This weekend passed in a blur of activity.  Mom and I took N to Granville Market yesterday, where he stood with solemn fascination regarding the crabs, resting on their claws, silently awaiting their fate in tubs of bubbling water.  We bought hand-peeled shrimp and Napolean cakes and sampled fudge and peanut brittle, and left abruptly when N fell in a tank-sized rain puddle, soaking through his tiny jeans and causing a behemoth meltdown.  Last night I rented Knocked Up and fell asleep about seventeen minutes in. Today, I went armed to Chapters with a book list ten miles long and bought two.  I'll let you know which ones when I'm finished reading, but thanks again for all your suggestions.

I also paid a trip to the electronics store, because lately I've got it in my head that I might want a Macbook.  This is a tad ludicrous because:
a) I hate change
b) I am horrible at learning new things and
c) those things are goddamned expensive.

But in the business of blogs, it seems that everyone works on a Mac and I leave every meeting feeling like they all know the Secret to the Computing Universe and I, with my sad little Acer, am highly unevolved.  Those of you that have worked on both a Mac and a PC, I'd love your input.  Is it all hype?  Or will my life be infinitely better without Windows?

Saturday night dinner preparation; N steadfastly gripping the pepper shaker, rendering the main course inedible.  I'm always grateful when someone else takes pictures of him and I, because one can only have so many photos of one's own self-portrait enlarged pores and intense magnification of one's frown lines. 

Comments

[kate]

honestly my mac book and I are in love. I would never give it up and I would never go back to a PC.

Mac Books are super fast and wonderful in so many ways.

Took a little getting used to but totally worth it!

[Josie]

my favorite thing about my ibook is never having to control alt delete anything. I love my computer, and I never loved any computers before it. =)

[Loralee]

I am trying to decide which would be more difficult...Yearning for a companion or having it be Dr. Laura.

Tough call.

[Angella]

I asked the same computer question last week and was surprised at how many people dissed the Mac. I think I may stick with my PC.

Next time I come to Vancouver we are so doing a photo shoot of you two beautiful blonds :)

[Thursday]

Just the idea of a Mac puts me into a blind panic so I'm no help.

I'd certainly suggest starting to listen or just hearing music again - tough as it may be but it may help 'desensitising' it sooner rather than later and you may also find things that in future will remind you that things are 'better now'. That's my pennyworth of wisdom anyway.

[Bokker]

You will be able to listen to music again, I'm sure, but perhaps never in the same way. I wrote about a similar thing on my blog- how my relationship with music has changed since my own heartbreak, the loss of my 16-year-old sister. Here's the link, if you have the time or the inclination to read yet another blog! (it's a cut and paster, I'm afraid).
http://bokker.vox.com/library/post/two-years-and-seven-months-in-music.html

[Jolie]

I made the change from PC to macbook about a year ago and was also scared. I am in college, and a lot of the computer labs are incorporating macs now and I was slowly learning how to use one.

I personally tell you to GO FOR IT. they are different, but not as different as you think. I learned everthing in about a week, tops, and if you happen to know just one friendly mac owner they would, I'm sure, be happy to show you all the quick ins-and-outs that are like I said, not as hard as you'd imagine.

there are lots of things I love about my mac that a pc doesn't have. I can phone or video chat with my boyfriend who lives 2 hours away to stay in touch for free with a built in camera/phone system, I can actually find files and search for things MUCH more easily than on a pc where I would lose things in the infinite abyss sometimes. the only minute problems I've had have been easily solved by calling apple support, and the layout is just simpler and easier to maneuver.

this is long! I will stop! but you won't be disappointed with your pricey but well made choice if you choose it.

[The Yap]

Another beautifully written post.

"And so we roll, to farmer's markets, bookstores, tolerant coffee shops."

That is us, too! I am not a "stay at home" mom I am a "never at home" mom. We don't do well when cooped up together! How can a child be so well-behaved in public, only to turn into a whiny pool of mess when at home?

I truly love Macs, though I do not have one. They are just so much more intuitive to me. They just make SENSE.

[Teej]

I will eagerly await the answers of your readers as I have been deciding between a mac or pc laptop. The little experience I've had with an apple product (my ipod) has led me to believe that those people just do things better, simpler and with less glitches.

[Chookooloonks]

I work on a PC (Dell) and I own a Mac, so I use each daily. And I'm here to tell you that I will NEVER, EVER, EVER spend my own personal money on a PC. NEVER.

EVER.

And I say this as (a) a former techie (engineer), (b) a former writer, (c) a current lawyer, (d) a current photographer, and (e) a current blogger.

[Chookooloonks]

Also? You might want to keep in mind that Macs very rarely are affected by viruses. It appears that nefarious coders like to work all their evil on PCs. Something to keep in mind.

[Janssen]

I work on a PC and use a Mac at home also and I LOVE my Mac and deal with the PC. My mac never just does randomly weird things (like disable buttons) or hides downloads in totally incomprehensible files.

Yes, the Mac is so so worth it. My whole family has switched over now and they are all addicts too.

You won't regret it.

[Christina]

I hear you about music... there are whole groups that minute I hear their tune it brings tears to my eyes. Most of those tears come from when I was younger - like a few of the Cranberries songs which are intertwined with my 1st time falling in love and subsequently being dumped by this person... UGH. I am not as attached to songs as I once was so perhaps there is hope?

As an aside, I love the backslash and counters in your kitchen... I covet such things and talk incessantly to my poor husband about these things. What a dork, huh?

[angie]

I think you would have hated knocked up, for the record.

[wn]

I work on a PC (at the office) and use both a PC and an iMac at home....I only use both at home...because my partner and I fight over who gets the Mac. So sometimes (not often) I compromise.

The iMac was worth every penny. We now use it as our primary entertainment center, our music library, my photo repository and the main hub for my partner MD's aspiring comic book business.

It almost never crashes and it's faster and easier to use than any PC I have ever used.

My two cents!

[Leah]

I use both Mac and PC every single day. It's about 90 percent hype, especially if all you really need to do is word process and make spreadsheets. Macs are great machines, but I don't think they're quite worth the asking price. Depends on how you feel about paying for glamour, I guess...

[patty]

Your blog has been really helpful to me having split from my husband only a couple months ago. I also find it incredibly depressing, and I can't read for any length of time. I'm still in the cardboard tasting stage though, even though I'm also on the right track.

Anyway, my comment is mostly about music. I have also been listening to silence more often. But, there are a few tunes that do my soul right. It helps if you like angry punk rock music, and if you don't, maybe just listen to the Ramones for a few. My favorite post-break-up songs right now are:
I Will Survive by Cake, not the original.
Uncle John's Band, Grateful Dead.
The Great Song of Indifference, by The Boomtown Rats.
Lies, by Violent Femmes.

I'm working on more that don't piss me off or make me cry.

[Hope]

I liked my iBook, it was nice to have the two formats. I didn't learn how to do a ton on it though. And it just died. Sigh.

Eventually you'll be able to listen to music again, but maybe not every song or maybe not quite as often. There are some songs I still can't listen to, that send me in to a panic attack. I notice I've got more 'feeling' playlists, like angry girl, sad and happy on my iPod.

[Sundry]

Ooh, I have to disagree with Leah big-time on glamour being the only differentiator. Even my PC-loving husband has decided the next laptop he buys will come from Apple, because they are just better in a thousand and fifty different ways. I'm pretty sure you will fall in love if you get one.

[Samantha]

If you still want windows, you can partition your harddrive and put windows AND the mac operating system on your apple machine. It's not complicated and tons of people do it.

I'm in the process of scrapping money together to get a macbook myself - not just because it's trendy, but because I figure if I'm going to spend at least $1000 on a machine, I might as well make sure it's top-of-the-line and pretty much uncrashable.

As for the tunes - I've gone tunes for every occassion. If you would like, I'd be happy to send you a playlist that won't make you feel like drowning your sorrows in wine and/or chocolate cake.

ps. Nolan appears to be cuter every time you post a photo. How that is possible I am unaware, but you are one lucky momma.

[Samantha]

Ugh. There are so many typos in that last comment. The editor in me is embarrassed right now.

[Ky Eliza]

I adore my iBook, but my dad, who is a computer engineer and works solely on PCs goes insane everytime he has to use it. "This thing makes NO SENSE," he says. "Au contraire, Dad," I reply, "It just doesn't make sense to YOU."

I go back and forth (Windows based PC at work, iBook at home) and I have to say I like my iBook better. It's never crashed (omg, knock wood), never been infected by a virus, never gotten the Blue Screen O'Death, none of it. It's purely personal choice for me, though.

[jen maiser]

I can really relate to the music thing, having listened to talk (NPR, mostly) for a lot of the past year. When it was music, I had a playlist called "won't make me sad" that had musics that had nothing to do with the ex. The day that I was able to listen to iTunes again completely on random, or turn on the car stereo and zone out was the day that I knew I was well on my way to healing.

[Jen]

Ummm... Mac. Hands down. I will never own another PC. Ever. I suggest the MacBookPro. I've owned mine for a year and it has NEVER EVER crashed on me - not ONCE. It's awesome and pretty and great for really quick photo editing. It's worth the money, really. With most of the PC laptops out there, you'd have to buy two of them to last as long as a Mac will.

[W. Lotus]

I'm new here, pointed here from Chookooloonks. Hi.

I've been a Mac person since 2002 (desktop then PowerBook), and I wouldn't want to go back to Windows, despite currently studying to earn several Microsoft certifications. :-) I didn't find the switch at all difficult. For some reason the OS seems more intuitive to me, but I can't pin it down to statistics. I just like 'em better, that's all.

Oh, and no blue screen of death.