Random and Odd

offering up my heart.

Cold Sisters Cuddle by Random and Odd
Cold Sisters Cuddle, a photo by Random and Odd on Flickr.

Last week on my monthly trip to Ikea, Dan was rambling about how he was going to do this thing where he hooks up his old phone to speakers and streams Pandora. I didn’t understand how that would work because those phones are not activated. He said they didn’t have to be, as long as I had WiFi to run them on, they still work, just not the calling option.
Really now?
I have never kept an old phone before because it usually had Tide detergent filled water seeping from the cracks. The last one that had to be retired was because of a cracked screen. It’s still functional, but the tiny flakes of glass in my finger was reason enough to bite the bullet and buy a new one.
I pulled the finger slicer out of the old phone drawer and charged it up. I had to redownload Pandora and I was questioning this plan the whole time. It works! Now I can listen to music while I edit photos without it being all choppy and slowing my computer down to a snail’s pace!

Pandora is my new favorite thing. Shut up, I know I am late to the game. The last time I used it was when it first came out and they had commercials every other song and the amount of music was very limited. Recently I have been on this weird music kick. I don’t know what you would call the genre of music that it falls under, but it’s not the stuff you hear on the radio and at 41 years old, it feels like I have heard every single song on the radio and I need something else.
I’m a 15 year old that suddenly decided to quit the cheerleading team and only listens to underground music and rolls her black eyelined eyes at everything.

Last week was one of those weeks where I buried myself in my office to edit pictures with a vengeance. I had about 7 client’s proofs on deck and had 2 more sneaking in before Christmas and with Kara coming home, they couldn’t wait. Pandora felt my pain and stepped up to provide me with that mix of music that had me smiling and sometimes even crying. I mean, I was bawling at Passenger’s – Let her Go. Rosenburg with that haunting, British-folky sound gets me every single time. That last line…oh my lawdy my heart just breaks.
I have been writing down all the music that I love so at some point when I have a second I can download it and make a CD that I will never remove from my car.
One of my clients and friends came over to go over his pictures and he laughed at my broken phone set up and questioned my musical choices. He said, “This actually fits the weird mood you have been in the last week.”
Music is so revealing. I hadn’t talked to him about anything I have been going through because he’s a part of our BFF group and I didn’t want to talk about it to one person and then have to deal with it from anyone else later. I’m lucky enough to have pockets of friends that I can lean into and it won’t overlap with the other pocket. It does sometimes, with the photography club, running team, hockey team, skydiving team…they all intermingle now and I NEVER saw that happening. I’m happy though because I have the greatest friends and they are good for each other. Anyway, I was surprised he picked up on my mood.
“I’m good now. I’m better than good.” I’m on a different road and I have to switch the way I have been thinking for the last four years. It’s scary, but I am ready.

The past week the Pandora has been honed with the thumbs up, thumbs down and it even knows what time of day what I want to hear! At night it’s that folky sound. During the day it’s Warren Haynes grit. Sometimes she slips in some country and I can be heard belting out, “Follow your Arrow” by Kasey Musgraves.
I blame this new music interest on Carson Daily…he got me hooked on Joshua James which has opened up so much more music I wouldn’t have normally listened to.