We won the Peapod lottery! Yes, I found a delivery date. It's two weeks from now, but it's in there, and I can adjust my list based on what we need. It's a relief, because we're starting to run a little low on some vegetarian staples, like tofu and veggie burgers (though the homemade veggie latkes we made a few weeks ago were better than the store-bought kind).
It was gorgeous and warm outside today, and the girls got to take advantage of it at my mom's, running around the backyard and playing on the swingset while mom watched from a safe distance. I was helping with painting my friend's childhood home, since carpets are being installed Saturday, and Jeff was losing the battle to get all the trim and walls done before then on his own. I do love home renovations, because they are tangible. You can see a before and after picture, and even though there's a LOT of work in between, there is something extremely satisfying about watching everything come together.
I've been watching HGTV shows for years, and every now and then, they give us ideas of things we can do to our own house. Now, with doing to much to my friend's place to get it ready for sale, she texted me that we should consider flipping as a business. Ah, if only we had the capital. I don't think the unemployment checks are going to cut it for that one.
After hours of painting, I drove home with the girls, and set about to make dinner while they showered and changed into pajamas. I turned on my phone at just the right time, intending to check on a recipe, but instead found that The Indigo Girls were doing another live stream via Instagram, and I managed to jump on right as Emily ducked out of frame, and Amy Ray began singing Mark Knopfler's "Romeo and Juliet."
The first time I ever heard an Indigo Girls song, I was walking through the hallways during my high school's Teen Arts day. People were playing music, standing by paintings and drawings, and one girl, the older sister of a friend, was playing "Blood and Fire" on her guitar, while belting out the lyrics. I'd never heard the song, but the words hit me, and I remember freezing so I could let the melody wash over me. "Blood and fire are too much for these restless arms to hold/and my nights of desire are calling me back to your fold." I had no idea at the time who the IG were, or that this was even theirs. In fact, it wasn't until a couple of years later that I heard those lyrics again, and instantly remembered my friend's sister, her black hair slipping over her eyes as her fingers strummed the chords, and her voice resonating off the walls. Their music would go on to be the hazy soundtrack of first love and breakups, joyful road trips, and nights filled with the uncertainty and pain of young-adulthood, but that first experience of hearing it has stayed crystal clear.
Ask any woman who grew up in the 1990's, and she'll tell you the Indigo Girls had a profound effect on her. We can all recite Galileo and Closer to Fine from memory, and I guarantee, if you start playing either, you will have a sing along of strangers who all get a glassy-eyed look thinking back to their teenage and college years (Schooled had an amazing commentary on this during an episode earlier this year). I immediately started texting two of my best friends from high school, Andy and Heather, who had shared my love of IG. I have a photo of myself in a boy's off-white and green flannel with my arm around Heather (clad in her college windbreaker), and Andy on the far side of her in a blue tie-tied tee shirt (because that's what the 90's were- plaid, tie dye, and windbreakers) at an IG show sometime in late 1997 or early 1998. It was a concert experience of epic proportions, singing along in harmony with thousands of other equally engaged people who were just as mesmerized as we were. I remember I was in an in-between place at the time, not quite sure what I wanted to do with my life, not knowing where I was going, and what I was willing to give up and leave behind. But I knew that the Indigo Girls, and Heather and Andy, were definitely going to be along for the ride.There is something magical about music. It bonds people, makes us feel like anything is possible. And maybe it is. When I looked at the comments floating through as Amy Ray belted about a lovestruck Romeo, they were all messages of home, and thanks. Kindness flowed through the internet as people wrote lyrics, wrote they were singing along with their partners, their children, their friends. It was rousing and it was joy. And maybe that's really what we all need right now.
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