I love music. I love to constantly have a steady stream of it playing in the background, shuff-shuff-shuffling any of our hundreds of CDs in a sequence that is never the same twice. I like it when I hear a song that I haven’t heard in a decade and it monorails me down memory lane to the time and space that it holds in my memory. I love the digital age of music wherein I can hear, read about or in other ways stumble across a song, make a mad dash to the computer and have it downloaded and burned in a matter of minutes. That is what I call progress.

Progress is also not having to be a slave to format. Yes, you know what I am talking about. The ear-bleeding perkiness that is….children’s music. It burrows into your subconscious until you find yourself singing a song, not even realizing “AGH! This is from the Hi-5 soundrack — what am I doing?” I blame Steve. HE is the one that went to Borders to buy the DVDs, and HE is the one that just had to download all 37 of their cotton-candy-top-40-the-speakers-ooze-sugary-sweetness songs. Action had to be taken. So here, in all it’s glory, I give to you the anecdote for all that is perky. Everyone, I give you: Stella’s Bad Mamma Jamma Mix ’05.

This mix encapsulates the following important kid-AND-MOM- friendly musical stylings: world music, hip indie/alternative tunes, French-Cajun music, western cool, bluesy cool, reggae mon

• “E Eats Everything” || They Might Be Giants
• “Jump in the Line” || Harry Belafonte
• “Mahna Mahna” || Cake
• “La La La La Lemon” || Barenaked Ladies
• “A,B,C et 1,2,3” || Michael “Beausoleil” Doucet
• “Go for G!” || They Might Be Giants
• “The Bowling Song” || Asleep at the Wheel
• “(Put the lime in the) Coconut” || Toxic Audio
• “Rubber Duckie” || Kelly Hogan
• “Rolling O” || They Might Be Giants
• “Little Sack O Sugar” || Taj Mahal
• “(The Banana Boat Song) Day-O” || Harry Belafonte
• “Bare Necessities” || Tony Rebel

May this be the first of many wonderful listening memories, my hip little dancing girl.