Last weekend, while we were in Ukiah for Shannon’s birthday, Steve took Stella on the mother of all field trips. It was the Sunday morning after the party and, as the sun started peeking through the blinds, I heard the usual early morning commotion. When I asked Steve what time it was, he replied with a simple “You don’t want to know,” and handed me some aspirin and a tall glass of water…for my…sore muscles.

The next thing I know, I am hearing the pitter patter that I instantly recognize as Stella’s straigh-legged-no-upper-body-movement-except-her-head-bobbing-up-and-down running style. I roust only to find her running around the expanse that is Shannon & Ryan’s property. She quickly came running up to me wearing — wait for it — her fleece footed pajamas with her Teva sandals — on the outside! (This is one of those moments that is making me realize that I need to have my camera at my hip at all times.) So, she is babbling in her Stella-speak something about “payyyyyy” and holding a rubber ball fashioned as a globe. I instantly began to realize that a lifetime had passed during those few short hours of slumber.

With Steve’s help, Stella goes on to tell me the story of how they got to go to go to the land of low priced enchantment that is known as WALMART (i.e. the only retail establishment actually open at 6:00 am on a Sunday), and got to buy “EhmoEhmoEhmo” (for those of you who don’t speak ‘Stella’, that is Elmo). So as the story continues to unfold I realize that “payyyyy” is actually pancakes and that before he even has to tell me, I know exactly where the story is headed.

Me: “Duuuude, don’t tell me you actually took her to McDonalds!”

Steve: “Well yeah, and I had to ask the lady at WalMart where it was.”

Me: “So let me get this straight. You took our daughter to WalMart, in her pajamas, with sandals over them, at 6:00am on a Sunday morning, while her mother was at home sleeping off one too many glasses of wine, then proceeded to McDonalds where you bought her the toxic troika of pancakes, sausage and hash browns?”

Steve: “Yeah, and she ate the entire hash brown all by herself.”

Me: “You do realize that, in the period of a couple of hours, we have just become the people we make a sport out of mocking?”

Steve: “Yeah, but can their kids do this? Hey, Stella, where is Antarctica?”

Stella proceeds to spin the globe in her hands until the blue blob of Antarctica is side-up and says, “actica.”

Me: “I give up.”

Wherein we opt to remove the shirt instead of adding the bibb.

Me putting my foot down:

“Stella, I am NOT going to let you eat your string cheese by way of chewing through the plastic wrap. Not this time. Nope. I really mean it. Look here is how you…”

Stella responding obediently:

“WAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH! noWAYnoWAYnoWAY”

Me holding firm:

“Fine!! Here!!”

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.