Laurie Gould -- Midlife Mom Songs

This Mother’s Day, Boston has given me a beautiful bouquet of flowering trees.  

It’s been a cool spring, and the trees have been in bloom for longer than usual, a real treat.   I can’t see these particular flowering cherries without remembering the intense joy they sparked in me as a little girl.   They were pink – my favorite color – the most marvelous bubble-gum pink.   The blooms were fully double, frilly and fabulous.   And a full tree of them, growing higher than I could see!   It was a miracle, this…

I am getting over a cold:  a sneezy, sniffly, thoroughly unpleasant and thoroughly unserious cold.   

I know that it is not COVID.   But you don’t. 

I got this cold from my husband, who is tested regularly at work, so he knew for a fact that he didn’t have COVID.   He also knew for a fact that his symptoms were due to seasonal allergies. Look at that pollen count! (and give me a lick of your ice cream cone because I haven’t tried the Salted Oatmeal Cookie but it sure sounds interesting) and haven’t you…

Featuring the acting talents of Sheree Galpert and Chris Combest, with the inimitable Julia Ansolabehere on the clarinet.  Cheers!

Your Efficient Neighbors hang their laundry to dry rather than running the dryer.  Your Efficient Neighbors do not even OWN a dryer!  They only run the washing machine when it is very, very full; and they never, ever use hot water. 

Your Efficient Neighbors keep their home at a breezy 55 degrees in the winter, and a balmy 82 degrees in the summer.   To deal with the winter chill, Your Efficient Neighbors wrap themselves in scarves and shawls hand-knitted from responsibly-sourced cashmere. 

Your Efficient…

I used to live in the suburbs, where I had a biggish garden on a smallish lot.   

Now I live on the third and fourth floors of a rowhouse in the city, and I have no lot at all.   I’m still a gardener, though.   I’m just learning how to garden a little differently. 

These days, my main garden canvas is our 5’ x 15’ fourth-floor porch.  We moved into this condo last May; I planted up the porch within a week.   2020 being the year it was, I went for color: big, bright, gaudy annuals, as many shades of pink…

Dear Zoom, 

Please change Gallery view so that my own image is really tiny in the corner of the screen, the way it appears in Microsoft Teams, while everyone else’s image is full-sized.   I’d like my Hollywood Square to be just big enough so that I can make sure nothing really embarrassing is going on behind me; but small enough so that the fact that I’m having a bad hair day won’t be a distraction.   Also, I’d appreciate it if you could program the video to turn off automatically each time I decide to have…

1. I’ve learned that on Zoom, reading glasses are a good substitute for eye makeup.  Makes sense, right?   They make your eyes look bigger.   Plus reading glasses are much faster to remove.   Extra hint:  if it’s a business meeting, go for the unobtrusive reading glasses instead of the rhinestone-studded hot pink pointy ones, much though those are the ones you really love. 
2. I’ve learned how to make masks!    Which involves remembering how to use a sewing machine.   (I got a whole blog post out of that…

A new song to round out the year:  Plague Song #6!

I am back to making masks. 

In April, when the CDC announced that masks were a good idea, after all, probably, my younger daughter and I went full-on Little Women, stitching supplies for the beleaguered Union troops.   Our first masks were made of whatever fabric bits we could scrounge around the house:  bandanas, Japanese gift cloths, a few disastrous efforts involving tea towels.   

Some of our early attempts were less than expert.  We call this one “Loving Hands, Made at Home,” after a favorite…

Here you go -- latest Song of the Plague:

Words, music, instrumentals, video editing and what have you by yours truly.  

If you've missed the other three Songs of the Plague, you can find them on the Videos page.