wanna cry, wanna croon, wanna laugh like a loon...

Despite the "honor" bestowed upon me in college of being "one of the guys", I am truly a girly-girl deep down inside, as evidenced by a multitude of archived posts. I like pretty things and feeling pretty and pretty music and such. I like smell-goods and baking and flowy skirts and ribbons. The last time I lived on my own, my kitchen was quite possibly the girliest a kitchen can be. For that matter, the whole house (I was renting from a friend) was as girly as I could possibly make it. Why not? I am, after all, a girl.

I love to listen to girly music, too. And not just chicks with guitars (everything from Ani right on down to Avril). I adore Lisa Loeb and all of her girly cheesiness. And I love the stuff that you can light the candles, bake some cookies, sit on the floor and collage to... Edie Brickell, Norah Jones, Dido, Fiona Apple, Alison Krauss, other chicks I'm forgetting and will kick myself later for... Most recently, I even discovered an affinity for Minnie Driver - who knew?!

Autumn brings out my girliness with a fury, and my desire to nest and create and not work an eight-to-five (unless, of course, that eight-to-five were in a bed and breakfast I owned... which, in that case, would be a midnight-to-noon-to-midnight... but I digress). Not that I mind my eight-to-five. I could not ask for a better office job, and I am greatly enjoying the stability. I can not resist filling my car with girly music in the Fall, and daydreaming on long drives out Highway 10... or, better yet, down old Arch/167 to 270 and back (the shifting landscape from car graveyards to secluded monestary is unbeatable).

So, it is in that mood that I suddenly decided to pull out Rachel Zylstra's cd this season. Rachel is a friend of Gretchen's in NYC, and Gretchen brought me a copy of her cd a year or so ago on one of her trips home. Somehow, I have managed not to really listen to it before now, and for that I apologize. I thought I had actually met Rachel at Old Devil Moon when I visited G-dawg in NYC, but I just fact-checked via text and Gretchen informed me that was someone else. (I include it anyway, because it went with the title... and because you should add that fun little restaurant to your next trip to the City). Regardless of how I know her, I am loving her music - and so should you. You can listen to mp3's and even purchase a cd by clicking over to her website - and you should. For the record, it makes a good soundtrack for sipping on a venti cinnamon dolce latte... I'm just saying...

if you don't bother, it won't matter

and I'll return here a little faster

back to ordinary thoughts and concrete things

back to reality

maybe this series of frustrations and mistakes

will just lead us into a special state of grace

maybe you're not the one I thought you'd be

I was living in fantasy

~ Rachel Zylstra