Geico for your money.

I was driving around my hometown with my parents on Christmas Eve, looking at the neighborhood that usually puts luminaries out.

Except this year that neighborhood did not do luminaries, which means Christmas should have been canceled and I just wasted a trip home. (Best guess as to why they didn’t put them out this year: burn ban.)

I had surgery on Dec. 20, and I was in a mood on Christmas Eve. My head throbbed and my face was swollen.

I was in the backseat, and I started talking about how I want a prenup if someone ever decides that I’m maybe marriage material.

My parents didn’t seem to like this idea of mine.

Marriage is forever, they said. Through sickness and in health, as long as you both shall live. ‘Til death do you part.

At this point, I thought the only appropriate response to that was to start singing some Kayne:

We want prenup! We want prenup! It’s something that you need to have, cause when she leaves, she’s gonna leave with half.

🤷‍♀️

Merry Christmas to my parents, from me.

We don’t want no gold diggers! 

Top 10 List

I am getting dangerously close to 50,000 blog views on thishereblog.

I'm pretty excited about that. I remember when I was excited to hit 6,000 views. Also, most of them are probably my parents (hi Mom and Dad!). 

I thought I'd walk you through a little history of thishereblog first, before we delve into what really matters here, which is music.

First off: My most read blog post ever, of all time, is a story about how Eric Church stole my sharpie. 

That makes me laugh so hard, you have no idea. :) 

I have blog views from 29 states and 11 countries. I don't know anyone from out of the country, but if you're reading, this, hi! Welcome to my little piece of Kansas.

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I started this blog when I switched from working in journalism to working in marketing and public relations. As a newspaper reporter, you write all day, every day. 

In marketing and public relations, you don't write as much. Maybe you write something twice a week, or twice a month. 

The idea behind starting my blog was to keep up writing personally, that way I would never lose it professionally. But the thing is, guys, I will never lose it professionally (or personally). It's something I've always done and will continue to do for the rest of my days.

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This is a post I've been pretty excited to write about. 

My Dad and I talk about this pretty often. We throw around songs and try to name our top five favorite songs of all time, from any artist, ever.

I'm going to name my top 10 songs for this blog post, and then go into other people's Top 10 list in another blog post. 

I also enjoy getting to know everyone's pissed off song. (Mine is Misery by Soul Asylum. My brother's is Leave me Alone by Hopsin.) So feel free to throw me your favorite pissed off song my way if you read this.

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Here are my top 10 favorite songs, in order. I'll include a brief explanation of why each song is on the list. 

1. Sweet Emotion - Aerosmith

The year was 1998, and the Armageddon movie, and its soundtrack, came out. My middle school friends and I loved the movie, and we bought the soundtrack on CD. I remember who was there that day, where we were, and the color of the walls when I first heard this song on that soundtrack.

The moment I heard this song is the moment I fell in love with music. My Dad has a really funny and embarrassing story about how I came home from that friend's house and told him about this new band I just heard. 

That new band? 

"It's this new band, Dad, called Aerosmith!"

I was 12, guys. I didn't know any better. 

My life hasn't been the same since. 

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2. Love Without End, Amen

I don't know about the whole marriage thing, but if I ever find someone willing to put up with me forever, this would be my Dad-daughter dance song. 

It will likely never happen, but I still hold a little bit of hope that it might.

A tiny bit of hope. It's microscopic, but it's there. And it's my favorite George Strait song ever.

Daddies don't just love their children every now and then. It's a love without end, Amen.

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3. Record Year - Eric Church

This is the song that first got me hooked on Eric Church's music. I've written about it plenty before, but when I figured out that this song is a break up song, it changed my life. 

It saved my life. 

As with a lot of his music, this song found me after a break up. I could give you the details, but in the end, how and why the relationship ended doesn't really matter. (For the record, he married the girl he cheated on me with.)

She got a husband who will probably cheat again. 

I got Eric Church.

I win. 

Front row in Denver. My heart is full.

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4. Carry On My Wayward Son

My nickname in college was Kansas for a summer. Every time I hear this song, I'm 22 years old again. I'm singing this song at a karaoke bar, I'm drunk, I'm not sure where my cell phone or purse is, but I'm singing this song surrounded by my buddies and I really don't care about anything else in life.

Because the Kansas girl is singing Kansas. 

Don't you cry no more.

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5. Along Came You - John McCutcheon

I went to college in a little town in Kansas called Winfield, which has a pretty big bluegrass festival. I'd never listened to bluegrass music before, but my Dad came to town and took a friend and I to this festival while I lived there.

Along Came You has been my favorite love song since. 

Along came you, just when I thought my whole life was through. Never believed there was more than I knew, then along came you. 

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6. Some of It - Eric Church

This shouldn't surprise anyone, but I have another break up story involving Eric Church's music. Shocking, right?

The guy I was dating had been talking to his ex-girlfriend from years earlier, and was planning to meet up with her. I begged him not to and to stop talking to her. (It turns out that if you have to beg your boyfriend not to cheat on you, he's probably not marriage material.)

"She just wants a shoulder to cry on," he told me.

Yeah, buddy, that's not what she wants to cry on.

I got pissed off one night and left his place, for the last time. Before I left, I stood in his living room for a few minutes to see if he would get up and try to stop me from leaving.

He didn't.

There's a feeling you have when you leave someone for the final time. I looked around his place, at his very nice things, thought of his very nice and new truck, and I thought to myself: I can't believe I will never see any of this again.

I went out to my car and turned the ignition on.

Eric Church's beautiful voice sang to me: "What really makes you a man, is being true to her 'til your glass runs out of sand."

It's funny how music finds you when you need it most. 

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7. Mississippi Queen - Mountain

I found this song because it's one of my Dad's favorite songs. I don't think I need to explain it, but everything about this song is perfect and beautiful.

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8. Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen

I don't think I need to explain this one to anyone. My favorite text message to send to people when we're talking about stormy weather: Thunder bolts and lightning, very very frightening.

:)

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9. Where the Green Grass Grows - Tim McGraw

I always played this song in my car when I came home from college. When I hit my home county, when I saw that Ford County sign, I always played this song.

For a while, I lived in a concrete jungle. I hated it and was always excited to come home, where the green grass grows.

I've kind of made a career going to little towns instead of big, sexy cities. That's not surprising, given my love for this song. 

Watch my corn pop up in rows

Spend every night tucked in close to you

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10. This Cowboy's Hat - Chris LeDoux

I loved Chris LeDoux when I was little. In 1991, when Western Underground came out, I had the cassette tape of it. I played it over and over in my little tape recorder (it was brown and tan, and had a handle on it. It looked like a purse). 

The thing is, though, I was six years old. I didn't know how to flip the tape over to listen to the other side. I asked my older brother to do it, and he never helped me flip the tape over.

He didn't do it one single time. Jerk.

I couldn't figure out how to flip the tape over (I was six!), so I just pressed the rewind button and listened to the same five songs over and over. 

To this day, I still don't listen to the last five songs on Western Underground, because those songs don't mean anything to me.

The first five songs, though? Those songs are my entire childhood. 

Now if your leather jacket means to you what this hat means to me

Then I guess we understand each other, and we'll just let it be

But if you still think it's funny, man you got my back up against the wall

And if you touch my hat, you're gonna have to fight us all.

But we came up with the test.

Space, the universe, stars, and the Christmas Star have all been topics of conversation amongst my family this week.

It all eventually boils down to a saying that my Dad and I say to each other often.

"You think there's intelligent life out there?" he asks me.

I reply with a quote from Contact: "It'd be an awful waste of space if there's not."

And then we start talking about this blog post, where I quote Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson: "I wonder if we're smart enough to figure out the universe. We define ourselves as intelligent. But we came up with that test."

I'm glad that I created a blog and captured that instant.

https://kansasmusings.blogspot.com/2014/03/geek-central.html

Part 10: BAD WORDS.

I had a really weird phone conversation the other day.

Me: Do you care if I blog about your boyfriend?

Mom: Which one?

Me: All of them.

That conversation does not happen every day. I don't usually get permission from people to write about them, but I felt like this topic needed her okay first.

Please note: The last time I checked, my parents are happily married and have been for 35 years. Or 36, or 82, or something like that.

Also, please note that it's really gross when you're with your parents in public and they get hit on.

Ew.

Get this: This concert and this trip were my idea. I bought the concert tickets. And yet, despite me being the instigator, my Mom is the one who constantly got hit on everywhere we went.

It's not fair.

At the concert, there was a guy sitting beside her. He was with a group of four women, and if one of those was his girlfriend, you could not tell. Not a single one of those girls paid any attention to him (of course, who would pay attention to a guy when you're in the same building as Eric Church?).

The guy was clearly a third wheel among his people.

And the thing is, he was cute. He was around my age. Did I mention he was cute?

But I never got the chance to meet him or talk to him, because he was talking to my Mom DURING THE WHOLE CONCERT.

At one point during the concert, my Mom nudged me.

"My friend just asked me if I'm going out tonight after the show."

BAD WORDS, MOM. BAD WORDS.

I told her she could put a sock on the hotel room door if she wanted to. (Gross.) She laughed.

If I had sat in that seat, I could have had a husband in a year or two. I could have lived in a penthouse palace in downtown Saint Louis (he actually lived in Jefferson City, but whatever). But no, that won't happen now, because my mom stole him from me.

I'm just joking...kind of.

When we went to the Cardinals game, she made a boyfriend there too, but he was an older guy and not as cute as the Concert Boyfriend.

Meanwhile, I did not get hit on once.

Thanks, Mom.