Earning The Wins.

Sometimes I actually say, "If you don't listen to me I'm going to throw your Barbie Vet Station into the yard."

When such a statement rolls from my lips, several things happen simultaneously.

First, I picture that handheld book I refer to once in a blue moon that tells me I'm destroying my child's self esteem when I say things like this. And that thought, of course, damages my self esteem.

My second thought is that I can't believe I own any type of Barbie anything, much less allow my daughter to play with any type of Barbie anything. As a kid I played with Dusty. She was the "tom boy" version of Barbie and was much more palatable to me. I guess Dusty has been discontinued.

Then I think these thoughts in quick succession: "Some people have seven kids." "Some people have three kids." "Some people have triplets." "Some people are single mothers." None of these thoughts comfort me.

Then I start cooking dinner, I change diapers, I continue cooking dinner, yes, sometimes in that order. And I let them watch too many episodes of Peppa The Pig while I cook dinner with my debate-ably dirty hands. Just kidding. I always wash my hands. I never lotion them. You should see how dry they are.

Then they take baths, most nights. And they brush their teeth, every single night (and morning). That's my non-negotiable. I told them they'll get bugs on their teeth if they don't brush. The book doesn't mention what bugs on teeth is doing to their self esteem.

The twins and I debate every single move we make all day long. From what to wear to when they'll get dressed to what they'll eat to how hot what they're eating is to how much milk is in their cup to what color their cup is to which car seat they sit in to which sneakers they'll wear and on which foot they will wear them on.

Everyday, we hit repeat. As if I didn't win every single debate the day before. They make me earn the wins. Daily. It is literally maddening.

Like clockwork, I miss them exactly 60 minutes after they go to sleep at night. Sometimes so much so that I sneak into their rooms to look at them while they're sleeping. And some nights it wakes my daughter up. You've never seen anyone in your entire life go from sound asleep to wide awake as quickly as my daughter, Katie. And she ends up sleeping in our bed with us. "Gasp" from all the people who don't have kids who are planning on having kids who think they will never do anything wrong when they're a parent.

Sometimes people who don't have kids like to offer sage advice like, "they need to learn to understand the word no." If you are one of those people with no kids miraculously still reading this boring blog who feels compelled to say that to someone with kids, you are an asshole. Love, Kristen.

My kids (almost) always look grown ups in the eyes and say hello and goodbye. They say please and thank you. They give hugs and kisses unless they've got a sixth sense on you. They "take turns" with friends pretty well. You know, sharing isn't exactly instinctual.

I used to have part time help but I haven't in about three months. I'm with my kids 24/7 unless I'm away with the band. I've been reluctant to bring someone else into the mix because on some deep dark level I clearly love the day long debate with two almost three year olds. I like knowing I'm the one to blame if their self esteem gets a little ding in it. I also happen to like the way they smell and I like hearing all the little things they say all day long. They're really funny. And really smart. And nobody that isn't me can make them feel like they're as funny and smart as I do. Don't debate me on that. The fact that I happen to not mind Peppa the Pig is a bonus.

And I've never lost a debate when employing the "I'm going to toss the Barbie Vet Station out into the yard" tactic.

At some point you just have to say "F*** what those stupid books say."
 #Hendo

Huffington Post 3 Part Video Series - Here Come the Brides.

Click on link to watch videos

Sarah and I were featured in a 3 part internet docu-series on The Huffington Post. It was about our wedding, as you can probably tell from the above photograph. We got married in the great state of New York. Yay New York!

It was one of the happiest days of our lives and we were thrilled and honored to share it with The Huffington Post. And we hope you all enjoy watching the videos!

#Hendo

ROLL VIDEOS - HUFFINGTON POST - HERE COME THE BRIDES

Our Midwest Run is ... done

It turns out I really love the Midwest. I mean, I was always a fan of the accent, in fact I have often been accused of having one. I believe it's my blend of Long Island with 4 years in central PA that gives me my Midwestern sound. Debate if you must.

Everywhere we go, people are nice. And the Midwest people were as well. The only difference was that every single person we met on this run was hilariously funny. I mean like full blown colorful character funny. All of them. In fact, I could claim Detroit to be one of my favorite cities on earth based on the people alone. There were too many broken windows around town for me to threaten to move there, but Detroit has some serious character(s). Double entendre intended.

Watch this video from our appearance on uDetroit.com. Four songs plus interview w Pam Rossi. The interview starts out a little awkward, but we pick up steam and it ends up being 45 of the most hilarious minutes we spent together the whole trip. Charo reference courtesy of Sibby's twisted brain.

#Hendo/Posh Spice (roll video)

Facebook is Annoying Me Because...

We have a band page on Facebook. It is http://www.facebook.com/antigonerising. But there is ANOTHER annoying Antigone Rising Facebook page that seems somehow linked to Wikipedia that has 1,930 likes and whenever anyone tries to tag our band or add photos of our band, the post and/or photos end up on this bogus wiki nonsense jackass page that we have no control over.

I google it every which possible way to figure out how to get rid of it. But I can't. And I don't have time to shake a solution out of my computer like I once did. But MAN, it is SO annoying.

I try to report the page as "duplicate or miscategorized" and then it asks which page it's a duplicate of....and the only option it gives me is of the bogus page!

If anyone has any suggestion that leads to the removal of this annoying page, we will give you free things. I mean, we have lots of things. So you can choose the things you want for free.

And no matter what you do, DO NOT LIKE the bogus annoying page. It's the one that DOES NOT have a photo of us on it and has around 1,129 likes. You need to LIKE the one with our photo on it that has over 4,000 likes. Please.

#Hendo

ps- this is a link to the annoying bogus page that I really don't want you to click on. https://www.facebook.com/antigonerising#!/pages/Antigone-Rising/108165915877542
You can also just go to FB and search Antigone Rising - two musician/band pages pop up. The real page has a photo and over 4K likes. The fake one has no photo. And I deeply despise it.

The Gracefully Blog.

Ok. So here it is. The long awaited, maybe too long awaited that you forgot you even wanted it, blog entry about the song Gracefully.

This may be a bit of a blabber blog, too...all over the place. Prepare for take off.

Warning: If you don't like knowing what songs are really about, if you like to interpret them for yourselves and keep it that way, then don't read this blog. Ok? ok. Here we go:

When we entered the studio to record 23 Red, it was initially going to be a 5 song EP. That's right. 5 songs. We asked Gary Philips, our producer, to help us pick the best 5 from about 18 or 19 songs. I believe the initial top 5 songs were No Remedy, Everywhere is Home, Borrowed Time...and...I can't remember what the other 2 were now. But then we did the Kickstarter Fundraiser and suddenly we had a real budget. One that would allow us to record 8 songs...so we added 3 more from the list.

Then we wrote Gracefully by accident and had to add it to the CD as the 9th song. And it just didn't make any sense to go in and record only one song. I mean, all that set up and rigamarole (really a word, go ahead and google it like I just did). So we ended up recording Gracefully and Say You Want to Leave. 10 songs. Full length CD. We went a little over the budget there. But we figured all our fans donated so graciously, we couldn't possibly put out an 8 song CD. I mean. Who does that?

So Gracefully...the song. It came about because Nini thought the CD needed a song with a tempo change on it. All the songs on the CD were in 4/4 time. You know. Tap your foot along and count to 4. She thought the CD needed a song in 6/8 time...or 3/4 time. I'm not totally sure what the difference is between those two time signatures. But tap your foot along to Gracefully. Or Kelly Clarkson's Breakaway. Or Goo Goo Dolls Iris. You'll see. It's in 6...or 3. Go ahead. Tap your foot and count. The 1 comes after the 3 or 6. Not after the 4.

So that was Nini's objective for writing it.

My objective was a little different. Mine was based on a conversation I had with my neighbor the night before we wrote the song. She was at my house and told me a really sad story about someone we both knew who had just been re-diagnosed with cancer. And the friend had kids. And the diagnosis was very grim. My heart sank...and I knew I was going to make Nini write another depressing song with me the next day.

**Good spoiler alert**The friend beat it again and is totally fine. Yay. Phew. Why can't I ever write a song about that? Hmm. Note to self. Write a song about that for once.

Now back to the story of writing the song.

So I show up at Gracewood to write with Nini, and she's strumming a chord progression in 6/8 getting ready for the task at hand...I lay the story on her about my neighbor's friend and we end up talking about our own kids and how that's our worst nightmare come true...I mean, anyone's worst nightmare come true...Nini starts singing placeholder words like fall with the fall, all in the all...and I tell her they're not placeholders, and we debate that for a few minutes...and then I say Gracefully at the end of those "placeholder" words...probably because we were writing at Gracewood...and then we realize we have the start of a real song.

(the ...'s are starting to get on my nerves too...)

So we decide the song is about teaching your kids one final lesson. Even if you were dying, you can still teach them one final lesson. Whatever it is you have to do in life, no matter how hard or difficult, do it gracefully.

Fall with the fall. You know. Sometimes you just have to go with it. There comes a time when you just have to accept it and go with it. And always remember, it's all in the all. You know, give it your all, even when you're falling with the fall. Make the most out of everything you do. Even dying. Wring every little drop out of life while you still have it. This stuff makes total sense to Nini and me, if nobody else.

Just hold your person's hand, and both of you, do it gracefully.

I'm a great believer that blog posts should never be too long. But I haven't even touched upon the intensity of the recording session when we tracked Nini's lead vocal. The session was so intense we had to stop a few times. It was making our stoic producer, literally, cry. And we sent Nini on the most intense roller coaster ride of emotions in the vocal booth. You should go read Nini's blog post about it. She blogged immediately after the session. Read it here: Worktape: In The Studio, Gracefully. It's the 3rd post down.

Alright. Nap time is over for the babies. I don't even have time to spell check. I'm just going live.

...#Hendo

Times Two (the book ) & 23 Red (the CD)

Times Two is available online and in bookstores everywhere:

Antigone Rising's new CD, 23 Red, is due out in record stores and on iTunes everywhere on August 2, 2011.

It Takes One to Know One - Marriage Equality in New York State

I've come to blog here the past several days attempting to say something that hasn't already been said. I've spent quite a bit of time calling Senators, asking all my friends to call Senators, reading other blogs, posting comments, participating in certain threads where my time could have been better spent smashing my head into a brick wall, etc. You get the point.

The long and short of it is this.

There's nothing I can say here that hasn't already been said on various Senators personal Facebook pages (Senator Dean Skelos, Senator Greg Ball), or on The Huffington Post comment section of Sarah's Op-Ed, "My Children Have Everything...Except Married Parents.

I've read many inspiring posts from people all over New York who are in favor of Equality. And, unfortunately, I've read some posts from people against Equality. Thankfully, the posts against Equality are outnumbered, at least on the places I'm surfing the web (which are all the places I've listed above).

Usually the anti-equality posts are religiously fueled, and more often than not contain grammatical and spelling errors...I'm just saying. And I've yet to read a single post from that side of the argument that is strong enough to deny any human being their civil rights.

What those posts against Equality have done for me, however, is they've reminded me of what it was like growing up gay.

I've said it before, and I meant it, I didn't realize I was gay until I was nineteen. My brain couldn't even internalize the thought of being gay, that's how abhorent a concept it was for me. I buried it so deep down that I never once had a conscious inkling of it until I was in college. 

I learned to fear being gay from the world I lived in. Nobody ever told me directly, "Kristen, don't be gay. It's a very bad thing." Yet, the noxious homophobic gas pumped into our society's air that I was breathing in on a daily basis made me know for sure that it was a really really bad thing to be.

I knew it.

You knew it.

And some people still think it.

So I'd like to share this story from my childhood with all the people who are posting against Equality. Even though I know none of you read my blog. This is my attempt to say something that hasn't already been said - or - This is me bashing my head against a brick wall again. Here goes:

Dear People Unwilling to Give Me My Equal Rights,

When I was growing up I was a tom boy.

Every kid has "their" reason for why they feel different. The kid with the acne, the kid with the hair that's too curly, the too fat kid, the too skinny kid, the kid with the thick glasses, the poor kid, and on and on.

Anyway. I was the kid who felt awkward every time my girlfriends wanted to do girly things. I didn't want to wear makeup or carry a Le Sports Sac. I wasn't comfortable with designer jeans, or leg warmers, or capezios. Every day I wore my Lee Jeans and Pro-Keds. That was my uniform, day in and day out. While it doesn't sound that bad, every day I got dressed I thought about how different I felt.

I know. Whoopeeding. I wasn't picked on. I would have picked on you first. And I wasn't bullied. I would have bullied you first. Think about that for a second, anti-equality person posting on the internet.

I was an athlete. I loved sports. I played every season. I lived for it.

One season, my high school coach was a lesbian. We didn't know this because she was "out." We knew this because she looked like a dyke - I'm just going to use the word. She was very stereotypically lesbian looking in every way.

She threatened me to my core.

But I was 15 years old and I had coping mechanisms in place to be sure I was not affected by her existence at all. 

What I did was write a "funny jingle" for everyone on the team to sing. It was a song about how gross and abhorent our scary lesbian coach was. And I would sing it.

The memory is so overwhelming for me that it stops me dead in my tracks. Fifteen year old me felt I had to sing a song about the grossness of my lesbian coach so that my teammates, and I for that matter, wouldn't catch on that I was a lesbian too.

Fear. Breeds. Intolerance. Fear. Breeds. Hatred. Fear. Breeds. Bullies.

Much worse things have come from fear than a really bad jingle sung in a high school locker room.

We have an opportunity to alleviate some of the fear that maybe your fifteen year old son or daughter or niece or nephew or neighbor might feel one day. That alone should be enough reason to vote for Equality.

#Hendo