We shattered my cousin's world yesterday.

For my 5th aunt's 50th birthday, her 7 sisters (and nieces and nephews and mother and friends) made a song-and-dance revue DVD. It featured such songs as 49 going on 50 ("Your life, Lynne May dear, is an empty page / that menopause will write* on") and Drama Queen ("Drama queen / Young and sweet / Only go-tsap-he**") We watched it yesterday, my aunt howling in laughter on the couch.

*they changed it to "rile on," but I like the original better.
** Hokkien for "50 years old."

In the midst of all this, Audrey (age 5) got a puzzled look on her face. "Mama," she said in consternation, "how old are you?" It eventually came out that she had previously thought her mother was 29 years old. (We are not sure how that happened.) Upon being informed that her mom had actually turned 50, she burst into tears. Watching a small child vacillate between extreme drowsiness and distraught surprise is... weirdly entertaining and simultaneously kind of touching. (More the former than the latter, for this topic.)

Melanie and I played with Garage Band today and made a first attempt to lay down a 6-part a cappella on-the-fly rendition of (Coldplay's Viva la Vida) with two people (after I tinkered a bit and came back with a one-Mel 4-track rendition of Don't Worry Be Happy). Our version of Vida features me rhythmically coughing into my hands in a (failed) attempt to sound more like a bass drum and Melanie leaning back from the microphone and yelling the background "Whoooah-ooah-oooah-ooh-eh" that floats over the last verse. We are definitely not publishing that track.

That track also highlights the fact that neither of us is a soprano, no matter how hard we try. But it was fun! And it taught us things about the way the software worked and how we could record and layer sound in it. And eventually we found ways to tweak ourselves (I found a better bass drum vocal percussion method) and the software (Melanie started looping some of our better snippets) to make better music.

Tonight I'm moving (most of) my bed and (most of) my computer workstation to pika, and sleeping in my new room (sink with Matt, woo!) for the first time. Off to pack!