Country Music: The Beat of My Heart

Music.  Oh my God, I LOVE music.  Whoever was the first person to hum a tune, strum a chord, create an instrument, I thank you.  Without music life would be so boring...and so silent.

Have you ever loved a song so much that you listen to it over and over and over and over and over again?  I have.  I once ran 6 miles with the same song on repeat.  I'm not even close to kidding.  It was after a break up and it was the only song that felt right.  And, yours truly is not the fastest runner, so that was the same song on repeat for about an hour.  

If the title of this blog post, or actually, even this blog, didn't give it away, I am 100% head-over-heels in love with country music.  I'm the girl who buys the entire album the day it comes out, listens to it in its entirety and knows the words to the song that everyone else starts to love 8 months later when that track is finally released to radio.  I have many favorites that never make it to radio and those are the gems that I love sharing with friends.  

I'm obsessed with lyrics.  I have the metrolyrics app on my phone.  Again, not kidding.  I need to know all the words to a song, so I can truly understand what the songwriter was trying to get across, or how the artist wants the listener to feel.  This is why I cannot handle rap.  No offense, but today's rap is horrible.  I'm not talking about old school rap, because you can't mess with lyrics from Biggie, TuPac, Dre, Snoop, Cube, Too $hort, Busta & Bone Thugs.  I may or may not even still have a little Ditty by Paperboy on my iPod.  The rap I can't stand is today's rap, where a single word is repeated over and over and over and then the song basically talks about fucking a fat booty or making millions of dollars.  I guess, bravo to you shitty rapper, you likely do have more money than me, but it doesn't mean that your music doesn't suck.

Moving on, the lyrics to so many songs (both country and not) have created the soundtrack of my life and I love it.  The way a song can take you back to a moment in time...ah!  Amazing.  Trisha Yearwood even has a song about just that "The Song Remembers When".  "Even if the whole world has forgotten, the song remembers when..." Brilliant!

On the flip side, I have in the past googled lyrics to a song that has a great beat, only to find out that the lyrics are terrible.  I wish I could remember the name of a particular song, it came out when I was in college.  Anyway, the beat was awesome!  I remember really listening to the song to understand the lyrics and to my dismay it was basically about high school kids sneaking out to be together.  Lame.  Another song that I'm still amazed at its huge popularity due to the lyrics is "Pumped Up Kicks".  "You better run, better run, outrun my gun..."  REALLY.  Really.

I haven't even touched on concerts yet.  Concerts are my jam.  My thing.  My hobby.  I'm a pro at concerts.  They're SO fun.  I don't even think I have the words to describe how incredible live music is, or more importantly, how it makes me feel. The way I can put it perfectly, is with a song lyric.  So, I'll leave you with this from a song by the legendary Diamond Rio...

"It's like just before dark, jump in the car, buy an ice cream and see how far we can drive before it melts, kind of feeling.  There's a cow in the road and you swerve to the left, fate skips a beat and it scares you to death, and you laugh until you cry...that's how your love makes me feel inside."

Easter Deliciousness

Hope everyone had a great Easter!  We had a nice afternoon over at my Aunt and Uncle's house.  We are Greek, so every year we have lamb on Easter, and after having it for so many years, my Uncle knows how to cook it perfectly.  It was delish!  

I was asked to bring asparagus to the meal.  Which I fully planned on doing my normal way (roasting in the oven with olive oil, garlic, S&P, til the tips are crispy), until across my Instagram feed came this delicious recipe from www.inspiralized.com.  It was SOOOO delish and even the picky eaters in my family loved it!  

On our way home, I was able to snap this pic of the sunset over some of the fields...of course I thought it was extra cute because Norm had his head out the window and you can see his ears.

Random Saturday Thoughts

So I turned 36 in February.  No big deal.  Age is only as old as you feel, or as old as the drunk guy at the bar guesses.  However, for some reason, I've been graced with an onslaught of adult acne.  It's absolutely mind-boggling, as nothing has changed with my routine, and I'm thirty-fucking-six.  Seriously?  Can anyone explain this?  Maybe this is why I've been getting carded left and right again.  I thought those days were over.

Tomorrow is Easter and that will mark the end of Lent and the end of my hiatus from Facebook.  I'm not particularly religious, but I do like the challenge aspect of Lent, and my time spent on Facebook had reached incredible heights.  I needed a break.  I have kept my Instagram, but it's harder to crack out on there, at least for me.  Aside from being much less up to date on the lives of people I never see or talk to, I did realize just how much I use Facebook to keep up to date on what is going on in the world.  I still watch the news, but I guess I haven't felt as "in the know" as I used to.  I spent some time yesterday thinking about whether or not I care about that.  While I am looking forward to joining the Facebook world again, I do plan to clean up my friend list a bit and only check Facebook during times that make sense...when my husband is talking to me, while I'm driving and when I'm on the toilet.  I'm kidding about two of those.

Well, we just planted our garden for the summer.  I was never into gardening before I met Kris, but both my grandfathers were big gardeners, so it runs in the family.  I did all of the planting this year, which is rare, because I really don't care for the shit he mixes into the soil (it really is shit), but I sacked up and did it.  I actually am glad because I feel a much more vested interest in the success of the plants.  There's nothing better than going out to the garden in the summer and picking a salad, knowing that it's free of poisonous pesticides and full of delicious nutrients.  If you haven't gardened, I highly suggest giving it a try.

Have a Happy Easter, everyone!  Cheers!

Welcome!

Hi!  So the time has finally come to start the blog I've been talking about starting for months...years.  Let's be real here.

I think my lag in starting was that I felt I needed a concept, and everything I thought of wasn't working in my head.  Well, I finally found something that works!

Welcome to The Hillbilly Hippie.  I'm Nikki.  I live in a small country town in Northern California with my husband {Kris}, dog {Norm} and chicken {Estelle}.  Norm is the coolest little dog on earth and Estelle is one weird chicken who lays some tasty eggs.  I thrive on country music, organic vegetables and meat, red wine and G&T's, exercise, family, friends and good times.  I shy away from anything and everyone fake (including botox and spray tans), hate waiting in lines and have no tolerance for bullshit.  I'm generally happy, but always working on being happier, I swear a lot and keep things blunt.  This blog will be a rambling of the things that run through my head, music, food, travel and fun.  

Thanks for reading!  Cheers!