Special thanks (in order of appearance) to Selena, Jay, Jancis, Debra, Ben, Berkley, Trenton, and Clay
Credits:
The Bathtub Mermaid: Tales from the Tub is written and produced by Melissa A. Bartell, and is recorded and produced using the BossJock iPad app and Audacity.
Bathtub Mermaid album art was created by Rebecca Moran of Moran Media
Music used for the opening and closing is David Popper’s “Village Song” as performed by Cello Journey. This music came from the podsafe music archive at Mevio’s Music Alley, which site is now defunct.
#Audio. A mother finds solace in music during a delay at the airport.
Excerpt:
Kathleen stared up at the status board, and couldn’t help letting out a frustrated groan. Her flight had been delayed. Again. She liked her life as a road warrior, for the most part. She got to stay in lovely hotels, spend time in all the great cities of the world, and, she would probably never run out of frequent flier miles and first class upgrades. Flight delays, however, were something she would never enjoy.
Still, there were times when she longed to walk through the door to her own home to a sloppy, drooly greeting from her dog, a nearly ancient flat-coated retriever named Parker. (He was named after her childhood crush, Parker Stevenson, whom she used to watch every week on The Hardy Boys. No one, she thought, had ever made a better Frank.)
Special thanks to Debra Smouse, for the song suggestion.
“I Pray on Christmas” is by Harry Connick, Jr.
Credits:
The Bathtub Mermaid: Tales from the Tub is written and produced by Melissa A. Bartell, and is recorded and produced using the BossJock iPad app and Audacity.
Bathtub Mermaid album art was created by Rebecca Moran of Moran Media
Music used for the opening and closing is David Popper’s “Village Song” as performed by Cello Journey. This music came from the podsafe music archive at Mevio’s Music Alley, which site is now defunct.
#Audio. Happy Hanukkah! It’s the second night of Hanukkah, so this is a Hanukkah story.
Excerpt:
She played the chord again, and saw the children gathered around her focus their attention. And why not? They’d grown up with digital instruments: violins and cellos that relied on computer chips for their tone, guitars that made their sound through a wireless amplifier, and pianos that could be rolled into a cylinder the size of a zip-top sandwich bag. Her guitar didn’t have any chips, and it couldn’t be made smaller. It was wire and wood and care and love and history, and its lines were the only ones Sylvia had caressed since her beloved Harry had passed on five years before.
“I’m going to sing you an old song now,” she told them. “And you’re going to sing it with me. It’s in Hebrew. So, listen once, and then repeat.”
Special thanks to Joy Plummer and her daughters Sophie and Ruby for their singing.
Credits:
The Bathtub Mermaid: Tales from the Tub is written and produced by Melissa A. Bartell, and is recorded and produced using the BossJock iPad app and Audacity.
Bathtub Mermaid album art was created by Rebecca Moran of Moran Media
Music used for the opening and closing is David Popper’s “Village Song” as performed by Cello Journey. This music came from the podsafe music archive at Mevio’s Music Alley, which site is now defunct.
Flash-fiction written for 2016 Holidailies: A young woman and her grandmother add Holiday Magic to some seasonal plants.
Excerpt:
The inside of the greenhouse is a technological marvel, with heat lamps and misters and every kind of measuring implement ever invented to track growth rates and division patterns, to determine optimal climate zones and confirm hardiness. Even the ceiling was programmable on a section-by-section basis so that day-lilies could thrive next to night-blooming cactus if the Gardeners so desired.
The Bathtub Mermaid: Tales from the Tub is written and produced by Melissa A. Bartell, and is recorded and produced using the BossJock iPad app and Audacity.
Bathtub Mermaid album art was created by Rebecca Moran of Moran Media
Music used for the opening and closing is David Popper’s “Village Song” as performed by Cello Journey. This music came from the podsafe music archive at Mevio’s Music Alley, which site is now defunct.
Susan Fogel: Writer, real estate guru, sewist, and my mother, we chat about life in Mexico, espresso bars with no decaf, and I even let her tell one baby story.
(This interview is rambly and unedited. Probably contains adult language. You’ve been warned.)
Credits
Music
Music for this episode was provided by Mevio’s Music Alley, a great resource for podsafe music. Visit them at music.mevio.com. Opening: “Soap in a Bathtub” by Stoney Closing Music: “You Can Use My Bathtub” by Little Thom
In 2004, my husband and I moved from California to Texas.
In 2005, I turned the story of our trip into a creative writing piece called “Crossing the Mojave” and won a contest with it.
Excerpt
Fuzzy has gone the entire trip guzzling root beer and orange soda, but I am being good and sticking to water as much as possible, partly because it’s cheaper but mostly because it isn’t quite so vile when it is no longer throat-numbingly cold. I open my mouth to urge him to drink water, but he has a closed expression, so instead I mutter something about how the word “Mojave” changed to “Mohave” when we crossed the state line. He has no response.
I keep seeing signs for the Grand Canyon, which I have not seen since a school field trip when I was a child living in Colorado, but my husband reminds me that the dogs cannot eat until we stop for the night, and that as much as I seem to want to pretend this is just a road trip, it is not a true vacation. Instead, it’s a one-way trek halfway across the United States, to an apartment we have never seen that will be filled with furniture we do not own. I don’t tell him that I have to keep pretending we’re just exploring so I don’t get overwhelmed at the journey we’re making—not the physical trip, though that is grueling enough—but the uprooting of our lives.
Intellectually we both understand that this decision is the right one, that we were caught in a never-ending loop of bills and emergencies, that my company was failing, and that the cost of living in the Bay Area was increasing. Our ultimate destination, Dallas, Texas, isn’t the first choice for either of us, but it is the best we could agree on, and sometimes that has to be enough. Nevertheless, the knowledge that there is nothing familiar waiting for us at the end of the road is more than a little daunting.
Credits
Music
Music for this episode was provided by Mevio’s Music Alley, a great resource for podsafe music. Visit them at music.mevio.com. Opening: “Soap in a Bathtub” by Stoney Closing Music: “You Can Use My Bathtub” by Little Thom
Great dialogue, fantastic ensemble, and chyron to beat all chyron – that’s why I watch iZombie, and why you should, too.
Credits
Music
Music for this episode was provided by Mevio’s Music Alley, a great resource for podsafe music. Visit them at music.mevio.com. Opening: “Soap in a Bathtub” by Stoney Closing Music: “You Can Use My Bathtub” by Little Thom
In which the Bathtub Mermaid shares a piece called “Mermaid Child,” written for the Summer Love Notes project.
Excerpt
I could swim before I could walk, and before I was seven I was an expert in swimming out just far enough to find the warm current, sweeping my arm to make jellyfish float away, and body surfing into shore without ending up rolling in white water.
I flew in the water.
I believed in mermaids.
(I’m pretty sure I was one.)
Music for this episode was provided by Mevio’s Music Alley, a great resource for podsafe music. Visit them at music.mevio.com. Opening: “Soap in a Bathtub” by Stoney Closing Music: “You Can Use My Bathtub” by Little Thom
IntroCast
In which the Bathtub Mermaid gives a very brief rundown of what to expect over the next 30 days.
Credits
Music
Music for this episode was provided by Mevio’s Music Alley, a great resource for podsafe music. Visit them at music.mevio.com. Opening: “Soap in a Bathtub” by Stoney Closing Music: “You Can Use My Bathtub” by Little Thom
In which the Bathtub Mermaid babbles about the use of the term -30- in this wrap-up post.
Credits:
Music for this episode was provided by Mevio’s Music Alley, a great resource for podsafe music. Visit them at music.mevio.com.
Opening: “Soap in a Bathtub” by Stoney
Closing Music: “You Can Use My Bathtub” by Little Thom
Recorded and Produced using BossJock
For more of the Dog Days of Podcasting, click HERE.