She Has Joy, She Has Grace, She Has Seasons in the States

She’s beauty and she’s fun, she’s Miss United Sun

Rachael Bao
Insteaducation
Published in
3 min readMar 3, 2024

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Photo by Thiago Cerqueira on Unsplash

Welcome to the made-up beauty party that’s not a competition nor a pageant, but just me changing the baby’s clothes alongside mashsups. I’ve tried the coco melon method for baby sleep, (and super simple, my preferred baby entertainment channel, also barefoot books, the most emotionally moving songs set to warpy animations) but the baby really does like 80s (and occasionally 70s or 90s) classic rock videos that I either recall from my parents’ collections of have been introduced to by more knowledgeable music era connoisseurs.

The side effect is that after listening to their songs for decades I finally know what AC/DC and Scorpions look like. Also, I accidentally learned both that She Drives me Crazy has lyrics outside the chorus, and what the words are.

The child doesn’t appreciate mashups as much as I do. I was really hoping she’d like I really like a hole. But she doesn’t. She likes when I make up songs, though.

Photo by Victor Grabarczyk on Unsplash

Backstory, for some reason, during the postpartum week, I had Like a Prayer stuck in my head, especially when I was trying to roll my IV pole friend to the hospital toilet without waking up the family on the other side of the curtain. What was the trigger? Was it “I have no choice/I hear your voice”? Probably.

So, someone on a pod somewhere happened to mention that there’s a great game called Like a Dragon.

The automatic song-writing machine kicked in. Since I had no clue what this game was or even the genre or game mechanics, the first version was just a recap of the plot of The Hobbit.

Photo by R M on Unsplash

Much like my friend’s kid, who was disappointed that How to Train your Dragon had so little practical advice about dragon training, I was disappointed by the lack of actual dragons in the Like a Dragon game. The title is apparently a reference to the company that makes the game, or something.

Polygon had a very enthusiastic explainer and I got enough information to rewrite the song. The baby likes both versions. That episode of Besties also mentioned Tingus Goose. I’m glad I didn’t hear about it until after the birth. The baby likes songs, in general, just as everyone has always said all babies do.

As for Seasons in the States, we don’t know if that will actually happen or not. It’s expensive and we spent a lot on the house and grad school. It has occurred to me that the baby is the only biological relative I have seen face to face in about seven years. It’s nice to see my extended family on Zoom, but it’s a different level to be in a room with family.

Still nothing on the paywall. If there is a miraculous burst of energy this week — heh, I spent all of Wednesday and Saturday sleeping, I think — there might be something up there. I’ve got the story about thinking I was going to fight with Grandma about the baby bathtub. There’s some terms I learned from Business School that I will start trying to use as amusingly as possible.

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Rachael Bao
Insteaducation

With 2 A’s. She/her. Oft autocorrected, but great SEO! Married for spellability, remarried for Pizza. I miss sewing with Dad and watching Star Trek with Mom.