Music to clean the house to. . .

Someties when you're doing the dishes, you just gotta sing something by turns peppy and profound. You know what I'm talking about ladies. Avril Lavigne's "What the Hell."

I love that chorus: "And I really don't care about/If you love me/If you hate me/You can't save me, Baby. . ."

Recall Alan Rickman, that wonderful actor—so moving as Colonel Brandon in Emma Thomas' fabulous adaptation of Jane Austen's "Sense and Sensibility."

What a fine actor. How skilled at making a pained smile. Don't you love it in that movie when Marianne is sick and he asks, desperately, for Marianne's older sister Elinor to give him a way to help: "Give me an occupation, Ms. Dashwood, or I shall run mad."

Alan Rickman is said to have pronounced the following: "When I am 80 years old and sitting in my rocking chair, I'll be reading Harry Potter. And my family will say to me, 'After all this time?" And I will say, "Always."

So sad that he only lived to 69.

But anyhow here I am 41, by all accounts middle aged (I wish there were a sexier term for that. Maybe cougar-aged?), and still listening to Avril Lavigne.

When I'm 50, my family will probably say to me, "After all this time?" And I will say, "Always."

So for now, it's "What the Hell." Then, later, because I'm moody, I'll probably be crying and wearing dripping eyeliner and mascara and singing along with Ms. Lavigne's heartbreak torch song "Wish You Were Here," with those sad-catchy lyrics: "Damn, damn, damn. What I'd do to have you here."