Please Blitz Jeremy, and Yeah, I Finally Gave Away My Piano

Before I get to my silly post for today, I want to encourage you to visit the A-Z Challenge Blog.  One of our co-hosts, my buddy Jeremy, broke his ankle, had surgery, and is needing some bloggy love.  As a team of co-hosts, we wrote his "About Me" feature as a surprise.   (There are more coming up in the following weeks leading up to April about the most of the rest of us).  He's also being Blitz Attacked (see Friday's post).  I ask the favor that you visit the A-Z Challenge Blog even if you're not involved just to say, "Get better soon!" or whatever fits your style. I know the encouragement will help him heal.  Thanks.

*****

My piano has a new home, and it’s a good home.  Yet I’m a nostalgic person, and the big hole in my family room reminds me that though something may have sentimental value, I’m in the place where I need to let go of that which no longer serves a purpose for me, and can bless someone else. Then I have more room to get myself and my essential stuff organized.

I can’t play the piano anymore.  I used to sit down to keep in touch with enough frequency that I could still play “Color My World” by Chicago.  The reason I could play it was that it’s the only song that was taught to me without sheet music, so I’d sit and let muscle memory take over, and the song would just flow.  It’s a really neat feeling when that happens.

I’m going to take a little side trip here and explain about the lack of sheet music, which I know you’d expect the math nerd and recipe girl to need.

I had to have a ride to the bus-stop.  We’d moved, but I still got to go to my originally planned junior high.  Therefore it wasn't always a good time for The Nutritionist to pick me up when the bus dropped me off.  I'd just go to PieGirl’s house.  Sometimes for hours.  We sure didn’t mind!

She not only taught me that song, she introduced me to Billy Joel and we’d sing “heartattackackackack” at the top of our lungs while listening to “The Stranger”.  She tutored me, patiently, since I couldn't cook ANYTHING at the time, in how to make a perfect apple pie from scratch.  She was good at so many things, and such a good friend.  (I can still make apple pie, by the way.  Though I'd pick playing Color My World.  I also know how to buy a good pie.)

Here in my present, The Transporter, along with already kicking some serious talent around on electric guitar, wants to learn how to play the keyboard.  My former (practice saying it, Tina) piano can’t hold a tune (oh, that wasn’t on purpose but I like it), was ancient, and was taking up real estate that could be used for a keyboard.  (So could The Transporter’s own room…but any parent of a teenage boy knows that to make the normal laws of physics apply in said space, you need to add to the equation what a guy is willing to do to keep his room clean…)

We've had an ad up on craiglist with full disclosure of my former piano’s pros and cons, and had three calls in a month.  I thought the ad had expired, honestly.  Yesterday a family, with four little girls 9 and under, came to get it.  All four want to learn to play.  Mom is a pianist, and surprisingly, was very happy with what she found.  “It has all its keys.  All its keys make a sound.  We have someplace to start from, and we can put our money into fixing it up.”

They had driven two hours, rented a trailer, bought tie-down straps, and were ready to go.  I had a delightful time with SuperMom while the (now four, due to the strategic arrival of my three) strapping men got that old relic out the door and secured in the trailer.

Good-bye, Grandma Vivian’s piano.  Swissie and I had fun with our lessons, and it was lovely being the caretaker of this family “treasure” all these years.  Good luck to the four little girls whose names all begin with A, and to homeschool mom and super nice dad.  Enjoy.

~Tina, who wonders if you know how much dust accumulates under a piano which has been sitting for thirteen years…And yes, I could actually play that.  (Mine didn't have the little riff at the end though.  This was the closest I could find.)