Newness

Today I spent an hour working one of my all time favorite piano pieces from the movie Amelie. Let me pause here a moment to mention that I do not play the piano, cannot read music and cannot carry a tune but I am on a personal quest to learn this song even if it takes me the rest of my life. YouTube has a version that has been dumbed down enough for even the likes of me to follow. With the laptop perched on the piano and an earbud in my ear, I watched the solitary fingers of the phantom piano player over and over and over while listening to the notes and then I began play. While plunking along I can actually feel my brain sparking up in dark, quiet regions, probably the same regions built up like the Hulk in the brain of my musician husband. My fingers creep around on the keys like crabs on a hot, sandy beach. They are not nimble and elegant. They are clunky and awkward but the reward of actually playing a series of notes and creating this amazing melody on my own is such a thrill. I am, for now, hooked on this and will continue to torture those around me in my efforts to prevail.

I rearranged my son’s room while he was in school this afternoon. As a child I always loved coming home to a setting such as this when my mom, finally fed up to here and here and here with my clutter and chaos, took charge and somehow made me feel like we had actually moved to a completely different house. All of my toys would seem almost new again and, oooooh, look at my bed over therrrrreeeee! But W is kind of a control freak, like me. He likes his things just so. He warns us to not touch his monster trucks or disturb the circle of cars he has made the whole length of the couch. I tried to showcase his toys in a way he’d really appreciate the new arrangement (but for the love of jeebus why does just about every boy toy have to be 3” long?). I prayed that he wouldn’t totally spaz out and refuse to re-enter his domain. It was a possibility. It has happened before. I was, however, pleasantly surprised when he came into his room after school, gasped and said, “It’s great!” His lovely dimples were the ultimate proof.