It's All Been Done

The favourite song that I like to play in my guitar is "It's All Been Done". I love the song plus it is relatively easy to play with just a few bar(or barre) chords. It is upbeat and fun and one song that I can play. I can also play "Maggie May" for the same reason (although I haven't mastered the intro).

I can also play a lot of little ditty songs by picking out the notes such as "Amazing Grace", "Lavender Blue", "The Star-Spangled Banner", and "The Jamaican Farewell Song".

I have been taking guitar lessons for 2 and a half years and that is all I can play. Oh sure, I can muddle my way (barely) through songs like "Fire and Rain", "Let it Be" and "Please Don't Leave Me" (although I did have to switch to an electric guitar for Let it Be and Please Don't Leave Me because the barre chords were killer on my fingers and wrists on the acoustic because the strings are so much harder).

I am not sure what I expected with guitar. Did I think I would be able to play like Nancy Wilson from Heart by now? I think my expectations were very unrealistic, never mind the fact that I do not practice nearly enough.

So here I am, at the crossroads - do I continue or do I quit? I am worried that if I quit I will never pick up my guitar again. And if I continue, I must commit myself to really practicing and spending more time just playing in general.

Tonight I practiced for about and hour. My fingers are almost bleeding and they are sore but it is a good kind of sore. Enough to know that I did practice and I know did have a bit of a breakthrough on one song. Let's hope I still feel the itch to play again tomorrow.

I cannot stop watching video and photos of the devastation in Japan after the 8.9 earthquake and tsunami. The aftershocks are high enough to be "real" earthquakes in their own right and enough to cause tsunamis as well. And the potential meltdown at the nuclear power plant is frightening. So much to deal with all at once.

I cannot do anything other than send money at this point. What I can do for me is to update my earthquake stuff. I never did put everything all in one place so I plan to buy some totes to do that. And I need to check all of the flashlight batteries and make sure we have enough water stored away. As I mentioned in a recent post, the 10th anniversary of the Nisqually earthquake just passed. And the big earthquakes in the past few weeks in New Zealand, China and Japan are finally nudging me to get this done.

And really we should always be prepared for any kind of emergency, right? Are you prepared?

3 days 3 ways
Are you ready?

March came in like a Lion

On March 2nd, we had a big wind storm blow in. It was early in the day (much better than the ones that come up at night). I was downstairs catching up on some tv shows ("Glee" and "Survivor") when I heard a huge clatter and bang. I ran up to check on my patio furniture (the wind storms have blown my table across the deck in the past and knocked over the chairs). The table was moved a bit, the umbrella shifted as well as the grill. I couldn't figure out what had made that big clatter but all looked ok out there so back downstairs I went to finish my shows.

When I was done, I headed up to have a shower and I saw a long line of wet on the carpet:

Shoot! My skylight was leaking from all the rain! I looked up to see if I could figure out where it was leaking and saw...


What?! No SKYLIGHT! I was staring right out at a bright sky (we were between showers at the moment). OMG, my skylight was gone! I ran back downstairs and out through the garage to see if I could find the skylight. It was in the front garden.



I guess it must have slid right down the roof and feel into the garden. It fell so hard that it flipped over that round paver under it. But, it did not break! There are plenty of scratches on the glass but I could not believe it had not broken.

Then I wondered how the hell I was going to get it back up where it belonged!

I kept trying to call Stephen but he was incommunicado. I called my friend, who is a realtor, and cried WHO DO I CALL?! She calmed me down and told me to call the contractor who had been doing work around the house for us. I did call him but he wasn't going to be available for hours. It wasn't raining at the moment and the sun was even starting to peek out so maybe I'd be ok until 2pm??

Then a car pulled up and my friend's husband got out. He had a ladder strapped to the roof of his car and a blue tarp. He climbed up on the roof and strapped the blue tarp over the whole in my roof! Hurray! And just in time because the skies were getting dark again.


Then he drove away. I picked up the phone to call my friend to thank her for sending her husband over and as I was dialing, it started to hail and I was so thankful that the blue tarp was up there! Then a huge whoof and the tarp blew away as I heard my friend answered the phone. I stood there dumbfounded as it started to hail in my house. OMG - it was hailing in my house! The hail lasted close to 10 minutes. Then the sky turned blue and up drove my friend's husband again. He climbed back up on the roof and tied the blue tarp on more securely.


This time, the blue tarp stayed on until the contractor arrived, even though the wind and rain started yet again.

The contractor arrived, installed the skylight and secured our other 3 skylights. Turns out when the house was re-roofed (not long before we moved in), the roofers did not secure the skylights when they reinstalled them. I guess we were lucky that it hadn't happened before and that the skylight did not actually break.

We had another storm today. Not nearly as windy but just as rainy. I was glad to know that the skylights were not going anywhere!