You make me feel like Dancing!

I got bold on Sunday after spending most of the morning hanging auctions and I invited some of my family and pals to share my blog.

We have had the discussion about editing yourself and about writing for your readers and not for yourself and how we feel knowing people that know us in real life are reading our blogs. I had opinions on all these topics. Now we will see if I was right or just blowing smoke.

I did something else I never do and checked my statistics today. I used all the nifty tools and discovered one of my invitations was taken up by someone I wish I knew better and now I know they are going to try to know ME better by reading this blog!

I was so tickled! So I just wanted to take a minute to say HELLO! to all my really know me and getting to know me readers. I'm glad you are here! I hope watching the days go by with me helps us grow closer. It may run a few of you off, I have that affect on people sometimes and have grown used to it, but I hope not.

Music is very important to me. My family sang. Lot's of families sing better than we do but we could sing with enthusiasim! We sang for school plays, church events, in the car on long trips, when we were stuck somewhere waiting for rescue and just for fun. Dad had a country band he played with on weekends. Having five kids, ours was usually the largest house so practice was there more often than not. I had uncles on both sides that could yodel, my other uncle played gutiar and his family sang, my town grampa played the accordian, an uncle played harmonica and they all played records.

I wanted to play gutiar and sing like Daddy did. When I was 13 he let me take his guitar to learn on. He gave me a Hank Williams song book with the chords diagramed over the music and words, told me to go out to the picnic table and play there. He did show me which fingers went on which dots first.

I sat under the big tree and plucked, strummed, thumped and caterwauled all by myself for days and days. I finally thought I had "Your Cheatin' Heart" pretty good and played it for Mom. She didn't wince to badly.

I kept after it. My seven year old cousin who's dad played was learning at the same time. Now you want to talk about torment? When the weather got cold we would sit out on the back porch and whang away together. He was great at the gutiar but needed two buckets to hit the notes with his voice. I couldn't do anything fancy on the instrument but I could carry a tune. It was a racket fit to give God a headache but we really enjoyed it. We showed each other what we had learned since the last time we visited and played on.

I went on to have the music comfort me, teach me, let me express myself and make me a living down the road some years. I still have two gutiars but don't play much anymore. I prefer to find a willing piano player and sing.

Then I became an official grama in '03. The little darling is just a sweetie but she lives way far away from me. That's another story for the other blog and I will get there someday. For now all you need to know is I love her and her family but we don't have much contact. As she is so little I don't worry much about presents and such yet, she won't remember who got her what for when till she is about five. She has lots of loving family to spoil her, too. So my gifts would be excess anyway.

But I was cruising around the auctions one day looking for something and I found this little gem. It just screamed at me that I had to have it for the newest in a long line of fine women.

It's just the size of somebody learning to walk. It works, too. I was so happy with it I just bought it and shipped it. I forgot to tell them it was coming!

I love thinking my grand girl will grow up with music. I think if I wished my Mom had made me do anything else I didn't like it would be that I wish she would have MADE ME take piano lessons seriously. I had a few organ lessons from a neighbor lady but hit the same wall all the kids hit - I wanted to play a song, not scales and exercises! After about four lessons I quit.

I still went on and taught myself gutiar but I play by ear, I can only read notes if I sit there and work at it. I would love to be able to play piano! It's a musical skill that translates well into almost any other instrument.

It probably worked out for the best, I couldn't carry a piano with me everywhere I ended up going. The gutiar was enough of a problem sometimes.

So, for the little grand girls, there are two now, I think I will try to send implements of music and maybe try to get them lessons!

All that because knowing my friends are here with me made me feel like dancing!