Yesterday, we pawned the boys off on my in-laws and set off for the big city for some serious Christmas shopping.  Us and everybody else, apparently.

At one point, Mark said something like “Even though we hate it, maybe we should shop in October so we don’t have to do this.”

And I replied “Yes, we tried that one year, and we just KEPT shopping, because we kept finding cool things.”  So this is really cheaper, if fraught with insanity.

When the boys walked into the house last night, Will gave me a big old grin.  You could tell he was looking around, hoping to catch sight of something we might have forgotten to put away.  Little did he know that the very next morning, he’d actually get the opportunity to SEE some of what we bought, because we decided to forget about waiting until Christmas Day, plus Mark wanted to use their gifts today, so:

All THREE boys got fancy new snowboards and boots.  Mark has been using a board that was too short and narrow for him, and the boys hadn’t had boards of their own since the time we bought some cheap ones and Target and ended up taking them back because they were really terrible.  I’m not sure they could slide more than about a foot at a time on those, so that was pretty much useless.  They loaded up the truck and headed off for the mountains this morning to give those boards a workout.  We kind of figured that if they didn’t go now, we would have an unseasonably warm winter and they’d never get to use them at all.

That means that I have the house to myself, today.  (Well, me and the dogs…) And in between working on binding the Radiant Star (which is almost done!!!), I’m messing around with MY Christmas present.

Prepared to be NOT surprised that I picked one out in Candy Apple Red:

It’s a Fender Sonoran SCE, acoustic/electric.  It is very shiny and much prettier in person.  And when the guy in the guitar store played it, it sounded pretty sweet.

I’m running into a few problems:

1.  I’m a perfectionist, and want to be good RIGHT NOW, not in a few weeks and months after consistent practice.

2.  I’m also a hypocrite, because I teach longarm quilters and am always telling them not to be perfectionists, and that they can’t expect to be good until after they’ve had weeks and months of consistent practice.

3.  As a pianist, I’m going to struggle with finger numbers.  On the piano, finger number 1 is your thumb:  on the guitar, number 1 is your pointer.

4.  Speaking of that pointer.  The one on the left hand. Some blonde dingelhoffer sliced the edge of it off with a rotary cutter a few months ago and it is still QUITE tender.  QUITE. And it’s even MORE tender after trying to learn how to use it on the guitar.  Ouch.  Oh, how I wish I could go whisper in her ear and tell her to be a little more freaking careful with her rotary cutter.

Well, back to work.  I have about 3 feet left of that binding to go.  Y’all are going to be so impressed with it.  The binding, I mean.  Maybe the quilt, too.

Later -

S