When I was young, my biggest wish was to play the piano. My best friend was a piano prodigy, and she taught me from her beginner books and drew me a piano keyboard to practice scales. It was not to be because I have never able to have regular access to a piano or lessons. I did learn to play on a keyboard in high school, but I could never do too much but play the right hand and some chords with the left in order to practice singing. It is a big regret of mine that I pretty much left music behind to take up theatre, because I did not have that much talent but was able to get pretty good with tons and tons of practice.

HPF is feeling much better. Despite the steroids making her crazy hyper. Now my throat is sore and I'm super achy. Whee. Dear This Week: you suck.

It was really lovely. We had the piano until I was in college, but a) it lived with us in Florida for two years, where the humidity pretty much ruined it, and b) it became untunable, apparently, and its tone was all off.

It also buckled the living room floor in the circa 1910 home we lived in while I was in high school, and we had to shore up in the basement with a big beam. Oops.

I wish I'd learned to play music as a kid. Instead, I had ballet and intensive gymnastics and flirted with guitar. My brother had guitar, football and baseball.

Now I know I'd like Noah and Grace to play and I'd love to get a Yamaha p95 eventually.

In other news, I have purchased 7 turkeys in the past three weeks. They've been $.59/lb and since Grace alone eats about 3 lbs of chicken a week, turkeys seem way more economical than chicken breast. But if you are an LA person and want a turkey, Fresh and Easy has them for $.59/lb for a few more days. And they have small turkeys -- the one we roasted yesterday was about 10 lbs.

That's a ridiculously good price for turkey!

I wrote a long post earlier, but lost it. To sum up: head cold, headache, whine. Cats, antibiotics, probiotic, poop.

We went to cut-rate place and got fireplace tools today. Tonight is the first time we are going to have a fire in our fireplace since we bought the house!

Jealous! I wish my fireplace actually worked.

Not jealous of Sue. Blehhhh.

To be clear, the antibiotics and probiotics are for the cat, not me. Though I've resorted to feeding him my own probiotics, since he won't even go near the v. expensive ones I got at the vet.

I took piano lessons from ages 6-13, but since I never learned to sight-read (thanks, Suzuki method) I am now almost completely musically illiterate. I can sing pretty well, but not from sheet music.

I have decided to embrace homemade condiments - the two-minute mayo recipe from Serious Eats is serving me well, and now I have a homemade ketchup simmering on the stove.

I had about two years of piano lessons. My granddad decided that his gift to my sister and me would be a piano for each of us. (I received mine after my sister left home with hers.) There were times when I couldn't afford a 6-pack of Diet Coke, but I had a piano in the living room. If my life were a different sort of movie i would have gotten through the dark times by playing sad, but sweet melodies on it. Mostly I piled things on it.

A couple of months ago I moved it off the outside wall (hell on the tuning), got it tuned, and started practicing again. We'll see how it goes.