Hibernation....

....continues to sound like a really good idea.  TRYING to stay positive and active and productive, but the bear in me just wants to eat and sleep.  It's really been a tough winter, even the people I know who usually LOVE winter are like, "enough already".  But spring is in sight, won't be long now.  The other day Pam and AuntiePat and I were walking and most of the snow was gone and it was almost 60 out!!! We saw a whole crew of robins sucking worms out of the ground; two days later, it dropped back down to 20 degrees and it snowed.

I have been productive though.  The tailoring is caught up, and I've been making regalia like nobody's business.  Keeps my mind off the cold outside.  Inside, it's nice and warm.  Also I went to visit Sue, who lives two miles up the road and whom I haven't seen all winter.  She has been making all sorts of beautiful stuff, and I got all inspired looking through it. 

And I've been practicing the piano Preston got me.  After noodling around and pulling parts of songs out of the dusty, unused corners of my brain, I settled on my first actual project, which was the Eagles' "Wasted Time".  Such a beautiful song, sad but hopeful, and although I wouldn't call it "easy" by any means, it's a song I can actually pick apart and learn (because I don't read music, I play everything by ear).  Sometimes the piano gets lost in the background of songs and you can't really tell what's being played, but not this one.  Check it out.  So now that I've got the chords figured out on the piano, all that remains is to get both hands to work independently of each other, which is turning out to be the real challenge.  When you play guitar, not to minimize it, both of your hands are working to make the same note/chord.  On piano, they are both doing completely different things most of the time, so you have to train your brain for that. 

So while I keep going back to that, I've moved on to a new challenge:  Michael Nyman's "The Promise".  go and listen, and laugh all you want at my choices for beginner piano but it's coming along quite nicely thanks to YouTube tutorials.   I should mention, I guess, that I was not a complete stranger to the keyboard.  I took piano lessons when I was a kid, and we had an organ in the house that both of my parents played.  Still, I'm pretty pleased with myself!