Did I mention that H.E. bought me a keyboard?

After ten years of me missing my piano, he got me a Yamaha DGX-505. No occasion. We’d just been wandering around Fry’s Electronics Friday, looking for something else, when we sort of stumbled on it. It had the requisite 88 keys and a bunch of other things, so I noted the model number and he looked it up at home. The next day, he bought it and helped me set it up. I’ve played it everyday since.

I can’t express the joy I feel in finally getting to play again. Since I’ve been out of practice the last ten years, I sound like an absolute retard on the keys, but like most anything, playing the piano is like riding a bike; once you get on again, everything starts to come back to you. H.E. says I sound like a kid, practicing her piano lessons.

And I do because I am.

I’m re-practicing Mendehlsson’s “On Wings of Song” and Mozart’s “Turkish March” from one of my fifth grade level books—and just so you don’t think I’m completely slow, I’ll add that the fifth grade level is pretty high. I used to teach piano, so I used to buy lesson books all the time, and the fifth grade level books were never newly stocked like the lower grade books; they’d sit on the music store shelves forever, getting old and dusty before anyone got up to the level to buy them.

I never saw any sixth grade level books, so I have no idea if they even exist.

Not that I’m saying I’m any good. Because I’m not. I don’t play by ear, and I can’t compose. I was never even taught any theory; what little I know of it I taught myself, just so I could teach some semblance of it to my students. I’m mostly a sight reader, someone who is really good at reading sheet music. Sometimes all it takes for me to master a piece is to play it from beginning to end a few times, and so long as I have the sheet music in front of me, I’m pretty good.

And if I have a keyboard in front of me, I’m even better.

I totally love my Yamaha.

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