Friday, March 30, 2012

French and Gloria Estefan?

I woke up the other morning singing this song:

"Alouette, gentille Alouette
Alouette, gentille plumerai....."

It made me laugh and also confused me, because I don't remember knowing as many lyrics to that song as I  woke up singing.

I think I've solved the mystery though. I fell asleep with the television on and I think Target is to blame for my French singing:




The next day I woke up singing a Gloria Estefan song:

"One, two, three, four...come baby say you love me
five, six, seven times"

I have no idea where that came from. But I think Ellen Degeneres would have my back:

Thursday, March 29, 2012

Dear Left Hand:

Dear Left Hand,

I'm so, so, so sorry! I know that I have put you through so much pain with my decision to learn to play the guitar. If it's any consolation, the worst is over.

So about a month ago, I decided that I would buy a guitar (or geeeetar, which is how I say it in my head) and learn to play it. If anyone reading this has ever tried to play the geeeetar, they know that it's a painful instrument. Holding down those steel strings really does a number on one's fingers.

During my first week'ish of playing, I almost quit because my fingertips on my left hand were in so much freaking pain! I didn't think I could do it but THEN God's (or someone's) brilliant design of the human body kicked in. My fingers were all: "HEY! JEN! You're KILLING us; so we have decided that we are going to man-up and grow callouses so that we can handle this abuse."  And that they did!

I don't even recognize my left hand anymore. I have these crazy looking, permanent guitar string impressions on them and they feel like sandpaper!



I have lost all sensation in the fingertips of my pointer, middle and ring finger on my left hand. What's funny to me as I write about this, is that it sounds way worse than it looks. Callouses are thoughtful, generous and considerate. By that I mean that they showed up when I needed them most and they are protecting my hands, but at the same time, they don't make my hands look as gnarly as I'm making it sound. SO...good job on the smart and well designed callous-thingy Mr. or Miss Human Body Designer (whoever you are).

Writing this blog post was perfect because I was reminded today that I haven't written in ages AND I got to give my left hand a break from guitar practice to write a post. WIN/WIN for sure.