July 14, 2007 @ 5:42 pm | Filed under:
Bloggity Speaking of rockin’ girls…
Coffeemama says I’m a rockin’ girl blogger. Awesome!
Little-known fact: I do a fabulous Cyndi Lauper impersonation.
You never noticed the resemblance before, did you?
That’s because I never wear more than eight bracelets at a time anymore.
Anyway, thanks for the compliment, Coffeemama.
I am now supposed to name five Rockin’ Girl Bloggers of my own. What’s hard about this is narrowing it down. I decided to tag only people I’ve never tagged before, but whose blogs I read regularly and who do, in fact, rock.
Sarah rocks, and this I know not just from her blog, which delights me, but from having been so fortunate as to live in her neighborhood for five years. She’s got funny kid stories to rival Karen’s Ramona.
Mrs. MoneyDummy rocks very large. She is rockin’ her way right out of debt, and that is totally tubular.
Beck. I wish I rocked the house like Beck. If I am Cyndi Lauper, she is Chrissie Hynde: smart, wry, oozing cool.
Patience. I utterly dig her gentle, thoughtful vibe.
Sister Mary Martha. I hope she will not think me disrespectful for saying that I think she is one of the rockingest bloggers out there. Her deadpan style will make you howl, and the truth she speaks just might rock your world.
July 14, 2007 @ 1:06 pm | Filed under:
Family 
Twelve and a half years ago, I bought her father his first guitar. Now it’s his turn to see a face light up over the smooth, glossy surface of a Stratocaster. Scott gave Rose her birthday present a month early—because, I think, he himself couldn’t wait.
She’s been wanting to learn to play guitar for a while, but just lately her interest stepped up several notches. She loves to watch Scott play, and stands there asking a bazillion questions. Now she’s figuring out the answers with her own fingertips.
Daddy’s Strat is black, like Eric Clapton’s. Rose went for the red one, of course. It’s a three-quarter size, a better fit for her small frame. She holds it like a pro, her head tilted, shoulder curled, exactly like her father. Her hair hangs in her face, hiding her serious, focused expression. Scott taught her a few chords last night. Just like him, she likes the minor chords best, strums them over and over.
Watching history repeat itself, I got goosebumps.
You’re wondering if we’re crazy, giving a kid an electric guitar instead of an acoustic. Ah, but you see: the truth is, an electric—when it isn’t plugged into an amp—is quieter. Much, much quieter than an acoustic.
There’s an amp in the back closet, but Scott hardly ever plugs in. It’s just there, available in case anyone should have an overwhelming need for that extra push over the cliff to 11.
When he plays the acoustic guitar I gave him for Father’s Day a few years ago (you’ll detect a theme to our gift-giving), I’m astonished by how LOUD it is.
So Rose gets a nice, quiet electric guitar. And actually, it’s easier to learn to play on an electric because you don’t have to press the strings as hard as you do on an acoustic.
Plus, of course, you look devastatingly cool. Not that Rose has any idea what a rockin’ girl she is. Her primary concern at the moment is learning to play the chords to the Fairy Dance song in her beginning recorder songbook. She and Beanie are planning a duet.
