I spent most of yesterday evening with the tv on in the background, with a stack of pillows and a spare quilt outside the bathroom (the smallest, most interior room in my house).

Yeah. Welcome to spring and all that. We were supposed to have massive storms, there was lots of thunder, there were tornadoes to the north of us, but fortunately nothing really happened here. (They were talking "grapefruit sized hail." I don't know but it often seems to me that hail size is kind of the meterologist's big fish story...I've never seen hail larger than peas. Oh, I know it happens, but it seems like 85% of the time when they're doing an "OH NOES GIANT HAIL IS COMING" freakout, there's either no hail, or it's tiny).

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So today is April Fool's Day. I am not fond of April Fool's Day, as I've said before, and I'm not fond of most practical jokes. I think that's because I tend to take things at face value and I'm pretty easily tricked. And I don't like that.

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I was going to do a kind of minor-ish prank and talk about how I was being given custody of a baby, and it was mine to care for and play with for the rest of my life, and go on and on about it, and eventually reveal that the "baby" was actually my parents' baby grand piano.

Yes, they've decided that since no one THERE plays the piano, the best deal is to get it refurbished (there's one key that the action isn't working right on and it needs tuned badly) and hire some piano movers to ship it down to my place.

I don't have a timeframe on when that's going to happen but that's okay because I need to make room for it (I'm thinking that I'll just re-arrange my living room, move some of the bookcases in there into my guest room and move a couple chairs). And also, right now, I don't really have time to take lessons.

But someday. There are people here in town who will give piano lessons to adults, and one thing I've wanted to do as an adult is actually acquire some kind of musical ability.

(One of the things I'm dreaming about now is to be able to come home at the end of the day and play a Bach partita or a few of Brahms' short pieces as a way of calming down after the day. Madeleine L'Engle talked about how she played the piano and was never "all that good" at it, but that she was good enough to play some of the simpler Bach pieces, and how she found it a great comfort and joy to be able to do that.

And you know, I can see that. I'm already thinking about buying copies of the "Anna Magdalena" books to work from.

Oh, I know - learning to play the piano is mostly work. But I think one thing I've demonstrated over the years - with earning a Ph.D., with teaching an overload many semesters, with completing quilts that took over a year to hand quilt, with shouldering what I think is more than my fair share of volunteer work - is that I know how to work.)

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I added a couple more rows to the ongoing Vintage Vertical Stripe crocheted blanket last night (while flipping between channel 12 and channel 10 to see who was giving the least hyperbolic information about the weather).

I'm also working on the second of my Pay it Forward gifts. This one is really fun - I hope it continues to work up as well as it is so far.