I had my first lesson the Wednesday after Mother’s Day.  My instructor reminds me of a cross between Michael J. Fox and Roddy McDowall with a rock n’ roll edge.  He’s been in a few bands over the years and from what I gather he’s a big fan of classic rock.  He mentioned he followed The Grateful Dead on tour.  I think he’s either around my age or in his early 40s – although he could be older than that but due to his Michael J. Fox quality he looks young.  The first week he had me do snare drum exercises.  The book he had me buy was strictly for the snare drum, so I was a little nervous after the lesson that all I was going to see in the next 4 weeks.  I was wrong. 

The next lesson, pardon my French, kicked ass!!!!  He started me on his electronic drum kit.  We covered 2 or 3 pages of a book by Carmine Appice, the drummer from Vanilla Fudge and various other projects.  I fell in love with the drums all over again.  The instructor played the exercises through for me once and I was to go home and practice on air drums since I didn’t have a set.

I went home, grinning from ear to ear as I entered the house from the garage and encountered Martin on the living room couch.  He could tell I had a very good lesson.  ”Honey,” I said.  ”I think I want to go ahead and buy drums.”  And for anyone who knows me, I wouldn’t say those words lightly because drums are bloody expensive and I’m a tight wad rivaling Ebenezer Scrooge.  So I went on the hunt for a set and it didn’t take long before I found “the one.”  The Pearl F2725F Forum Series 5 piece drum set with cymbals and hardware in wine color.  We looked online and got a good idea as to what we could find them for.  Then Martin found them at a store in Midvale for around what we’d found online, only we wouldn’t have to pay shipping so I was sold.  We went to the store, the salesman did a fabulous job of selling them to me, and we bought them!  

I’m so glad we bought them at the store, because if I had to put the drums together on top of all the hardware, that would have been a pain.  But the drums came assembled, all I had to do was put the stands together and with some help from the DVD that came with the set, it was a piece of cake and I was head banging in no time at all.  I’m still fine tuning on getting the drums to sound how I like, but I’m getting close.  So I was able to practice my second week assignment on real drums and I think it made a world of difference.  The instructor told me he’s had students take a year or so of drums without a set to practice on and they did okay without them. I don’t know how people would do it.  It’s much easier to tell when you screw up because you can hear it.  I’ve now had my third lesson and again the feeling afterwards was “this is so freakin’ awesome!!!!”  I’m moving along in the Carmine Appice book and touching on beats I never thought I’d learn how to play.  The one thing that’s hard is I want to play at 1 million miles an hour already and not have to work up to it.  Granted, I can play some beats fairly fast which isn’t bad for a beginner, but there are some doozies that are going to take some practice.  But I’m up for the challenge!!!  The lessons are perfectly bite sized at 30 minutes a week, so it doesn’t take away much time at all away from Martin, Lark, and Charlie.  I can’t practice every day, but I get a little extra time on the weekends while Lark’s upstairs napping.  Believe it or not with the doors closed upstairs you can barely hear it… or so Martin tells me .

The moral of the story is, it’s never too late to do something you’ve always wanted to do.  I encourage everyone out there with an unfulfilled passion for something to just go ahead and give it a try.  What do you have to lose?  And you’ll never have to wonder “what if.”

So if you had a hard time gathering from that what’s really going on in my brain, here’s the skinny:  I’m absolutely dreading having Lark start daycare in the middle of the swine flu pandemic and I’m a little terrified she’s going to catch it.  Lark’s having trouble taking bottles, although she did take one for her sitter last Saturday, but she’s not taking them from Martin, so I’m worried she’s going to starve while at daycare.  And I’m a little nervous about going back to work in general.  It’s almost like the first day of school nervous.

Luckily, Martin’s pretty good at keeping me grounded and sane.  So today I’m going to savor my last day of freedom with Lark, avoid the news except my staples of People & US Magazines, and think positively about what the daycare experience will do for Lark in the long run.