For years, whenever my preferred NPR station would interrupt jazz or whatever with a ballgame, they would interrupt it with the words in the title. A few years ago they changed to a sorta sporty bit of music. They just played that tonight. The GG is using the Foot Massage Thingy (FMT) and I have not applied myself to learning how to turn on the “pod” to put satty-lite radio on so it is silent for now.

It took me a while to make friends with the FMT. For one thing, it reminds me of the Oxygen Thingy The Commander was hooked up to in the final couple months of her life. It isn’t as musical. Which is a good thing. I am a musician if not an active one and I can still hear that musheen inside my head. Dooooo doo do do do do do.

The FMT was one of my bday gifts. F*cking breakthrough covid was another one. I looked askance at the FMT. I was highly annoyed at covid. I mean, “people” are always antsy about what do I want for xmas/bday/whatever. I am always like, dumpster in the driveway! Trip to Kiwanis Thrift! I am flinging. After a week or more I finally tried out the FMT and I’m not sure why but it is pretty cool.

We now have satty-lite radio on.

The last few days I’ve been hearing a strange twangy kinda musical noise coming from wherever the GG is. I finally figgered out that he was trying to play this instrument. I bought it from a children’s catalog a bazillion years ago. They called it a thumb piano. I think it is related to an mbira. Mbiras are instruments played in various countries on the African continent and it turns out that my cousin UKW owns many mbiras and is an expert at playing them. She plays other things too. Piano, flute, and oboe (likely not recently), marimba, mbira and I dunno what else. Those of us who do instrumental music can usually play just about anything we pick up although the clarinet was a major challenge for me 🐸.

This mbira type thing is not anything approaching a “professional” instrument but then again I think mbiras are often crafted by their players. It’s a bit different than buying a flute from Haynes or wherever like my parents did when I was a kid. You build your own mbira.

We’re on the cusp of a major snowstorm and I’m thinking of UKW hanging out on the moomincabin deck in the summertime playing an mbira. 🧡🧡🧡

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 1st, 2022 at 7:46 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.