On the day that we headed out to take some pictures (which wound up with us finding the Chocolate House by accident, if you believe in that sort of thing (I have friends who are atheists; they believe that EVERYTHING is an accident, including their own awareness of accidents :)) Ethel, for some reason (there I go again - assigning rationality to one of Ethel's actions) decided to take a picture of me, up on a hill, looking down through cactus, palo verde and mesquite.

All in all, it's a scene as western as latigo.

I wasn't involved in this action, as you can tell. There was no "Smile! Say Cheeze-Its!" or any sort of preliminary; she just pointed the camera up through the brush and clicked.

If she were me, and if she were taking this picture today,then she wouldn't have clicked with impunity. The ends of my fingers hurt - the "tips", they are called, but I usually think of "tips" as being pointed or at least narrowing at the ends, whilst my fingers just sort of STOP right there under the nail.

They hurt because yesterday morning we played and sang for two services with the Lutheran All Boy's Band at Shepard of the Desert, in Scottsdale. Last year, I showed up and played banjo with these folks, doing "I Saw The Light" at each service. Inflicting banjo music on Scott$daliens is a misdemeanor, so I was feeling diffident about showing up again, but my friend the music director insisted, so I said "well, this time, howzabout I bring Ethel along, and she and I can do a duet on 'Angel Band' ?"


(Editor's Note: I said "last year", but it was actually TWO years ago - what's very strange about this is that the pastor remembered me from "last year", as did some of the other musicians. Oh, well - at our age, what's a year or two difference?)

So we did "Angel Band" to open up the services, and Ethel and I sang along with 'em on all the other stuff while I played the pastor's Taylor acoustic with internal pickups (a Taylor guitar costs less than a house in Circle Mountain, but not much) and then we closed both services- and chased 'em out - with "I Saw The Light". It was a lot of fun.


But the point is that I hadn't been playing much geetar or banjo lately - I had been practicing piano (which I have since given up as "one more thing that I'm not good at"). So I didn't have any calluses on the ends of my fingers - and a week of on-again/off-again practice won't build up enough callus to support two hours of gitfiddlin', so I was well blistered by the time I left the church.

We left the church to go to Pinnacle Peak and go climbing. It didn't work - we didn't actually DO any climbing - but I did TRY to climb. We toted the gear up the side of the hill until we came to a route rated as a 5.7 - now, the first route I ever climbed was rated 5.7 (or maybe 5.6). It was ridiculously easy; before I left Utah, I was able to lead routes rated at 5.10c.

But Arizona seems to use a rating scheme different from Utah; since these are the only two states in which I've done any climbing, I don't know which one is "right", but I do believe that the Zonans tend to feel smug about saying that the Utah ratings are too "soft".  (N.B. - my friend Damon, from Vermont, used to talk about having a rough time climbing 5.8s or 9s, and I wondered why, since he's obviously in great shape and a better all-around athlete than I am; now I suspect that I wouldn't be able to climb the routes he was talking about at the time).

So I tore my fingers up on some granite, and all in vain (although we did find some places that we want to come back and try next week).

So, as of this morning, I'm saying "OuchOuchOuchOuch" while I'm typing this (but not out loud) and wondering if they'll ask me back to the Lutheran church next year (or the year after that, as it were) since this time, they heard me sing. Singing, like piano and rock climbing and banjo and guitar, is one more thing that I don't do well - however, it's the only activity that I practice that causes other people pain to just the extent that it causes me pleasure (but not for the same reason).

I'd still like to find the thing that I'm good at, though. "They Say" that everybody is good at something (no, I don't want to hear the old stuff about "maybe you're good at looking for something to be good at" - even worse is the "maybe you're well-rounded". The myth is that everybody has a talent - well, I want my talent, dangit! :)