I was legit giddy when I finally figured it out.

Many, many moons ago, when my lovely wife and I got engaged, she bought me a lovely Gibson guitar and a sweet Marshall amp. We didn’t have children then, and our fur baby came along about a year after we got married, so for the longest time I could crank up my amp and play for ninety minutes or more in a day without a care. But since we’ve had children I had to curtail my musical endeavours in favour of nap time, for the sanity of everyone in our household. But, my Marshall amp is awesome, as i said before, and it came equipped with a emulated head phone jack. But i could never get it to just output through the jack alone, and not blast through the speaker aswell. I figured, for a very long time, that i just had the incorrect jack conversion piece that fits my 3.5 mm headphones. But no, i had all of the right pieces, i had just failed, miserably i might add, to work out the correct placement of the dials to be able to rock out with just the headphones. Until now.

Let me tell you something, i haven’t danced a happy jig in quite some time. I’m not a miserable sod, but i don’t get giddy very often. But tonight. Oh, tonight I danced a two step, clapped my hands and was beaming, just BEAMING from ear to ear. I can play again, without fear of disturbing my family or neighbours. Oh such joy, to bring music back into my life again! I have to restrain myself from staying up tonight and playing until my finger tips go numb, hurt or bleed.

So many songs I’ve forgotten over the last five years. Usually I would wait until my wife and daughters had sometime away to be able to dust off the green machine and play along to Royal Blood or Wolfmother, or even some Soundgarden. That’s not to say that I’ve never played in front of them. I had taken to playing my acoustic upstairs once in a blue moon. But I’m rusty af, and I learned some Joe Satriani material before I ever learned any chords. So my strumming is weak, and so are my fingers on those ultra thick acoustic strings. Gimme those bendy 9’s. Bit of a character flaw of mine. Trying to run before I can crawl.

But again I can know the joy of learning new material and keeping some dexterity in my fingers and hands. Oh happy day. Music really is a wonderful thing.

We sing a lot here at the house, well at least I do. I’m no stranger to a mid day dance party with my girls while we do chores, or to do away with some mid day blues. Especially since we’ve had snow since November first this year.

So very glad to have that option back. Feel stupid it took me so long to settle in and sort that out.