a note on our new piano

So I married Superman. After working 34 hours straight, Christian met me in Renton (about a half hour away) to pick up a piano and move it to our house. And this thing is one heck of a piano. It's an upright grand circa 1910 and it is a heavy sucker! I was floored that after all that heavy lifting Christian stayed awake to watch the kids while I returned the Uhaul, have dinner with us, and then bathe the kids for me. He may not fly, but I say close enough.

Here's the story of our piano. We are poor. We know we're poor and we're okay with poor. But sometimes we want things that cost lots of money. Like a piano. Maybe I wanted to give one to Christian more than he actually wanted it, but I miss hearing him play. And I miss seeing him totally relaxed and in his own world while he's playing (some of you know the look I'm talking about--he looks at you but won't respond no matter what you say--yes, it can be annoying, but I know he's happy when I see it). I've been searching Craigslist for months--MONTHS-- looking for a free piano in good shape. I keep hearing about people who have found them. But the stars were not aligning. All I was finding was junk. Either the people wanted to con someone into picking it up so they wouldn't have to haul it to dump (and it looked like it should be there), or it needed $800 in work to sound decent.
Then I came across an odd ad. Everyone thinks I'm a little nutty for doing this, but really, it felt right to me. This woman had moved from a large home to a condo on the waterfront and didn't have room for her piano. It is an antique that has been in her family forever, and she wasn't ready to part with it, so she posted an ad on Craigslist for someone to "borrow" her piano for free, longterm. Well hey, I'm looking for free and semi-longterm, so why not? We don't have to pay for a piano that works and she doesn't have to pay to store it. Granted, getting the thing here was more than a little stressful (I had no idea what I was doing when I rented the Uhaul, which caused a few problems), and I had to call upon a few friends in the ward to give up their Saturday afternoon (which I so did not want to do), but we now have a fully functional, not bad-looking antique piano in our front room. Hooray! We've cleaned it up since these pictures were taken and it looks pretty good for almost 100 years old. Thank you to Gary and Ryan for your muscles and senses of humor. We love you guys. Here's a little sampling of our new instrument. . .