Dusty

I give up on following the schedule. Now that my daughter is home from college and it being the holidays, it's just really busy around here. I'm trying to imagine the madness of it all if I was still working right now. I can't even keep up with dusting. Every three days, I look at my instruments and there is the thinnest layer of dust that I need to wipe down. It's just insane how dusty everything gets so quickly. I really need to keep everything covered when not in use. I also really need to adhere to a cleaning schedule. But listen, I haven't even figured out the source of the strange old wax smell that has appeared on my bedside. I thought it was coming from the drawers of the Alex that I use as a bedside table. I cleaned out the top drawer, which seemed to be the main source of the odor but it is still there. The other drawers contain costume jewelry which I have arranged on jewelry trays. I am now thinking that one of these days, I should take them all out one by one and inventory. The bottom drawers are filled with sunglasses and old prescription glasses. The very last one has nail supplies and a variety of beauty tools. One of these drawers is likely the culprit. I will find it!

My initial suspicion was that the smell was the result of me placing a cheap capo in the top drawer. I was looking at a bunch of things to order a few weeks ago and decided to get a guitar maintenance kit, a guitar neck holder and another capo but since we would end up getting them from Amazon, my husband had to get involved. I think I had been looking at something from Temu but their pricing schemes are really deceptive. Some items would ship free, others require you to spend a certain amount of money. Then you have to consider the source of the item or who is selling it etc. His conclusion was that I could get the same or similar items from Amazon and it will actually cost less. So I sent him my wishlist and he got to work finding substitutes for some of them. He got me the Sennheiser HD 400 Pro headphones but for that, I was able to browse the Sennheiser store on Amazon which leads me to believe that the item was actually from Sennheiser and not a third party vendor. But the other stuff, including the capo, they were from vendors and brands I'd never heard of. When I opened the box, there was a smell. I thought it dissipated but I guess I was wrong. Putting the capo in the drawer was a bad idea because the entire drawer started having a smell. It was some cheap thing though, so what am I supposed to do? It does the job but now I am wary of putting it in a drawer. 

The capo is essential to my project though so I need it around, all the time. The guitar teacher taught me to move it closer to the fret line to minimize and/or prevent buzzing. Although I haven't noticed any real difference in the sound, I now prefer using the Martin capo I ordered from Sweetwater. My old D'Addario one was messed up. The rubber thing that grips the back of the neck got unglued and while I've been able to stick it back on, it still moves occasionally. The new cheap capos from Amazon, well, they just have a smell. On my last lesson, I didn't bring my own guitar because we had come from a whole morning out with the family and I didn't want my guitar sitting in the car so I just packed my binder with all the music and this little pouch that had my tuner, capo and a variety of picks. I borrowed a $2,000 Gibson songwriter from the acoustic room and thoroughly enjoyed playing it during my lesson. I am tempted to not bring a guitar again next week hehe.

Playlist Recommendation: West End Girls, Pet Shop Boys