When things go really, really wrong.

Last night was rough for me.  I had been really productive in everything I did yesterday, so I set myself up with the expectation of that continuing into the night. I haven’t had a really solid guitar practice in a few days due to time constraints, been more like 15 minutes than the hour(ish), I’ve been spending, which sucks. 15 minutes feels like a warm up. So, I really wanted(needed) a solid stretch of time last night.

Five minutes in, a string broke. Ok. *sigh* fine.  I’ve been playing almost daily on these strings for almost 4 months, so it’s probably not the worst idea I could have to change them all.

Last night, it was. The. Worst. Idea.

First: the B string is stuck in the bridge and won’t come out. After 10 minutes of fiddling, I got the genius idea to go to the kitchen, and dislodged it in about 2 seconds with a wooden meat skewer.

So, I pull out a fresh pack of strings, and realize I forget how to do this. Ok, not really, but it seems I’ve suddenly become a perfectionist, so fussed over the first string for half an hour. Clipped, moved on…

And instantly realizetd that the strings had been labeled wrong. They swapped the A and low E. Fuck. I’d already cut A, so it wouldn’t reach the right peg now! And, that was my last set of D’Addario strings. Double Fuck.

After a bit of scrounging, I found one more set of strings- Ernie Ball regular slinkys. Bleh. Not that I’m dissing EB at all, but not really a good sound on this particular guitar. Do. Not. Like. Maybe it’ll grow on me…

Anyway, I put the Ernie Ball’s on, this time feeding them all through before even attempting to string any of them (learned that lesson, thanks). Good to go! I pull the first up, feed it through, start to wind…and my pegwinder snaps in half.

Seriously?!!?!

So I’m forced to string it all by hand. And, at 10:30 pm, once it’s finally strung, And tuned, can’t find my wire clippers.

Life Hack: my cat’s nail clippers are just as strong as wire clippers.

I’m due to get up in 7 hours and still have a mess of guitar strings and my shattered hopes for a good solid hour of practice laying in heaps all over the bed.

Five minutes. FIVE. That’s it. I nearly cried myself to sleep in frustration.

Now, I have to try to get to the music shop before it closes to get more strings and pegwinders(plural). Good luck, me.

I did, however, learn the regular Ernie Ball slinkys are no harder for me to press than the D’Addario super lights, though, so there’s that. And…when it comes to pegwinders, always have a backup(though, doing it by hand really wasn’t bad.)

until next time, praying for a better night tonight.