I have, in the past two days, acquired two things that make me very happy. One is a replacement tuning key for my harp. I have a lovely little Celtic harp that a friend made for me, but I’d lost the tuning key. I’d also kind of stopped playing it, because I had to keep it out of my son’s reach. It came down off the top of the entertainment center and got dusted off in the packing process, and one of my foster daughters tuned it. (Yes, she carries a tuning key in her purse. You never know where you might find a harp. 
) My favorite little boy has so fallen in love with it that he’s got me showing him how to play it a little, and wants one of his own so we can learn together. Fine by me; I’ve wanted harp lessons for years, and now I’ll do it with him. But the tuning key is sort of important to the project, and now I have one.
The other is a small but well made bodhran. I’ve wanted one for years, and mentioned that it would be my next instrument-type acquisition at dinner with some friends. It turned out that Li’s husband Ed had acquired one while in Ireland (sometime before their marriage, so over 8 years ago) which he had never even unpacked. Li knew where it was and unearthed it, whereupon Ed promptly turned around and gave it to me. I am over the moon! Now I have to learn to play triplets on a drum played with a beater (my other drums are hand-drums, like a doumbek), but I can do that.
How d’you know there’s a bodhran player at your front door, me darlin’?
Simple.
The knockin’ gets faster and faster and faster and faster and…!