How to Traumatize Your Clients: aka, Guitar Problems

So during my first week as a music therapist in Idaho, most of my sessions were held together with the previous music therapist who was transitioning the client on to me. Most of these initial sessions went pretty well, but one...

Well, as a cute little four year old comes up to me to start strumming my guitar, I realize that the high e string is badly out of tune. In a moment of thoughtlessness, I started to tune my guitar while the kid was right in front of me. And, of course, the string snaps and slaps him on the hand.

For a moment he just stared at me with wide eyes. Then he ran sobbing to his mom and was inconsolable for the next five minutes. I about wanted to climb into a hole and die.

Anyway, after that I went to get new strings for my guitar. Only the one was broken, but it'd been long enough since I'd changed strings that I felt like it was overdue. 

I found the nearest music store I knew of, and just had a feeling as I stepped inside that I would be seeing this building a lot.

After getting a set of the most durable guitar strings they had, I went home to change my e string before the next appointment that evening. Except, as I was putting in the new e string, it snapped.

I didn't have time to get a replacement string before I had to leave again, so I attended the next session guitar-less before going back to that Music store to buy all the high e strings they had. Luckily, no more strings broke over the course of restringing my guitar that night.

There was a point, however, as I drove home from the music store where I thought to myself, "OK, this is annoying, Jen, but you're still having a good day. One annoying thing is not enough to make your day a bad day."
My check engine light then came on, and I realized that I'd managed to break two of my nails.