1. Begin each week with one obsession. Stave off obsession for as long as possible. Until Saturday, say, when the rain is slanting down torrential and tempestuous every 15 minutes and you read in Deuteronomy "...but the land which you cross over to possess is a land of hills and valleys, which drinks water from the rain of heaven, a land for which the Lord your God cares."
2. Take your time Saturday morning. Observe (but do not purchase) the boots your hidden 15-year-old heart once longed for. Try them on even, but (again) do not purchase them. Wander from the thrift store toward the river.
3. Pause in front of the instrument repair shop. Angle your head to catch the price tags hanging on the ukes in the front window. At this moment, the owner will walk up and wipe his boots on the mat outside, unlock the door and turn the closed sign around. The shop bell will ring and somewhere Jimmy Stewart will get his wings.
4. Go inside. Talk with the owner about woods and plastic and composite materials and the 100 year old uke he has hanging in the back of the shop not be parted with for love or gold. You regard the $30 birch wood, plinky. You are taught three chords: C, G7, G. You say you'll consider most dutifully and perhaps come in again later. The owner remains convinced you only wanted a break from the rain.
5. Sit at a coffee shop, drink coffee, write, consider the purchase. Someone of the Delta River Blues congregation wails over the speakers. You are giving yourself time because even though you have a job and are actually not struggling, it's hard for you to make a purchase of $10+ that isn't for the monthly groceries.
6. Head in the direction of the instrument repair shop, fresh with coffee, but stopping first at the corner music store that specializes primarily in ugly electric guitars and teenage males.
7. Enter this store and feel the panic rise as not one but three sloping, skinny, Led Zeppelin-playing teenage power chord worshippers finger picker hair in the face boys look up at you with money-colored eyes. You are the only customer. You want to leave two seconds after entering. No, you're stuck. Make the cursory tour of the shop. Decline any need for assistance. Pray for deliverance in the form of a sudden fire, a sudden death, or another customer. You begin to realize you have an inferiority complex about instruments, especially guitars. However, this is a valid complex for you to have since you can't play anything much except "Blackbird".
8. Continue on your way to the instrument repair shop. You go a different way and discover that there's a whole music shop along the same block as the repair place. The only ukes are some gaudy cheap things hanging in the window. Perhaps there are more inside? You enter.
9. Meet a Hawaiian ex-pat in mismatching clothes who only has to shrug his shoulders and break out his own delightful uke playing and mention "While my guitar gently weeps" to convince you to buy the green ukulele.
10. Converse with this individual so that it is not immediately obvious the green ukulele is sold. Nobody wants to be obvious.
11. Purchase the green ukulele. Walk home with it tucked under your arm in a cardboard box and let the first song you figure out how to play be Tom Waits' "Rains on Me"
I think that its lovely greenness must greatly improve the enjoyment in playing it. Good purchase!
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