Beauty and the Beast

The two younger kids happily surprised me by getting themselves involved in their school musical, Beauty and the Beast.  RD got recruited to play the synthesizer as a secondary piano, and was later tasked with playing the accordion, and MyGirl joined soon after to play the bass guitar. Prior to the school musical, these kids had not held these instruments before.  Apparently the fact that RD plays the piano well and MyGirl is pretty good at the guitar was enough to land them parts in the orchestra.  OK, it was mainly because the orchestra conductor is RD's piano teacher and MyGirl's music teacher in year 7 who was in dire need of musicians to join the orchestra.

The accordion RD uses belongs to a friend of the conductor. I never realised that an accordion is a huge instrument.  When I first saw the case, I couldn't help but think of my grandmother's sewing machine.   

It has a beautiful sound, though.  And apparently, it takes a person with long arms to play.

The musical is scheduled for the second week of June so the kids are practising more often now.  Some days they have rehearsals for the whole day. They even have musical practice on Sundays.  Last Sunday, MacGyver had work on Sunday so he reminded me that I had to drive the kids to school in time for their 10 AM practice.  I had no problems with that.  The school is less than ten minutes away.  

I woke up bright and early on Sunday (not as early as MacGyver who was out of the house by 5 AM) and did some chores.  I looked around for the accordion which is usually in the middle of the living room when RD brings it home.  I couldn't find it.  

I checked RD's room, just in case he had practised upstairs, but it was not there.  I was hoping against hope that it was not in the car which MacGyver had brought to work.  

At about 7:00, I sent him a FB message, a G-mail chat message, a text message, and I tried to call him twice.   No answer.

I was starting to get worried.  We had been in the general area of MacGyver's office the night before for dinner with some friends but I was in the passenger's seat and obviously not paying attention to the directions, the correct lanes and the turns to take.  We had talked about driving together to his office so that I could be confident to accompany GI there and back but never got around to doing so.   (As a learner, GI needs a certain amount of driving time practice in order to be eligible to take the driver's test to move him to a P-plate.  Only when he has his P-plate can he drive on his own.  We figured driving to and from MacGyver's office would rack up his miles, so to speak, since the office is about 18 km away from home, approximately 20 to 30 minutes drive.)  The farthest I've driven from home is less than 10 km.  The local mall is about 2 km away and I would rather walk than drive.

So there I was, MacGyver at the office, kids still asleep, no accordion in sight, and time running out.

At 8:00 I decided to wake RD up and ask him if they had brought the accordion home the Friday before.  It was entirely possible that the accordion was in school and there was no need to worry.  Sadly he confirmed that MacGyver had picked them up from school that Friday and that they had put the accordion in the car.  

RD was still half-asleep so he did not realise the implications of his reply until I said, "Yes, the car that is with Dad?" 

I rang MacGyver up on his office landline.  He was away from his desk when I called so for me that meant he would have a chance to see my messages and missed calls.  When we got to talk, he apologised for forgetting to off load the accordion and gave me additional instructions on where to meet.

We managed to meet up (after I got lost because I missed a turn), so RD was able to make it to practice on time with an accordion.   

Thank goodness for second cars, GPS, mobile phones, and my trusty navigator RD (who interpreted the GPS and would yell, "That's not yet the turn, Mom.  Go straight!  Go straight!)

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We decided to get MyGirl a second hand bass guitar so that she could practice playing at home.  

Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought I would see MyGirl playing a bass guitar and RD an accordion.

So I would like thank their school, their teacher, and of course

Beauty

and

the Beast.

(I love you, RD!)

Note : RD knew I had taken a picture of the two of them and that I was drafting this blog post.  I told him that the original title was "The Things You Do for Love" but was about to rename it as "Beauty and the Beast."  When I teased RD about the final title in conjunction with the two photos I was about to post (Beauty ... and the Beast), his response was "That's so rude to MyGirl!"    Let it be known that he vehemently objects that this blog post is not reflective of his envisioned photos to match captions .