Blake is my oboe student. He takes lessons with me one day a week.
Of course, when you have two oboe players in the same room in charge of completing a task, nothing will get done. We have the inability to focus on anything seriously for any amount of time. We laugh, we giggle, we talk about how awesome the oboe is.
So, in a thirty minute lesson, it's safe to say only about 12.7 minutes is actually productively spent.
On this particular Wednesday when Blake came for his lesson, we had a mission. I was convinced that I was in possession of the book Blake needed to find his All-State audition pieces.
*** Side note: I know for a fact that I did at one time have the book. I had to have it for my private lessons. I promise.
Anyways, since I've moved four times since college, all of my materials have been kind of hard to locate. I'd checked out every closet before he arrived, looked in bags, under beds, and came up with the only logical explanation- this book was in the attic. Definitely.
So, when Blake came in, I told him not to worry about putting his oboe together yet, we were going on a music hunting expedition to the bowels of my attic. We trudged up the stairs, and the kids followed us. At the door to the attic, I explained to them that they were not allowed to come with us. So, what did they do? (if you can't guess, refer to any of my earlier posts). They stayed at the door, trying to edge their way in as we moved along the corridor of broken toys and Christmas decorations.
"We're looking for a box that says 'Master Bedroom'," I said.
"Are you sure, Mrs. Scheeler?" Blake asked.
I laughed. "No."
We finally found a box that said "Master Bedroom Closet." I was certain that we'd hit the jackpot. I distinctly remembered keeping my music in the closet one house ago. I cracked open the box and voila! There was my music. I handed part after part, folder after folder to Blake, who looked through them and found....nothing. There was one yellow book that resembled the one I was looking for, but everything else was not even close.
I scoured the box again while Blake paged through what I'd given him. "Hey! You told me you didn't have this!" he yelled, holding up a solo I'd encouraged him to buy because didn't own it. Apparently I did.
I backed up from the box and looked around at the others that were sitting there unmarked. "Maybe it's with the books?" I said. I opened a couple of boxes of books that were covered in little mouse poos. "Maybe not," I decided.
I backed away from the boxes that were sure to contain various surprises and straight on to a sticky trap. "Crap!" I said, trying to shake the trap off of my foot. I sat my foot down to pry the trap off if it, and noticed that there was a dead mouse stuck to it. Blake laughed. I tried not to vomit.
With my free foot, I tried to check out some other boxes where this book could be resting, waiting for us to snatch it up. I found a box of Ivy's old shoes, and they were exactly the right size to fit Story!!! Blake was balancing all of the music in one had when I started thrusting pink and white tennis shoes and boots at him.
I finally gave up and followed him outof the attic. I let him drop the shoes and some of the music in the office and we went back downstairs, presumably to play.
He played for about three minutes, but then we got in a "discussion" about something he'd said to me on facebook chat once (which he DID), but as oboe players, neither one of us will ever admit error.
I looked at the clock and 48 minutes had gone by since we started the lesson. So, I said, "Time to go!
And then we agreed that next time we would actually get stuff done.
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