They tease
“It feels like tornado outside” Elmer texts all the siblings that morning... and it does... just that “feel”...
Kids sit at the table with me for math sheets... Patience has prepared herself avocado toast with an entire avocado on a single toast slice as she chats about purchasing “jersey pajamas” and we find an April Fools article on the “plaid poison dart frogs” of Suriname... and Yali switches on the Minecraft Movie soundtrack... and Patience shares how she and a friend filled cupcakes with mayonnaise yesterday to fool the Yellow Bird kids... distractions are always plentiful...
After math class Oxbear and I bunch up into his tiny closet office to take a Zoom call... he's busy cracking open matchbox cars with pliers for one of Yali's creative concepts as I move a box of his ukulele pegs to make space for my notes... the everlasting explosion of work and ideas...
Patience and I are gone shortly after ten o'clock... into that already-wildness stirring tree blossoms through the wind... radar and charts and meteorologists predicting big-time storms and tornados through a large swathe of the Mississippi valley...
Home for lunch... Yali is busy gaming online with cousin Ja... Patience's guacamole bowl goes flying out of her hand somehow (she must have done a good job of preparing it though because the dog licks the whole thing off the floor)... and Puck comes out to request paninis and to admire his newly-arrived wallet.... “This is a premium wallet” he notes with satisfaction, holding it up for inspection... quality product-conscious like his grandfather before him...
Sliding into the two o'clock hour... all weather radar/live tracking up and on... nothing like a good meteorological severe weather tracking sequence with a good meteorologist... **cough cough** NERD!... the boys join me outdoors while I sit and watch... Puck begins throwing a pickaxe and hatchet at the old dead oak while Yali sits on top of the minivan... all those things one should definitely do while waiting for a thunderstorm...
Eventually the rain begins to pat the ground... just a little at first... Yali walks around in his bulky coat because he loves the rain now... while I'm washing dishes watch him from the kitchen window wiping raindrops off the back of the Toyota and rubbing them through his hair...
In the two minutes it takes to drive Puck to work at four o'clock the sirens begin screaming as thunder rips through the county... Patience should be at the studio soon but we drop off Puck and turn back home as the rain begins to pound in heavy silver sheets... and continues that way for awhile...
Evening... and nothing more than a thunderstorm... slipping into glassy sunset as the rain passes...
While Oxbear Minecrafts with the younger kids till nearly nine... pick up Puck from work with two boxes of Fitz's sodas... a grape one shatters on the kitchen tile back home because we can't go more than a day without some kind of crack or break or bandage (Yali's had two of those in the past 24 hours alone)...