March 5th, 2025
Yali and Patience spend most of Ash Wednesday morning, fighting... like two bears poking each other with sticks... “Never gets old...” Yali practically congratulates himself as he annoys Patience into a set of very vocal pouts on the other side of the room...
The matches briefly suspend as a heavy wet snow begins to fall past the windows... “It looks like sugar!” Yali announces... allow him some time to contemplate the beauty before returning to grouping poison dart frogs into fractions...
Patience and I leave for the old school mid-morning in a high wind as Yali begs to stay home with Puck and Minecraft more on his world without little sisters “ruining everything”... allow it...
While Patience works with the tots... C.P. consults with me on Spanish Pascua projects and schedules for all the students in April... then while preparing a stack of 1st grade test booklets for the Scantron, an explosion of texts hits me about all the Irish dance TV spots coming up in the next week...
As we leave a little late dropping off our volunteer lanyards at the front desk... Patience notices the bag of Chick-fil-A sitting on the desk of the police officer of the day, Officer J... Patience is clearly jealous of this blatant display of feastery...
On the drive home we spend some time discussing complicated dance performance logistics... but half of Patience's brain is clearly someplace else... “Officer J's Chick-fil-A is making me huuuungryyyy...” she continues to contemplate... then quietly to herself while staring out the window like some cartoon mastermind villain formulating taking-over-the-world-plans... “Steeeeeal J's foooooood...”
At home... the neighbor's recycling can has blown over in all that wind... wafting tissue paper and gift wrap into our dividing hedge... hedge trash pick-up is a paid chore around here – there's usually lots of it from Walgreen's after a good wind – so Patience eagerly bundles into her avocado green winter coat and hustles out into it...
Puck joins the crowd later to heft his newly arrived work-out equipment to the basement... and to debate extensively with me over foreknowledge, free will, and philosophical fallacies... it's like Oxbear in high school all over again, with Puck's distinctive flavor of argument... while the dog inexplicably eats half a somewhat large pile of dirt someone tracked into the living room from the outdoors as if it's her favorite snack...
With all that discussion, leave almost late for the studio with Patience, wondering how my phone managed to get one long crack down the glass until Patience tells me that she dropped it on the kitchen tile that morning... and Puck calls me only a few minutes after departure, irritated over a variety of missing tools he needs to piece together his work-out equipment... he eventually solves his problem, employing the use of gorilla tape in the process...
Back home again in soggy twilight... late to prepare dinner, deal with a security issue over phone and text while Puck wanders out for “FOOD!” as I slap together spaghetti and meatballs... which ends up with Puck laughingly threatening to pour leftover packets of sweet and sour sauce into Patience's bowl of spaghetti while Yali – also laughingly – whacks Puck repeatedly over the head with an empty cardboard tube... but then Patience explodes into sobs over the sweet and sour sauce coating her spaghetti, stomping off to her room and Puck feels bad and cajoles her back into a good mood again... "It tastes good like that, Patience!" ... and they all end up watching SpongeBob together in the living room while I braid Patience's hair into cornrows for tomorrow's performances (or “corncobs” as she calls them)... and chaos... eventually subsides...