16 JUL 25

My stomach feels a little funny...” Yali informs me as Patience and I prepare to leave that morning... Oxbear is at all-day conferences but Puck is home so... “Okay well... I'll let you stay home just in case and... call me if something comes up... get it?” **obliging if not slightly patronizing smile**... but it does... come up... Yali calmly tells me over a video call from his tablet ten minutes later while I'm on the highway... “I threw up... and I got a nosebleed... I feel good now though... I can handle it”...

So while Patience cousin-sits young master "R"... three hours of sandbox and homemade cupcakes...

...Yali lounges on the couch with his tablet until I determine that there's not much chance he's sick-sick...

One o'clock pick-up for Patience... "R" sleepily stares at me from his highchair as Patience and I leave with two boxes of cupcakes... “R helped...” Patience explains... “he clapped his hands in the flour”...

Then... because she's been saving and saving for Nike “bubble” shoes and she's almost made that goal... we stop at the Nike outlet store in Chesterfield Valley on the drive home to see what they've got... an oven-baked 108 heat index blasts us across the parking lot... we browse a little... Patience fully confusing the teenage sales associate with the term “bubble shoes”... after then describing the shoe... “Oh... do you meant the Nike 270?”... he then explains that they have no children's sizes available... so Patience – un-phased – makes plans to hunt through Amazon later...

Skip ahead to late afternoon... Puck at work waiting on that Lincoln Continental inspection from Wisconsin...

A grumble of distant thunder pulls Yali and myself outdoors to watch a fantastic cloudscape... flat on our backs on the trampoline for awhile... colors and textures mixing across sun and shade... crickets and birdsong in the wind... Patience later pouts that she “wasn't invited”...

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Jamie Larson
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