01 AUG 25

Dangerous heat has been replaced with a poor air quality alert all day in St. Louis... those big fires up in the north... but it's only in the 60s that morning... nearly an inexplicability for August... and just in time for Puck's campout down south...

Still... indoors recommended for the county... so when Yali walks up to me shaking boxes of mac 'n cheese like maracas while wagging his rear end back and forth to the beat... near-yelling in my face because he can't hear too well from waxy build-up lately...

...it promises to be all the usual nonsense... just once again packed indoors... so it's... Minecraft and “Malcolm in the Middle” and color-guessing board games and classic samba and Honeycrisp apples and creating elaborate handshakes and 3D-printed masks and reading WWII-era historical fiction and LEGO dioramas and Ryan Trahan Youtube videos and designing Irish dance dresses and yet more fake blood...

And by late afternoon.. as Justin the garter snake attentively watches Yali paint at the crafting table (in truth, about every surface of the house has become a crafting table)...

...it's about time for a Chick-fil-A dinner...

...and Puck is established down in the Ozarks off the Current River for a weekend of – hopefully – fun adventure...