07 SEP 25

Leaving early for church that morning in a frosty plume of sunlight... Patience squawking way too loudly for the sleeping neighborhood about french fries... Yali shooting rubber bands from his 3D-printed Spiderman web shooter wrist cuffs... Oxbear playing some sea chanty about beans and rice from his phone as he trucks a heavy bag of new hymnals out to the van... is it never not a circus?...

Some hour and a half later just before the end of Vicar H's sermon... look up from my notebook to see a man standing in the aisle near the altar with a bag slung behind his shoulder looking maybe nervous and confused... but not erratic... he continues to stand there as the young vicar also continues preaching without pause... after a few moments the man sits down in the front pew and begins taking things out of his bag and coating his hands in hand sanitizer... Pastor K leaves his seat behind the altar to sit with him for awhile before communion then hurries back to him at the end of the service to continue the conversation... Yali and Patience never seem to notice...

Afternoon and Puck is driving south with J and friends to Elephant Rocks and Johnson's Shut-ins...

Yali and Patience sharing joke books on the trampoline... Yali in full Spiderman costume of course battling "water monsters"...

...while Mama sits at the patio table with a stack of notebooks and a Lutheran podcast on demonic possession...

...and Oxbear returns from some shopping at the dinner hour with a case of White Castle cheeseburger sliders... splurgy kind of weekend...