19 : My First Actual Teacher

All day the sky was about half threat-to-rain, by looks alone. At least the mugginess had been cut in half, because the boys and I had more errands to run than I thought.

We cleaned all the grass clippings and sprawling weedy-grass from around Dad’s grave. Picked up “Toy Story 3” at the library. Bought a lot of starch at the grocery store – my boys love pasta. Then I sat in the car with Yali and watched Puck finish organizing all the shopping carts in the parking lot stall. He was proud of his work.

“It bugs me when they’re all messy like that,” he told me, buckling himself in for the drive back to the Silverspoon’s.

It was mid-afternoon. I released the boys into the wild for some bike/cart time on the driveway.

At one point, Puck paused his vehicle. “Mom, do I get a new lunchbox for school?”

“I thought you wanted to keep your old one.”

“We should put that lunchbox on display, Mom. Because that was from Mr. Vermeer’s class.” He started pushing the plastic bike around the pavement again. “In fact, anything from Mr. Vermeer I really want to keep. Because all that stuff from Mr. Vermeer – he was my first actual teacher.”

Considering that Puck had been home schooled through First Grade, I needed some clarification on that. “Hey, what about me? Wasn’t I your teacher first.”

Puck looked at me carefully. “Mom, he was my first ACTUAL teacher.”

No offense taken.

Movie night.

Francis walked through the front door of the Silverspoon house, hungry. Always hungry. Especially when he saw the pork steaks frying on the stove.

“If you have any leftovers, I can help you out with that,” he told Gloria.

He walked down to the basement a few minutes later with a full steak.

“Francis this is just like when you were a little kid and asked Mrs. Silverspoon if you could have her microwave,” Carrie and Rose chastised him. “Quit asking for stuff!”

Once Thunderbird and Annamaria had also arrived, we lived it up big with Carrie-Bri’s homemade zucchini cobbler – yes, zucchini – that somehow still tasted like apples.

We ended up watching a “serious” film for once. Matt Damon and John Krasinski in “Promised Land”. Although it took about half an hour for Carrie to tell the difference between Damon and Krasinski. She’s not so great at faces…