21 JUL 25
Creek is high from the rain... its usual glass-clear waters nearer a cold hot cocoa running in a hurry around the bend and down towards the Meramec... rock bank washed out some... kids begin splashing against the current while I begin exploring the new rifts in the rubble... it's a good haul too... fossils and tooled stone implements... including one piece of white chert already catalogued with fading Sharpie pen by some previous explorer... and a large maybe-spear-point... confiscate for historical preservation...
But the heat is about to blast again... and – more importantly – a bird has dropped a foul gift on Patience's head and it is now smeared through her ponytail... after she wraps her scalp in a bath towel we drive for home... frozen drinks in strawberry and blue raspberry via drive-thru to distract from unpleasant events...
While Patience hits a long shower...
...Oxbear and Puck have just returned from the bank to prepare an auto loan for Puck's waiting Lincoln Continental...
...and Yali layers up in costume... begins crashing around the house into walls and tumbling around the floors... plastic rifles battling invisible foe...
...Patience emerges from the shower some time later... “Mom! Mom! Come see the art I made in the shower!” // “Okay...?” // she proudly throws aside the shower curtain to wave a hand over the shower wall where she's Picasso'd numerous strands of her long black hair into her “masterpiece”... “I've been working on it every time I take a shower!” // “Uh... wow... what is this art... of?” // “It's a galaxy!”
...as Puck returns to the kitchen to spray paint the inside of a glass vase for no very obvious reason... which is quickly so potent that Patience runs in with a strawberry air freshener also so potent it's like stepping into a living Lisa Frank stationary box...
But Patience is waiting for her promised afternoon tea so... mask up and layer together cucumber tea sandwiches and prepare a pot of peppermint tea while Patience arranges red velvet tea cakes and fires up the last third of “Pride & Prejudice”... that's when Puck realizes he likes cucumber sandwiches and returns for so many of them that most of the bread loaf is gone by the time we return to Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet...