23

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Collette was 23. Despite the fact that she was feeling rather old, it was still nice to celebrate, once again, the yearly event.

The day began with a number of “incidents”. This included hearing that Joe had, the night before, not only had his thumb jambed, but had also taken a dive into what he thought was a pile of snow (which was actually ice), and tore up his back and shoulder.

Puck, the infamous daredevil, had somehow managed to pull OLeif’s bike down on top of himself. He was not harmed.

When Collette and Puck arrived at the house, they discovered that Mom and Carrie-Bri had taken Frances to the doctor to check out a rather painful pulled muscle which had bothered him for about a week.

Later that afternoon Puck was found sucking on a thumbtack, which had gone unnoticed on the carpet. Mom found him just in time.

Aside from the collection of troubles, the day was good. Rose, who was happy to have her exams rescheduled to January, was smugly lounging on the love seat in the living room.

“So…” Collette asked, “when are you and Augustus going to have those Beta fights?”

Rose grinned. “Soon. Ha ha.”

“Beta?” Mom asked. “Is that the thing living in that murky glass bowl on your desk?”

“Yes… I’m training him not to see so he can fight better.”

“And what if your Beta loses?”

“Oh, he won’t lose. Mine’s going to be better than Augustus’. He doesn’t know how to pick the good ones. I picked mine because he was trying to eat all the other fish in the tank.”

“You should put them on leashes so you can pull them apart if they’re about to kill each other.”

“Hey, did Augustus ever see your cicada you put on a leash?” Mom asked.

“No,” Rose laughed. “I did that a long time ago.”

In the past, Rose had been known to tie leashes of dental floss around pet cicadas and fly them in circles in the air.

“I did that once too,” said Frances. “And his head came off.”

“Frances!”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to,” Frances tried to hold back a giggle.

“You should have your Beta wear armor,” said Linnea.

About this time, a delivery was made to the front door.

“This box contains alcoholic beverages?” Carrie read from the side. “It’s for Dad. Call him and see if we can open it.”

Dad gave his permission. Inside the box was a basket of chardonnays, cheese, mustard, salami, crackers, etc., from Rabo.

“Ooooh, this is expensive,” said Carrie. “I used to put things like this together. This is nice.”

Knowing that Dad wouldn’t care to sample the chardonnay, Carrie poured herself a glass. And the tin of Ghirardelli chocolates was soon consumed.

“Rose, are those my fishing lures in your pants?” Carrie snapped at Rose as she walked by in a pair of striped pajama pants.

“No!” Rose jumped back. “Those are safety pins. I had to put them in because you cut holes in my pants.”

‘What?” Collette asked.

“Well, she made me too angry one time, so I had a scissors, she walked by too close, and I slashed at them.”

By the time evening came, Curly dropped in to hand over Collette’s gift from OLeif (which had apparently been shipped to the Silverspoon’s). The title of her gift was “Wreck This Journal”. OLeif knew how to pick them.

For the rest of the night, Mom, Collette, and Carrie-Bri finished the Christmas shopping while Joe was out with Curly, Rose was at work, Frances at the junior high Christmas party, and Dad and Linnea at home. After they were pretty much shopped out, they ran into Jims Mormon at Target and then dropped in to the Bread Company for dinner.

“Oh, that orange scone looks amazing!” Carrie looked at the glass bakery display case.

She got her scone, and they headed back for a bit of Star Wars III before Collette called it a night and returned to the sleepy OLeif.