25 APR 26
It’s within the early hour of three o’clock that a crashing rattle of something falls over in the kitchen and wakes me... I almost ignore it but...
Puck’s yellow cat stares at me guiltily from the end of the hall... “What did you do?” I bark-whisper at him... but he slinks through the cat door into the safety of Puck’s room while I inspect the damage... which is amazingly only a pile of syrup bottle peanut butter jar diced tomatoes and a can of chili knocked onto the tiled floor from the pantry... and one lost hour of sleep because now I’m fully awake...
Some time later in the normal hours of the morning... Yali flashes past my open door several times in a pair of slick shades and all his current Yali-fashion... he has nowhere to be today but that doesn’t stop him from arranging his wardrobe and hair just the way he wants it... his locks are already a shade of violet and he’s ready for soft-boiled eggs on toast...
So while Patience gets cracking into five hours of dance-and-wait dance-and-wait down in Oklahoma with Pops...
...it’s a day of work-from-home as Puck teases me out of my Civic for the day... but for once I have nowhere to be either... so my morning is genealogy and dishes... weather reports and laundry... archives and clutter negotiation...
...followed by over three hours of Yali one-man-show on the trampoline... dumping jugs of water over his fully clothed person again and again as he tumbles around and forward and upside-down hanging dramatically by climbing rope strapped to one end of the sloping trampoline in a rainbow spray of garden hose... stuntman always...
After he grabs a hot shower and begins to ink his hair green with the innards of a washable magic marker... I prepare to order us a dinner of Dominos...
Then Patience’s news from Oklahoma... she did it... after five years of stomping-hard work she has attained the highest level of Irish dance... clacking gold around her neck and a couple of plush puppies for icing...
Yali and I wrap our day with about four hours of Reed Timmer storm chasing live in southern Oklahoma... Yali watches a tornado spin up over a field near a town called Roth.... “I’ve got chills Mom!”...