25 : Day 16

Yali and I returned from fresh mangoes and Spanish class in the middle of a baking-oven-afternoon. I cooked tortellini for lunch and flipped on “Mulan” for the boys. Five minutes later, all the pasta was gone.

“Mom? Can I have more food?”

Meanwhile, Oxbear took my phone off the counter to answer a text message for me.

“What’s your passcode?” he asked.

“The numbers of my favorite Cardinals. It goes – Matt Holliday, Lance Berkman… Wait. I should change that so it goes in order of my favorite Cardinals instead. That way you can remember better.”

Oxbear just stared at me, then laughed. That’s not going to help me,” he said.

Also meanwhile, watching “Mulan” had inspired conversation between Puck and myself about the most evil people from throughout history. Puck’s deep sense of justice had been ignited, and he wanted more facts.

“Genghis Khan killed the most people, looks like,” I told him, after a little research. “Forty million. That was ten percent of the Earth’s population at that time. Although Attila the Hun was pretty bad, too. He was one of my great-great grandfathers.”

Puck stared at me in some light shock, then asked, “Do you think you would have still loved him even though he was so bad, because he was your grandpa?”

“Good… question… He did eat some people…”

“How?”

“Not sure…”

“Did he roast them?”

“Maybe.”

“That’s gotta leave a bad taste in your mouth.”

As the heat index crawled towards 112, Oxbear took one look at the lawn back home and decided that he’d mow it later. It was too hot to do pretty much anything. So we bought some chocolate instead. Naturally.

Meanwhile, Puck was out swimming under the supervision of Gloria. When he returned for a plate of grass-fed burger and farm-fresh tomato (that’s how the Silverspoons do things around here), he was very pleased with his progress. But it was also after eight o’clock.

“Time to get ready for bed, bud,” I told him, keeping half an eye on the Cards losing to the Dodgers on the television.

“But, Mom,” he said with great diplomacy, bobbing his head up and down for emphasis, “I just learned how to swim pretty much, so I should be able to stay up late.”