26 SEP 25
Head cold doubles down in the night... and it's hopped quarters down to Patience now too...
Yali is already buzzing the RC Tesla in the living room... Patience asking for the location of the jar of apple butter... both of them sketching jack 'o lantern designs at the dinner table... which later becomes Yali rigging a goose feather from a 3D-printed wand and polyester thread dipping the quill in peanut butter to create a game for the dog who is enjoying the snack...
It's probably partly because after a grand fight the previous evening both Yali and Patience lost use of their tablets for the foreseeable future... but I'm fairly certain that even without the ban I still would have been sitting at the table that morning in a pile of tissues rewriting the budget while Yali and Patience craft a full-out Nerf war from both sides of the living room in rapid fire of foam missiles blasting through the air... “I LOVE WAR!!!! AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!”...
Late morning leave for a quick drive to the library to grab my reserve on string theory before its lifted from the shelves... why do I think I ever have enough time to read these things?... walking down the driveway the rat-tat-tat of missiles and Yali's battle cries can still be heard from the street beyond house walls and windows...
When I return with a fat book and a handful of used tissues...
...Yali is sporting about four earrings pieced from broken necklaces and magnets he's found around the house because he's going for a South Korean look today...
He and Patience finish Science and get busy crafting artfully layered sandwiches in the kitchen proudly showing off their turkey-pepperoni-cheese-lettuce-tomato-pickle-mayo masterpieces before hitting the trampoline with a couple of picnic blankets... but first big brother comes out to commandeer a test bite... “Actually eew no... this has mayo... why did you put mayo on it?” // Well I didn't know you were gonna eat it!” // “You should have anticipated that Patience...” // “Well next time you come out I'm not gonna make you something!” // “Sure you will... you're just saying this now”... he's not wrong...
Somehow it's after dinner and Oxbear and the youngsters are setting up a – I realize later somewhat rare – board game called “Northwest Passage HMS Terror Edition” that Puck dug up somewhere... Oxbear peruses the instructions once again... “Oh wait... this is all in French”...