29 JUL 25

Back to the studio for Patience... while we drive there she sighs like a seasoned instructor over the would-be students and their poor listening skills of the previous day...

Between meetings... Oxbear and Yali are in the kitchen whipping red food coloring and cocoa powder and psyllium husk in the old blender... then Yali gets busy preparing a label for a recycled plastic spray bottle : “FAke BLOOD”...

Three hours later Patience provides a better report from the studio... mostly because the primary culprit from Monday decided not to return that morning... not all three year-olds are supremely interested in following instructions...

Drive Puck to work in a 111 heat index...

At home Yali is preparing a hand-shredded Spiderman suit while carefully applying fake blood to his face in the bathroom mirror... a washed-out gallon jug of orange drink now hosting fake blood sits in the fridge waiting for his next projects... “Uh... Mom?” he asks me eagerly while buttoning up a collared shirt about four sizes too small for him... “I need help pouring out the blood so it doesn't spill and look like someone got murdered in your kitchen”... several minutes later he's walking around in the old shirt squeezing against his ribs liberally covered with oozing red patches...

It's so hot by dinner time that I close all the living room shades while Oxbear ends work to play a fun color-guessing board game with Yali and Patience...

Then Patience is back to the studio for two hours... soaring cloud towers in Renaissance tones split in hot white light...

And when I grab Puck from work at seven the heat index is still 108...