What's a Bit More

“Mom! Mom! Crackers was greeting me with her morning delight! She was purring with me and walking around on my lap!”

It had rained in the night again. I keep missing it. Puck likes to open the front door and step out on the porch in the mornings to observe the weather.

“It’s a 3% drop!” he declared. “A 3% hit!”

“What’s the degree of that hit?” The Bear asked from the couch, pulling on his heavy boots.

“1000% degrees! Cold.”

As we prepared departure around yogurt cups, Puck took the little violin from the piano.

“You want to play an instrument soon?” The Bear asked him.

“Yes.”

“What would you like to do?”

Puck thought about it for a moment…

“To be the best singer in the world!… But not a singer with your mouth. A singer with a violin.”

“Big bungling burgens!” Puck declared. “It’s cold!”

We had a nine o’clock appointment at church. The Bear on violin. Puck on voice. And myself… On cracked-head-proof foam padding squares. I don’t really understand how it happens, exactly. I landed in the nursery again. But it was easy today for once. Mom and I got to catch up on things. We got a few more kids added apologetically towards the end.

“You all are saints,” the children’s director told us.

Well of course Mom is. She’s the Easter bunny, Pollyanna, and Mr. Rogers all rolled into one. I… on the other hand…

Theodore had finished rigging the pull-down ladder in the shed, so he started working on the head board with The Bear for our bed. Gloria took a break to dig around in the Legos with Puck. They discussed false gods and other items of interest for an hour or more together. When I finally tore myself away from another boring line of names with no connections to real life a couple of hours later, I found that Puck had lathered the top of his head in the shower with Gloria’s good bar of face soap.

A free range chicken cooked in the oven. At six o’clock we christened the new dining room table with that chicken, a bottle of Martinelli’s sparkling apple juice [for some of us], and sweet potatoes with Brussels sprouts.