39 : An Artist's Mind
One lollipop and two cookies in, I was oblivious enough to serve Yali a cup of pink lemonade on top of it. Sometimes I don’t know why I allow the things I do. But it was Art Camp art show day, so I chalked it up as celebration sugar.
Heidi walked Yali around, balancing on his toes on the tops of Heidi’s shoes, to the various display tables. Then she gifted him one of her papier-mâché penguins with googly eyes, after she removed the little bow on its head.
It was late in the afternoon out at the Big House. Puck was rummaging through all the give-aways Irish had piled on the kitchen table, including a set of adhesive fuzzy red or blue mustaches. Yali went with red.
“Which color do you think I should wear, Mom?” Puck asked me.
“You seem like a blue kind of guy to me.”
“Why does everyone think I’m a blue kind of guy? Blue is my 43rd… no, 44th favorite color.”
Our house had hit the market. So we were spending the weekend with Theodore and Gloria.
After Yali was tucked in for the night in the king-sized bed, Puck brought in his paper sack of art projects to display to everyone, including a black on white drawing of “Mustache Man”, which Oxbear claimed for his desk at work.
“Mustache man!” Puck said proudly. “I copied something off the board, except I perfected it. And I was like, ‘Mustache man’! It kind of looks like you, Dad!’”
The Coco-Cola papier-mâché rocket was next.
“We could choose between a letter, an animal, or a rocket,” Puck explained. “I chose the rocket. To be honest, rarely anybody did it.”
Meanwhile, Gloria was busy preparing steak and sweet potatoes for dinner. Puck, however, had already eaten.
“I want an excess dinner,” he explained, pulling a juice box from the fridge.
And even though he concluded that steak was “too sophisticated” and pulled together a plate of peppers, celery, and carrots for himself, he eventually also requested to be served the steak.
It was a small movie night group, just Oxbear, Carrie-Bri, Francis, and myself in the basement with a pan of bacon cheeseburger dip made by Carrie, and a heist movie. And for the first time in nine years of movie night history, I fell asleep on the couch.