54 : Still More Paint & Water
I took a break from painting Oxbear’s office, late morning, to let the boys play outside with the hose again. It was already so hot. Puck was browning up, although still a ghost compared to his little brother. When I looked up from my laptop at the window, both boys were belly-down on the pavement, slurping hose water fresh off the street. Yum.
I let them have Round Two with the hose later in the afternoon. This time, Puck had more plans.
“MOM! CAN YOU BRING OUT THE DUCT TAPE! I’M MAKING A SPRINKLER FOR YALI!”
“We’re out of duct tape, son.”
As it turned out, all Puck really needed was a roll of Scotch tape, which he wrapped around the mailbox, securing the hose on top. After blocking off half the nozzle with more tape to make a fine spray, Yali had his very own, very effective, mailbox sprinkler.
Later, when Puck turned off the water, the flies returned, which highly irritated him.
“Why are there so many flies?” he asked, to no one in particular. “I’m not rotten flesh!”
Back inside before dinner – both boys toasted a little darker from the sun – they dug their hands into a large communal bowl of goldfish crackers and switched on some Netflix in my room while I finished up the office. Almost there…
Yali was down for the evening. Dinner was cleared away. Painting done. Oxbear driving home late from work. Puck walked out to the kitchen.
“Can I have a snack, Mom?”
Every half-hour, at least. Sometimes more.
“You just ate dinner, bud.”
He grinned. “Don’t leave a man to starve, Mom!”
Something that certainly wasn’t starving was the ant colony just outside the front door. When I asked Puck to toss the stale food in Crackers’ food bowl, I had envisioned the trash can, not the front porch. A swarm of hundreds greeted me when I walked out to get the mail…
…which, by the way, hadn’t been delivered – one could presume – due to the drenching repercussions of the mailbox fountain. I’ll probably get a note about it from the mailman tomorrow. Still, all in all, a pretty decent summer invention.