28 OCT 25
Wake to Yali already sitting at the breakfast table with a white board and dry erase marker carefully drawing a “no sign” over the words “no Patience”... which may or may not indicate a double negative but for his purposes this clearly means war...
...before I remind him that the trash isn't at the end of the driveway for collection yet and he flies out the front door... Harry Potter robes flashing behind him...
By the time I begin serving egg sandwiches on English muffins for breakfast...
...Yali's costuming has changed to include many 3D-printed rings on his fingers and metal rings in his ears and chains on his jeans... “What are you now?” // “A bully” he replies darkly... I'm not sure what Patience has done already so early on a Tuesday morning to incite such ire... but whatever it is... which might actually be nothing at all... Yali is ready for battle... because after all... their favorite hobby is fighting...
Having finished teaching about nine classes later...
…including one particularly raging session of art by Yali wherein he nearly loses his mind over blending colors in a shade of gray “just so” for yet one more 3D print...
...Puck cries help for researching rain gear... he's gotta break down the Renaissance fair tomorrow in suddenly very not-dry weather...
...while Patience continues practicing scales in my bedroom... however the notes quickly fade and she wanders back out to public living spaces... “Patience... why are you not practicing violin?” // “Because my ears hurt”... I can feel Puck physically restrain himself from replying... “So do mine”...
And Yali has been threatening to glue Patience's mouth shut with plastic weld cement because this chatty train don't stop and she's taken the whole collective of the rest of our words that day so far and probably tripled that in the past hour alone...
But Yali is also very busy with more important projects like slapping silly-face stickers onto all the baby potatoes... and/or slicing them open for surgery employing more fake blood from the jug in the fridge... so the plastic welding of his sister's face is temporarily forgotten...
“BACON!”... Puck is feeling inspired... begins buttering a frying pan on the stove... “Puck... why are you buttering the pan? Bacon doesn't need butter...” // “Butter makes it better!” he declares...
And Yali transitions to dancing like the Peanuts in the living room because classes are over for the day and life is feeling pretty good...
...he and Patience then even manage to clean a portion of the basement together with almost zero arguments while apparently conducting their own screaming contest for the duration...
It's evening and in the day's towering smorgasbord of sandwiches and hard boiled eggs and ramen and hot dogs and grilled chicken and pork steak and peas and beans and most of a homemade lasagna Yali and I prepare for dinner...
...Puck dines in his room with his increasingly fat blob of a yellow cat sprawled across his lap in a plush blanket near the space heater as a misting rain continues beyond the window...
Shovel Patience off to the studio for a two-hour class in a wet dark night...
Home where Oxbear has returned from another long day of in-person team meetings for work with a pair of rubber rain boots for Puck...
...who is also hoping for more “BACON!”...
And after a quick wash-up in the kitchen... back to the studio to grab Patience who finds it apparently enormously necessary to “gurgle-sing”... as she calls it... half a pop-album of content the entire drive home ending with one particularly wailing version of “Amazing Grace” before I back into the driveway...
Finally find a quiet seat on the couch amongst Yali's handmade harpoons scrapped together from junk metal and packing tape and piles of candle wax from another recent candle explosion and yet another box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch as Yali's jack 'o lantern cackles behind me... catching up on the old laptop with more episodes of “Travel Man”...