14 OCT 25
Yali is already busy toasting tiny marshmallows with a handheld lighter walking into the living room before classes that morning... don't roast and drive please...
They're chugging through work sheets... after some dramatics from Yali... math flashcards are his apocalypse-now... he roars right into Abram in Genesis with an “...and a member of my household will be my HAIR!”...
...before Patience and I pause to prepare a loaf of banana bread for Puck... he's been asking for days... Patience shares the spatula with the dog while the oven preheats...
Puck is out later in the afternoon chatting about his '76 Lincoln which somehow morphs theological until... “What's burning?” he nods out the window... ghosts of smoke folding over the front lawn...
“Uh...” Yali is standing very calmly behind me... “I was trying to make a LEGO scene and things were burning...”
Puck and I walk out to investigate a very black frame of charred grasses encircling the fire pit still wheezing in an ashy heat...
“Well... Yali... I guess you know how quickly this could have become a very bad thing right?”...
He nods guiltily.... “I do...”
“And next time you're gonna ask me first to start a fire, right?”
He nods again...
“What did you do when the fire started in the yard?”
“I got water to put it out...”
Recall a similar situation when Puck accidentally set the front yard on fire a few years ago... also calmly reaching for the garden hose to put it out... maybe they'll both be firemen one day...
After driving Puck to work I return to Yali asking if I can sit outside while he works with more fire... so I do... and he's literally playing with fire and LEGOS to tell more stories and somehow it's just a normal page in the book over here...
Skip ahead a few hours while Oxbear is at an elders meeting at church before a meeting with the vicar for coffee...
Picking up Patience from the studio discussing various church denominations and how most of her friends are Catholic... she's the lone Lutheran in the pool... “We were talking about Jesus and stuff... and I asked Molly if she was Catholic because in my 'perspection' she's always wearing stuff with crosses on them”...