15 NOV 25
While Patience is ready to stomp it up five hours southwest later that day...
...Yali is working on his own adventures... vocalizing “Daisy Daisy” to himself about two octaves lower than he would have a year ago... suiting up as Spiderman for action flips on the trampoline...
...asks me to join him in the yard with a stack of work while I sit in the light bake of a warm sun...
While Patience waits for her two-thirty slot somewhere after the traditional Irish soda bread competition... she and Oxbear tour the Wal-Mart Museum which I did not know existed... “I got something there for Puck to make him smile!” Patience declares later over a video call... holding up a packaged yellow smiley face pin to the camera... and it will...
Yali ready for the park about the time Patience pops on stage for her reel... he tears around the asphalt track on his old Razor scooter before chasing squirrels with Puck's vintage Minecraft pick-axe over crunchy autumn salad of oak and elm and sweetgum trimmings... and climbing the young boughs of trees no other children seem interested in climbing...
Stop by Schnucks for something “fun” for dinner... “Get me... a bucket of spicy wings and a case of diet Dr. Pepper” Puck suggests over the phone... as Yali begs for the party-sized Stauffer's lasagna... “Party size?” // “YES! Please!”... I counter with family-sized... he accepts...
Back home Puck urges me to take a bite of one of the fire-orange wings sitting hot in the box... I agree... “Oh Mama!... nope nope”... Puck just grins and tackles the rest himself but even he has to give in after five... he's busy testing out his new cowhide welder's jacket anyway... looking sharp...
Meanwhile Patience has finished all three rounds in Bentonville... and by four o'clock she has been handed again again again a second-place trophy... but she's got the hotel pool and “Ratatouille” waiting for her so no time to lament over that ever-illusive top spot...
Yali asks for another walk before dinner... sky is a little muted sherbet light as we walk off... deep crimson foam of foliage a glowing bed of fallen copper leaf reflecting last light as the air chills...
Yali walks steadily beside me carefully and intentionally organized in his green velvet cape and a variety of belts and knives including one of Patience's rhinestone tiaras hanging at his side... contraband from fighting trolls and goblins in the woods... which he explains in all detail to me as we walk the full circuit of the neighborhood...
Back to slide that lasagna into the oven as Yali reads aloud the instructions on the box in a Scottish accent...
...as Puck emerges looking for the button-down shirt he recently bummed off Oxbear... he has a birthday party to attend that evening...
...after some unsuccessful search and conversation Yali and I walk to the secondhand shop across the road twenty minutes before they close... grab a few options for Puck... while Yali rummages nearby... “Mom?” he asks hopefully... holds up a robot mask with somehow still functioning headlight... a dollar eighty-five... “Okay okay”...
Home for that family-sized lasagna... **chomp chomp chomp** “I still like yours better Mom”...