23 DEC 25
It's mid-morning and a wad of flaming paper towel coasts through the air towards one of my book stacks on the dinner table... I catch it in time... “Yali! Why?”...
**shrugs guiltily** “I don't know”...
Kids need to run around outdoors for awhile... scoop them out the kitchen door into temps inching towards 70... “Stay out there till lunch... you need some activity”... their noses press up against the glass like curious fish in an aquarium... doesn't take long for them to find that activity though... Patience goes jingling by the front windows in her alpaca jewelry and a can of passionfruit sparkling water... temporarily there is peace until...
“YAAAAAALI!!!! STOOOOOOP!!!! MOOOOOOM!!!!”... Patience streaks back past the window towards the front door...
...as Yali pounds down the path behind her with his turbo water gun...
This time they find themselves in separated contemplation and the house is once again temporarily quiet...
...until all three of them begin conferencing with me in my bedroom while I sort socks... hungry bears...
Mid-afternoon Oxbear returns from a day of shooting with buddies...
Patience and I are mixing chocolate cake from scratch in the kitchen... there are already chocolate rings all over her pastel tie-dyed sweatshirt from pressing up against the mixing bowl too many times...
While the cakes bake... “Uh... Yali? It looks like a murder scene in the bathroom... you need to clean up all this fake blood”...
**sticks his head into the bathroom** “I don't see any blood”...
The remainder of the afternoon pushing evening is the piñata explosion of Oxbear cleaning out our bedroom closet and Puck chucking marbles at his siblings and Yali trying to get a wasp's nest out of the storage shed and Patience blasting through wrapping paper and tape and chocolate buttercream and “The Philadelphia Story” and sketching new faces in her sketchbook in a style all her own... “What do you rate this face Mom?”... “Uh... I mean... if it's something you'd paint on the side of Kuzco's temple... then yeah it's pretty great”...
