17 DEC 25

Puck and I are in deep conversation about the measles vaccine and world stats that morning when I realize the time and scoot Patience out the door...

...as Puck drops a lit match into my lemon sparkling water and smiles with a kind of very 18 year-old boy satisfaction at his antics...

It's a quick blink and Patience and I are already back from volunteering and I'm preparing sets of lunch for kids...

...while Puck is “volcano-ing” a load of knock-off La Croix cans ready for the recycling bin just to watch them fly...

...and Yali is tossing a slice of bread into the air to see if he can repeatedly catch it...

...and somehow there is still a housefly buzzing around the kitchen even though it's mid-December...

I have also determined that Christmas break will begin two days earlier than originally scheduled... there are cheers...

So instead of workbooks and squawky violin strings that afternoon...

...Yali begins shouting out zombie gore stories from memory to me because his enthusiasm for the story and the compromised hearing in his right ear carries his tone into a barking register... “AND THE ZOMBIE ALREADY ATE HIM!”...

Kids then fly out into the mild winds of a half-baked sunshine afternoon going full pirate as Yali has convinced Patience to join him by offering her the other pair of my black boots for costuming... pausing only temporarily to stir up cups of homemade frosting in the kitchen...

And before I leave for the studio with Patience... Oxbear explains the essay he's writing on the history of chorded keyboarding...