09 DEC 25
Up too late the previous night indulging in another Madeleine L'Engle and a 1964 biography on Ralph Vaughan Williams...
...cue the seven o'clock hour amidst an explosion of plush stingrays and huskies and other fauna left by Patience all over our bed...
It's already a few hours later... sitting next to the wood hut Patience composed yesterday with a roof lined in rhinestones and googly eyes... kids have just finished learning about some of the various kinds of world maps (an absurdly high number of varieties)...
...before I send Yali to the bathroom to scrub off as much fake blood stain from his face as possible before the orthodontist... but his lips are still a little too cherry when they walk back for new bands...
He's gloomy when we leave because he didn't want Dr. K to pull his final baby tooth now loose for months... and feels guilty about refusing the offer...
“Let's get hot cocoa from the store on our way back” I suggest... mood changed...
Maybe it's the excitement of the impending cocoa... or the excitement of not having to actually get the tooth pulled... but Yali's energy is sending him places... it's sending him too fast down the juice aisle towards his sister... don't understand how it happened exactly but... Yali suddenly trips over thin air into Patience... who trips over more air and back into Yali... who then trips back over her again... and she trips back over him again... and they both sprawl into the floor like one big flying leap-and-splat of kid... while some guy back down at the other end of the aisle probably finds himself as confused as I am over this bizarre domino effect... offer them each a hand up...
“Were you embarrassed by us?” Patience asks skipping happily next to me as we later exit the store with a box of hot cocoa and a package of peppermint spoons...
“Nope... not sure there's much you all could do that would embarrass me at this point”...
“Why are we so CRAZY?” Yali laughs out loud as we approach the car... “My knee hurts!”
The rest of the afternoon is the kids playing so hard in the outdoors that Yali develops an actual bloody nose after some kind of other unexpected hit on the trampoline...
...while Puck zooms out west to friends...
...and a cold glass blue light settles on the land in a crackling wind as Patience returns to the studio for new steps and new dances for a new season...
