27 NOV 25

After eight weeks of patience and careful ear care... Patience is ready to swap out her first studs for something new... but she encounters unknown blood from one of the piercings and there is some theatrical wailing from my bathroom mirror before I'm even fully awake...

...while Yali is a few feet away breaking down some dance moves to the Bee Gees...

Thanksgiving floats towards the noon hour... Puck and Yali battling each other with magnets and rubberbands for ammunition...

...while Puck is simultaneously arguing with me about flight patterns over the Amazon rainforest...

...as I also simultaneously check weekend weather predictions from Missouri to Wisconsin and determine that Oxbear and Patience need to leave a day early for the O to beat the snow... rearrangements made...

...before mixing and packing a tray of deviled eggs for the afternoon feast...

...as Puck flips on a Vietnam War film...

...and Patience wanders through later... commenting on nuclear fallout to her oldest brother... “Patience you don't even know what fallout is” // “Yes I do... it's about people dying and... guns and... blood... and stuff... and I guarantee you I can probably maybe spell 'fallout'!”

We're in Saint Peters for the afternoon with Theodore and Gloria and crew for a homemade spread almost entirely prepared by Gloria until two o'clock that morning... including a full three homemade pies in apple and pumpkin and pecan...

The post-feast coma is hitting Puck hard as kids run screaming through the house in high energy chase until they wear out...

...and by the time Izzy and K roll through... in town from Chicago... after a little genealogical conversation with K... it's already time to scoot home under a chilled and low-glowing persimmon sky...

...while Oxbear stays late for more conversation and grazing...