A Drive-In
Friday, April 15, 2011
In which storms return once again and Puck attends a drive-in…
Collette woke before five to the tweeting of morning birds, just before the rain came in behind the open window.
OLeif was not happy about the birds waking him so early.
Not to mention the phantom cat who mewed outside their bedroom window for the past several nights…
The drive over… dark smoky gray skies in the last of the rain, bright green forests, tangled with white dogwoods, gold-red fields, brushed from the night’s rainfall… which happened to look very much like the coat of OLeif’s horse in Iceland…
At the house…
Joe was preparing coffee.
“Joe, if you drink that, you won’t be a boss anymore,” Puck told him.
Francis just returned from his breakfast with Henri and the boys.
“So what did the police say?” Joe asked, when Francis walked in the door.
This was typical of their brotherly interaction…
“They said they’d let me off of my first ticket,” Francis replied, “but if I blew a red light again, they would have to take me in.”
More storm talk. Everyone was busy discussing the possibilities of regrouping in the afternoon.
Carrie was singing odes to Puck, before which Puck had been singing Come on up to the House, courtesy of OLeif and his albums…
And there were two dishes of homemade coconut and banana muffins on the counter.
Puck came wandering in later to ask…
“Mama? Could I watch duh Free Cah-bo-hare-ios?” (The Three Caballeros)
Rose had filled the house with purplish flowering plants.
By ten o’clock, Collette was out the door to the bank and Theodore’s office where she was tested by Mrs. Rogers for a magnesium supplement, followed by groceries for the family under folds of that familiar deep blue and gray sky.
And at 11:30, Francis and Linnea met the O’s at the park-n-ride to visit the Omnimax for the new Storm Chaser’s film.
In the afternoon…
The girls were up on the roof capturing the last push-in of the sun before the next wave of silver violet encroached on the west.
Tornado watch until 9:00pm.
Sometime later… Rose fashioned Puck with a pair of lensless black eyeglasses.
“See? You’re a hipster now!” she declared.
“No, I’m not,” Puck replied. “I don’t have a beard.”
Joe returned from a brief storm chase just as the hail fell, like popcorn bouncing in the grass.
Inside, the storms were discussed back and forth between the crowd and Francis attached a feather to a power drill, showing Puck how to tickle people with it.
The evening was firstly reserved for the ‘Drive-in Movie Night’ at church for Puck and all of his counterparts. They were each to bring their own cardboard box to decorate as a car, afterwhich they sat inside their respective boxes with bags of popcorn, little candy bars, and fruit juice boxes, and watched an Easter Veggie Tales on the big screen. The foyer was plastered with four, five, six, and seven year-olds in their very own life-size pinewood derby.
The second half of the evening was spent in the regularly scheduled movie night back home with the kids, and a go at a homemade batch of vanilla ice cream with Andes mints. A milk gallon jug, washed, and filled with root beer and black cherry soda, or ‘black beer’, as Carrie called it. And a box of the traditional Cheez-Its. And as no one could really seem to decide what to watch, Magnus finally put in Metropolis.
Part-way through this viewing, which incorporated the usual peanut gallery, better known as the Mystery Science Theater 3000 Gang… Magnus sparked the idea of teaching his niece how to say ‘Pikachu!’
“Yeah, teach it to her while your brother’s not around,” added Joe. “When you’re babysitting.”
“All 151 original Pokemon flashcards!”
The evening ended shortly before eleven. Joe had to get up early and drive Francis to S-F at 6:30 the following morning.