A Little Bit of That
Arm surgery without sedation. Abandoned brownstone Greek senate house in Jeff City tour. It was with great relief that I woke this morning realizing that my right arm was not about to be opened.
Fog in the morning is the second-best way to start a morning. Second to thunderstorms. But sometimes fog is better. Or, more poetically, mist. Because afternoon thunderstorms top morning thunderstorms any day. So I’d almost have to call it a tie between morning mist and morning thunderstorms. And what makes that even better is seeing my boys snuggled together on the couch by the lamp reading Hardy Boys, Crackers sprawled on the rug.
After they unsuccessfully hunted up The Bear’s pipe purchased in Iceland, Puck discovered a box of Hershey’s treasures…
“Eew! Leftover chocolate! Yuck! That’s disgusting!”
Who says I’m the only one with secret chocolate stashes… Then Puck hopped up for a big tight koala hug before The Bear drove off in the mist. And another day had begun.
I ate more yogurt in one sitting than last week. I was a little proud of that fact.
“What is this button?” Puck asked, poking the wall.
“It’s not a button.”
“It is. Sun put it there by mistake. And I pressed it, and it opened up Grandma’s garage!”
“How long can I keep giving you hugs, Puck?”
“Fifty thousand years.”
“So all my life?”
“Yes. Just call my castle before you come over and I’ll keep Rex chained up. He’s my needle dog.”
About ten minutes later he cracked his head into my jaw. There’s really never a good reason for why these things happen. When you combine a young chap eager for energetics and exercise, of course these things happen. Or a box of Legos at lunch to make up new and exciting space travel machines…
“It eats snails and people and the universe,” Puck explained, holding the rig in one hand. “And my space ship can eat the black holes, too.”
“Mom, can I spend Quiet Hour in your room?”
– The important-looking young man walked into the kitchen flexing my two-pound orange sand-rubber dumb-bell, or as he called it, “the orange lift thing”. –
“I need to lift weights. I need to lift weights to get my muscles strong. Because tomorrow I might have to save people from stuff. Like a robot that’s trying to attack.”
We like our walks. It’s basically the perfect time for Puck to go cat hunting. Monday it was a white, Tuesday a tortoise-shell [which looked more like wide winding muddy rivers at midnight], and Wednesday… we adventured into the unknown at 3:30 to find out. Except that this time, Puck wasn’t so keen on cats. It was arrows. Chalk in hand, he paused at every house and sketched one, just how Anneliese had taught him, Hansel-&-Gretyl-ing our way around the circle.
“Now we will know how to get back home!” he announced gloriously.
Between all that stooping and scratching and, every time a car approached, lunging for me and dragging me off into the nearest yard, he was tired. Our walk was half as long as the others.
Puck was dragging out dinner too long again.
“Puck, everything in your stomach. Now.”
He sighed…
“Ok. Come on, Puck. Come on…”