A Little More Work

Spirit Week continued at school. Wednesday was “Tin Foil/Duct Tape Day”. At first, Puck wasn’t interested in participating.

“You know it helps your team earn points,” I reminded him.

“What happens if we get all the points?”

“Your team wins.”

“What do we win?”

“I’m not sure that you win anything.”

“Then it’s not worth it.”

My Puck – an all or nothing sort of guy.

In the end, though, he brought his giant tin foil ball from his birthday and apparently toted it around with him to lunch and recess.

“So did you all sing happy birthday to Violet at lunch?” I asked.

“I had food in my mouth, so I didn’t,” he explained, toting a cardboard chainsaw he crafted – I presume – during Art.

The lure of basketball sent Puck back outside later in the afternoon. Rain was coming; you could almost feel it. So neighbor kids gathered in the street to get the wiggles out before the storm – whenever it decided to make an appearance.

We landed in the basement for dinner again. A couple of weird 5:10 starts in a sadly empty stadium in 48-degrees Cleveland. Puck peppered on the questions, one after another. For a kid who claims to dislike baseball so much, he was particularly inquisitive that evening.

“Was that a ball?”

“If there are four balls they give him a walk?”

“He hit the ball though, so why doesn’t he get to run?”

“Was that good, Mom? Was that good?”

Finally, he walked back upstairs to fix himself a dessert of bananas and strawberries, waiting for Oxbear to return from Whiskey Wednesday to mow the lawn. Before all that rain.

After a tight loss in a very cold city up north, I switched off the television to conclude my long to-do list for the day: Colombian visa fees, United States visa fees, translation fees, fee fees, sleeping arrangements for the boys’ room, childproofing the basement door, unreturned phone call from USCIS, unreturned emails and phone call from the Colombian Consulate, back-and-forth emails with the Colombian Program Director, Spanish flashcards, calendar merging with Oxbear preparing to fly to Philly next week … it all gets done somehow.