A Pan

While people everywhere wrapped up their tents and sleeping bags from cold hard pavement on a very dark gray morning, trampling each other into bins of discount Blue-rays and snow cone machines, I…

…decided to spend my morning, by eight o’clock, organizing Puck’s room.

Again.

With a right knee that wasn’t feeling too perky after the rain.

Fortunately, The Bear didn’t have to work, even with the ominous label of Black Friday taped across any company that sold anything at all to the general public. Unfortunately, the mind-boggling headache had returned once again. Before ten, he had lost the contents of his stomach, and was back in bed. So I paused the shake-down and fed pomegranate to Puck to keep the noise down. But I did finish the project finally, just before lunch. From garbage city resembling photographs from missionaries in Egypt, to model home. Sort of. At least as good as it’s going to get. With dust pan as weapon of choice throughout the morning, everything was practically sparkling. I knew I had Mom’s scrubby Dutch genes in me someplace.

Even if she’s not really that Dutch.

One o’clock hit faster than ten for some reason. The Bear emerged victoriously after BC powder. I moved the coffee cube table away from the front window and swept up a fat pile of fuzz, clearing space for the tree. Crackers munched on tidbits in that fuzz while Puck was play acting…

“Show yourself!” he declared wildly, flailing the broom. “Or else you’ll get a taste of my broom! Hm… I’m pretty good at this.”

“Don’t congratulate yourself, Puck…” I replied on automatic pilot.

“A long time ago I congratulated myself, because I was proud of me.”

— He cavorted off into other regions of the house, still wielding his broom, challenging what obtrusive powers dared cross him. —

“Even if you had fifteen medals, you wouldn’t win at all!”

Soon, the boys wrapped the foliage around the Christmas stick, we strapped on about one hundred baubly things, and… we had a tree again. Even if we were short a few lights at the top.

We had prepared a special evening. I guess Black Friday wasn’t exactly the best day to shop groceries, but we also needed chocolate, so… Puck and I listened to “Adventures in Odyssey” on the parking lot while The Bear did the dirty work. It quickly turned into a forty minute venture, and while Puck and I imagined Black Friday tramplings, turned out he had only run into Ethiopia again and they chatted about recent developments.

So armed with a paper sack of Chick-fil-A, a super winter holidays bag of star-shaped York peppermint patties, Christmas tree-shaped Reeses, and snowmen stamped Hershey’s bars, we huddled down for a rewatch of “Brave” from Redbox. I think we know how to have some good, clean around-the-town fun here. At least, I certainly don’t hear any complaints.

I added a shadeless lamp to Puck’s newly refurbished – once again – room for the night, and he fell asleep to the peaceful sounds of his mother tapping the keyboard and Crackers fighting her toy mouse beside the Christmas tree.