A Time to Buy
Thursday, February 1, 2007
Collette had fallen asleep off and on throughout the night until OLeif arrived home at one o’clock in the morning. Collette had been experiencing odd dreams of balls held far away and of snow-covered mountains. It had been bears and apples several nights before.
It was a quick day, although it really was quite long. Collette was at the office from a little before eight in the morning till six-thirty at night, before OLeif could finally pick her up so that they could run errands.
Collette confirmed with Ivy that, after four and a half years, she would be leaving the office after junior arrived. Ivy had been anticipating this, and although it would be rather freeing not to have to work every Thursday and Friday as she had since she was seventeen, on the other hand, she would miss seeing Ivy every Thursday. And she would miss just being a church secretary anyway. She suddenly found herself down to eleven weeks before her due date – eleven more weeks to wrap up her job and find someone to fill her position.
In more amusing news, Ivy had words over the energy drinks that OLeif had given the boys the day before.
“Well, they were sitting there, drinking them on the couch,” Ivy said. “And I asked them how much caffeine was in there. And there’s ginseng in there too! Then, it hit. Plato was absolutely wired, couldn’t sit still. He kept moving his hands everywhere, fidgeting with a balloon. Ben-Hur took it away from him for awhile. So did Ecclesiastes. Then he and Creole were throwing playing cards around the room… And I found out that I have OLeif to blame for all of this.”
Ivy put her hands on her hips and laughed.
“Yeah…” Collette could just see the chaos… “I don’t think he anticipated that they were going to drink them during youth.”
There would be no more energy drink deliveries during the day.
Meanwhile, OLeif was out at Denny’s with Sinai for lunch. Ivy finally forced herself to go to lunch as well at 2:30 in the afternoon, whereupon Collette also cracked out her lunch and had some moments of quiet reading over it in the conference room.
OLeif must have been exhausted come evening, she thought. He had four to five hours sleep the night before and he would have to be up early the next morning after fasting through the night – he was having his blood drawn for routine tests Friday morning at 7:30.
Collette decided that she would be happy when Sunday arrived, busy as that day would be. Somehow, even with all the activities, there was a generally more peaceful atmosphere to the day. She could say this – she wouldn’t be attending the junior/senior high Super Bowl party with OLeif. Chaos would reign.
As Collette waited for OLeif to pick her up that evening, she listened to John Piper, preaching on the occult. And while she listened, baby decided to become hungry and started to dance.
Later that evening, Collette occupied her time with changing their address information on as many things as possible.
“Even if it were possible that the experience (if it can be called experience) of the lost contained no pain and much pleasure, still, that black pleasure would be such as to send any soul, not already damned, flying to its prayers in nightmare terror: even if there were pains in heaven, all who understand would desire them.”
– p.128, The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis