A Worm Story
Tuesday, December 5, 2006
Tuesday brought little thaw to the snow packs, although it was warmer. And yet another freeze was just around the corner.
During the course of the day, Frances was taken to the orthodontist to have his wire replaced, which had snapped in half at basketball practice the night before.
“Look!” He said, returning later that morning.
He flashed a big grin inches from Carrie’s eyes.
“Wow, Frances – pink,” Collette laughed.
“Yeah, I decided that it would be funny,” he giggled.
Perhaps it was a good thing he only needed bands on four teeth, so that his entire set of choppers was not pink.
And good thing his wire was fixed that morning – he had a choir concert later that afternoon, and also gave a brief introduction for one of the pieces and the girl who was to play the drum with the song.
“I messed up big time,” he said, upon returning. “I said the girls’ name wrong.”
And Joe again was not called into work that morning. Few cars wanted a good wash while there was still salt on the roads with more snow a possibility in the near future. Collette began to wonder how The Green Lantern survived during the rainy and winter seasons.
And Rose had returned home the night before at around midnight after babysitting Hansel and Gretyl.
“So I told a final worm story,” she said.
“That’s it – no more worm stories?” Collette asked her.
“Oh, no. He’ll make guest appearances. This time he swallowed up bad people and then spit them out on an island. So everyone asked him to swallow up all of the bad people in the world and put them in the same place. So he did but there wasn’t enough room on the island, so he split China into an island and spit them all up there. Then he dug into the center of the Earth because his mom and dad lived there. And he finally got there and it was hollow and his mom and dad had a surprise birthday party for him because they hadn’t seen him in 250 years. But then his mom and dad couldn’t get back out because they were so bent up into the little place in the middle of the Earth for so long, so the worm returned to the surface. And they called the big island with the bad people the United States of Bad People.”
And yet Gretyl had still fallen asleep during the story. Although Hansel stayed awake till the end.
Later that Tuesday afternoon, Gretyl walked down to the house to hand Linnea an invitation to her birthday party at the Build-a-Bear Workshop later that month. Frances and Linnea walked her back home just before it turned dark.
A great yellow moon rose over the snow that night before OLeif came to pick up Collette. Meanwhile, Carrie had already left for work, Mom was busy frying up potato pancakes and sausages before leaving for a meeting with Linnea and dropping off Rose at ceramics class. And Dad and the boys were at home with the dog and the cats.