Airborne Trash Can

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

The week was passing quickly for Collette, and likely for everyone else. She and OLeif were to visit with Mercy that night while she and OLeif practiced “Be Thou My Vision” for the funeral the following morning.

It was a day for cramming through the tutoring, covering, in all, twelve sessions of basic mathematics. Then, Mom, Collette, Carrie, and Linnea hit the road to run errands. Carrie’s ear had turned blue, meanwhile, from the new barbell piercing. And Rose was quite enthralled with her new iPod, which Dad had helped her select the night before.

In the store, Mom had her sunglasses repaired while Linnea stumbled across a notebook with Jack Sparrow, the infamous pirate, staring out across the front, his sea-grizzled eyes sharply piercing the seven seas.

And Collette happened to hear two women speaking Italian in the cosmetics department (what she thought was Italian) as well as two British women in electronics.

Mom and Linnea took hair trims after they all stopped by Quiznos.

And while Mom read history to Joe and Rose, Carrie blew green tea gum bubbles in Snuggles face, lying on her back on the carpet with the poor beast imprisoned on her stomach.

Later, Joe dressed sharply for his first day of work that afternoon in khakis and a red shirt. He had suddenly grown much taller that summer and was bulking up from having worked out with Tennessee those months. Collette decided that once his braces came off, he would look a good deal older.

Carrie also called Elizabeth to make plans to put several deep streaks of purple in her hair, of varying sizes.

And OLeif was to pick up Collette right after work for them to head out to World Market to purchase some incense for the apartment.

It was a typical afternoon.

And poor Joe was sent off to his first evening of work with a trash can flying after him, courtesy of Carrie. For Carrie was furious that he had taken the Civic, when she had needed it to drive to Elizabeth’s. Thus the airborne trash can.