All the critters
“Workin'... NINE TO FIVE!” Yali barks at his sister to wake her early for church that morning... Oxbear is on elder duty again... **giggle giggle** “WORKIN' NINE TO FIVE!”...
Meanwhile in the other room Puck's fantastic yellow cat is for-no-reason-at-all repeatedly charging at and biting my shoulder...
Putting bread in the toaster for a quick breakfast... recall the dog barking wildly again in the night... what did she hear this time?...
Thundering Medieval pipe organ an hour later...
Then Bible study... pull a tiny crawling bug off my arm while waiting to begin... Oxbear identifies it after some light research as an “English grain aphid”...
Home where Puck leaves for J's high school graduation at the Family Arena...
Oxbear packs for a week in Colorado while Patience gives him easy Mandarin lessons...
And Yali – his face recently washed of red warrior paint – is busy performing surgery on a banana in the kitchen... “He didn't make it” he explains... rinsing Kool-Aid off his hands next to the spliced fruit with Sharpied “dead eyes” resting on a paper plate...
Oxbear is then delivered to the airport... kids aren't happy about it...
But back home Yali quickly finds distraction in discovering that the dog has eaten the recent banana corpse including red Kool-Aid innards... he then pulls another fresh banana from the bunch... “I'm going to perform surgery on his cousin now...” so while he perfects his surgical precision in the kitchen...
...I finish a little light yard work... and discover what could be bear scat near one of the mulberry trees... might explain the dog in the night...
Shortly later back indoors Yali is washing his hands in the sink again... “This guy made it” he announces with relief...
There's still time for the park and a lunchbox dinner... after Patience finishes counting all her freckles for some reason... I sit with my laptop to work on a few documents while they get busy traveling over unpredictable lava fields and avoiding bees...
Smoky orange fire sun come evening...