And One More Round

I probably mention it too much, but – I have a pretty bad sense of smell. I think it might have something to do with the time I landed teeth-first in the top of my brother’s skull. [But that’s another story.] See, I have this unfortunate capability of walking past OLeif the Bear and comparing his current scent to, say, any of the four following “ideas” – Civil War campfire smoke, bad peanut butter, candy sticks from Pops General Store, or the sensation of a Medieval stone church. Half-way built. Or, as happened earlier this week, all four, consecutively, in about five minutes. So sometimes… OLeif prefers me not to comment on his current… “aroma”.

Anyway – parting from that useless pocket of knowledge – my Saturday morning began with a – “Floozie got outside! Floozie got outside! Floozie got outside!” Yes, Floozie the mama cat. Fortunately for all of us, OLeif was our minute man, and escorted the prowling she-cat back indoors with a stick. Puck continued to keep an eye on both runts for the next hour, bossing liberally and occasionally checking in with a – “What’s up, boys?” [Yes, they’re both girls.]

Before we commenced morning activities out and about in the bright blue world, I knew it before I turned around. That mischief boy-hug, come from behind, “I love you, Mama”, which in reality is just a disguised wipe-the-chocolate-mouth-on-the-back-of-Mama’s-Lance-Berkman-t-shirt…

Each Saturday calls up something a little different. This time around, the Eight family disembarked for Sarasota at noon. But someone had to watch the kids while they scraped up the last three years of glue chards and paint peels. So Puck and I spent one final set of hours in the church nursery with Mom, Naira, and the big baby boy while OLeif played a double-header out in Old St. Charles with Dad and some of the other ailing men of the congregation. I was kind of proud of myself for convincing OLeif to wear shorts this summer, by the way. But he had also forgotten his belt – I guess the kid has lost a little weight lately – so he basically spent two hours trying not to embarrass himself in front of seventeen other guys lobbing electric yellow softballs across the field.

Anyway – one of the only times church is so quiet, you can actually hear the metal roof pop and the sanctuary wall clock tick at the same time. All those spidery corners. And that’s how we sent off the former reverend of worship to Africa and the former reverend of youth to Florida in the space of one fortnight.

So my husband the Bear pulled out a decent exhibition with the team’s two wins, including a caught pop-up in foul territory, which had the team dubbing him “Yadi”. I don’t know about OLeif, but that would have absolutely made my day. Anyway, he must have been feeling good enough about everything to pick up Simply Apple juice and Reeses peanut butter cups on the way back to get us, plus two albums of Coldplay for me on his iPod. What do I say, though? OLeif’s always feeling good. Even bought me a ream of Astrobrights – Celestial Blue – for my letter-writing habit. I say that with one look at my right hand already dolloped with black ink. Some pens are just irresponsible.

Office supply stores are curiously addicting, by the way. The only kind of shopping I really don’t mind. All those tons of crisp paper, cut into the perfect shape – well, maybe three-quarters inch shorter on each side; but I’m not complaining. Stacks of clean notebooks, like blocks of sandwiches. Everything waiting for something fantastic to be written on them. They also apparently peddle racks of chocolate bars and highly discounted finely illustrated children’s books, which happens to be OLeif’s weakness. He added a five-dollar Steve Martin treasure to the packaged colored paper. And our shopping was done.

Some days. We splurge.

Anyway…

Gloria always has slabs of meat on the grill when we’re over on Saturdays. The Silverspoon household is kind of always like that. You “might could” sum up everything in that sprawling bigger-than-life world with lumber, red meat, and Texas. And by “world” I mean, of course, their legacy of being Texan. Despite my staunch St. Louis roots – roots so deep they tap into that little-known underground civilization of still-alive nations of dinosaurs – I’ve come to appreciate this aspect of the country as well. Seems to me St. Louis and Texas make reasonable and often handshakes of friendship with one another throughout the generations.

But this time, Gloria was out scrubbing up Sebastian at the dog wash, so she picked up two Papa Murphy’s pizza.

Puck was wound-up. In a two-chocolate day, what was I expecting? The whole front of his face was still stained red from his own personal QT juice as well. Izzy is usually my reliable source for tapping the kid like a maple tree to draw out the energy sap. Today’s rodeo included the newly popular backwards crab walk, carriage-style. “I’m winning at getting stronger and stronger!” Puck announced halfway in, the whole action sequence citing Izzy to eventually suggest that Puck was a “thrill junkie”.

At five.

He was eventually quieted down with fresh raspberries, wedges of juicy cantaloupe, and the English version of “The Borrowers”. I promise my son is not the Viking-caveman hopped up on cotton candy that the daily scope sometimes makes him out to be.

Puck ended his night scrounging cats out from under the bed with a flashlight, the faux-hawked kid all jammed up in an oversized blue Powerade t-shirt, and the commanding voice of authority. I hope he doesn’t want to become President. I don’t think I could handle it.

The most exciting part of the day had yet to arrive, however. Just as the Bear was leaving to join Theodore and Izzy for Batman… I about squeaked my eyeballs out when the Cards slammed in twelve runs in the seventh, including seven doubles on seventeen straight batters in a dominating shut-out of the Cubs for a franchise-tying record. Not to mention Matt Holliday’s homer being the longest in stadium history last night too.

My stars, gentlemen.

I think I felt somewhat faint.