And so it Begins
Monday, January 31, 2011
Collette woke from dreams involving alligators, pituitary glands, dinosaurs, and an enormous flood in which she was gathering food and water supplies to follow a group of newly-met people to a cement shelter, though it was already ‘surely the end of all things’.
Not long after the 9:15 mark, the sudden tap of ice was heard on the patio and the glass.
And so it began.
OLeif and Dad had gone into work. But the kids had been left off their Classical Conversations classes in Illinois. Just in case.
Meanwhile, Collette and Puck busied themselves with bananas, plain yogurt, and Special K, followed by cleaning Puck’s room, Puck’s very first one of 100 reading lessons, which produced, fortunately, nothing but grins and giggles on Puck’s part, and a subsequent devouring of the remains of the basketball cupcake from Saturday, selections from Mansfield Park, the audiobook version… And Collette attempted to teach Puck the game of mancala. After several rounds, he took the hinged board and folded it in half.
“I’m pretending this is Holy Jesus,” he said. “This is the Word of God. And he came to sent you bread in this. This is the bread thing. To worship God. You may not have any bread until… I have to let you have it soon as I can. You have to put any money in each hole. This one or this one or this one or this one or this one… Each one inside of the wooden Bible. Words of God.”
Then things grew somewhat quiet outside, aside from a little rain.
But by one o’clock, the skies seemed dark enough to be nearly five. Followed by heavier rain, and then subsiding, etc. Gaining strength again…
At a quarter after one o’clock, Charter’s cable went down.
By three o’clock, with a look out the window, it was clear that miniature icicles were hanging from every branch.
Nearing four o’clock, Charter was restored as OLeif finally returned from work, after his 6:20 arrival time earlier that morning, and a good deal of time after Collette had called him at eleven in the morning, given that the cars she could see on the highway, were, many of them, crawling by, if moving at all.
In other notes of the day…
Sunday in the nursery, Collette had looked out of the window to see a man in camouflage walking beyond the back parking lot with a gun slung over his shoulder. Apparently January was still hunting season…
And Monday was also a day for introducing Puck to another Jules Verne poorly scripted 1960’s version of Mysterious Island.
The evening commenced with a private viewing of comedy shows, as they were a grand eleven episodes behind as it was, accompanied by pretzel M’nMs and Cheez-Its.
And outside in the evening chill was a veritable ice forest.
In other news…
It would seem as though Magnus’ sister, Anne, would be married in June.
And there were another five babies due that year, for a total of ten, one of whom would be the Candles’ first, and Ethiopia’s and Ruby’s first from OLeif’s old NAWS days.
A man is generally what he thinks about all day long.
~ Emerson