And so it Begins
Monday, June 11, 2012
The madness was beginning.
8:45 show-up to 11:30 last song.
Vacation Bible School had returned yet again.
Fortunately, the rain had been summoned.
Puck stared at Snickers sitting on the deck watching the not-yet loosened skies…
“Mama? Why can Snickers go out there naked?”
Half the kids from last year showed up. Apparently the economy had recovered enough to spur the general populace back into summer vacation. This provided for a much less… crazy… week.
The sheets of rain also helped.
Maybe not so much the dirt cups, lemonade, and candy.
Thirty minutes of permanent markers and white scarves elicited extensive conversation between Puck and the arts and crafts administrators, including Collette upon occasion…
“Mom? Do women have beards?”
“Not usually.”
Carrie was ironing her suit jacket and blending a kale shake as Lucia arrived for their business meeting downtown.
“What?” Lucia declared, staring at Carrie’s slop-pony and Victoria’s Secret hot pink sweatshirt.
“What?” Carrie replied. “Lucia, you didn’t dress up as much as I did.”
Lucia chatted with Puck in the living room. He explained his “Big Chief” shirt to his first cousin once removed…
“But I’m the Big Chief,” Lucia told him.
“How do you know? Because you have writing on your arm?”
“Yup. It says that I’m the Big Chief.”
She then quarter-convinced Puck that she lived in a teepee.
Meanwhile, Mom had painted more of the library at church – a surprising red.
“We ran out of the white color so we hunted around and someone had left the red, so we used it. Babe Ruth said, ‘This is not an acceptable color for us. We’ll be excommunicated… I love it!’ I suggested that perhaps if we call it ‘Reformation Red’…”
And in other news, the latest choir era had shifted with the arrival of Mr. Sing as new director and – of all people – Bluebell, as accompanist and consultant.
Puck caught Snugs by the collar and held his face in front of a card he had snagged someplace…
“What are you doing, Puck?”
“I’m teaching Snugs about God. So he will believe God and not bunny words. Obey God, Snugs… Grandma? Could I have a Bible? I got to teach Snugs about God so he will stop eating bunnies. Don’t eat the forbidden fruit, Snugs.”
“Well, I baptized my dog five times when I was young,” Mom added in the other room.
Snuggles would not reform…
“He bit me, Mama.”
So Puck penned an angry face on a post-it note and stuck it on Snuggle’s back.
Also, apparently Pumpkin had bit Dad the other day…
“Are you the devil cat?” Dad had asked her.
Chomp.
Drew blood.
Carrie and Lucia returned from another successful meeting, then picked up some brownie earthquakes, with one for Collette. And much various business was continued by Collette and Carrie throughout the afternoon while Mom and Puck rummaged through old books in the basement toy room.
Dad returned early for a jog.
Puck was busy constructing a collection of leaves from the lawn, stuffing them carefully inside an orange phonebook bag. He marched solidly through the kitchen…
“I’m going leaf-ing in the front now, Mom.”