Another Battle Scar

Puck went flying out the front door with a tin whistle around his neck to give OLeif a hug goodbye, and landed in a skidding thud on his grandma’s sidewalk.

“Ohhhh!” he declared loudly, running for the lawn and sprawling quickly onto the grass to ease the pain. He lifted a lightly bloodied elbow.
“Dad! I fell!”
OLeif handed out a thumbs up…
“Alright! You’re tough!”
Puck returned indoors for soap and water and a large towel to pad the wound, which he kept wrapped around his elbow off and on throughout the day.

Meanwhile, Rose had officially dubbed her kitten – “Stinkerbelle”.
Of course.

Naira and her baby brother were employed for the morning in a final Wednesday meet-together. This included an hour of rummaging the shelves of the church nursery, followed by the inevitable Scottish sheep and personal pizzas hot out of the oven. All around temperatures inching into 105, with promise of 108 on Thursday.
Surprisingly, the heat hadn’t really bothered Collette nearly as much as she thought it would. She almost didn’t mind reading it on the weatherboard – those horrifying predictions for the coming days or weeks.
Still, though, it was too hot to do much of anything, except for Linnea to attend another volleyball clinic at Webster where she had recently toured the facility which hosted the volleyball games for the 1904 Summer Olympics.
And Puck decided to wrap his arm in the towel again…
“I have a war wound, Linnea,” he said, almost proudly.

Carrie and Puck got busy crafting homemade blueberry muffins in the kitchen. Puck marched up to the counter in flip-flops with a long apron tied around his neck and waist. It wasn’t long before he had also donned full blueberry face. He then aided Carrie in shredding a home-grown yellow squash from a church member’s garden…
“Sun? Are we going to eat all these scribbles?” he asked, as the shavings piled on the counter.

“Dreads” wrapped.
Plants watered.
Mom enjoying some “quiet” alone time at Starbuck’s while Linnea volleyball-ed.
Carrie added quiche and parsley salad to the dinner spread.
And Puck joined Dad in watching national news in the basement.

OLeif, meanwhile, had another meeting with old pals that night – dinner at the Chinese Buffet with Simon – returning to flicks of lightening in the sky and attempting to make stegosaurus shadow puppets against the wall.