Another Day Like That

Wednesday, March 6, 2007

Collette started her day with a full can of mandarin oranges. Either baby really liked oranges or really didn’t like oranges, due to his persistent rolling for the early part of the morning.

Come 10:10, Collette picked up Rose from college and headed back to the house. Rose was not particularly enjoying her Spanish class. She had pretty much decided that over the summer (as much as she hated French) that she would either register for a beginners’ French or maybe German course.

Back at the house, Rose changed back into her pajamas, wrapped a long bright blue knitted scarf around her head like a turban, and plunked a heavy case of paints on the kitchen counter.

“I need to glue my mask back together so it can dry while you teach me,” she said, quickly trying to explain herself before Collette could protest.

Rose had set out her green ceramic mask, which was round and shaped to be a frog’s head. In the center of his face was a fly, whose wings had fallen off in the baking process. So had his tiny arms and hands (which were made to look as though he were smacking his face to rid himself of the fly) and his eyeballs which sat atop his head.

Rose painstakingly glued back each appendage while Collette opened up another new textbook for her to begin – college mathematics.

So, it had been a long time since Rose had had any math. But after two hours of Rose solving six math problems: adding basic fractions, Collette knew that the problem was not that Rose didn’t understand the material. She was stalling. The stalling likely came more from the fact that Rose was busy making herself a mid-morning snack (unbeknownst to Mom) of a large bowl of Cheese-Its and two ice cream sandwiches. To her credit, she did try to down a small bowl of split pea soup as well, but never finished.

By this time, it was 12:30, and Collette was tired of sitting around waiting for her to finish the math. Glancing at her notebook page, however, Collette did have to ask Rose, why in the world, she had taken up an entire half-page for one simple math problem.

“You know that’s illegal,” Collette told her.

“Who says?” Rose grumped.

“The Dalai Lama.”

“Who’s that?”

“The controller of all mathematics.”

“How do you know?”

Collette decided not to see where such a ridiculous conversation could lead, and didn’t reply. Instead, she focused on getting Rose to hold off on the Cheese-Its. By this time, however, it really was too late. And the box was mostly empty.

The frog mask continued to dry during the afternoon. Then Collette situated herself at the coffee table in the living room to run a diagnostic psychology quiz session with Rose which lasted two hours. Half-way through, Rose was having trouble staying awake. Collette looked up after about an hour of drilling to see Rose sprawled on the love seat, a sombrero on her head, and her eyes closed.

“I’m going to take a nap now,” Rose declared.

Thank goodness the doorbell rang just then and Rose high-tailed it to the back room to escape being seen by the windshield replacement man at the front door. After he left, Rose returned with a fleece blanket and curled up again on the love seat.

“No naps, Rose. You shouldn’t have stayed up so late last night.”

Rose blamed that on the fact that she had to study for her Spanish test which she had just taken that morning.

Maybe it was just one of those weeks…

Come 3:30, Collette departed for the day. And after she and OLeif tried once again unsuccessfully to locate their forwarded mail which some post office somewhere in St. Louis had been holding for the last 25 days, they visited baby’s pediatrician for the first time. He was a very laid-back sort of person, honest and a little quirky; he had a drone which sounded somewhat like a robot when he had been talking for awhile. They liked him.

In more sober news of the day, Grandpa was not doing well. His Parkinson’s had lately become worse. He had talked to Dad earlier in the day over the phone, and due to his blood thinner, if he should fall… that would be the end. Death was always close, but sometimes it seemed closer. Despite it all, Collette hoped that Grandpa would still be given a good number of years before his time came.