April 10th, 2025
It's field trip day with Grandma for the tots... so they begin their cold morning early with some Roblox... while Oxbear throws a bag together for his roughly three days away with a pack of good old friends at a cabin in southern Missouri... their shopping list includes items such as...
- 32 manly eggs
- 32 strips of manly bacon
- as much manly butter as needed
- 4 manly servings of hearty meat things
- 4 manly servings of hearty veggie things
- 4 boxes of manly zebra cakes
While Oxbear drops Yali and Patience at the old state capitol with Mom to pick up sticks on the property and learn about old timey things...
...I arrive at the Spanish room by nine o'clock for another round... the yearly diorama projects... hot glue and pom-pom balls and popsicle sticks with the 4th and 6th graders... in the years I've been involved with this project though... I quickly hit a new kind of low while gathering wet tissues out of the recycling bin from a 4th grader with a head cold... because apparently all kids struggle to recognize the difference between trash and recycling...
Home shortly before Yali and Patience return from “ice cream with Grandma” and a half-carton of farm-fresh eggs... where they also made rope and planted flowers and picked up enough sticks to earn some well-appreciated dollars for their good work...
Then it's a begrudging return to the workbooks as Yali immediately distracts himself by using a mechanical pencil to clean his fingernails...
But time is healing to Calvin-school-hating hearts and as Yali completes his bookwork, a charcoal sky is building under shocking new green buds glowing before the storm... a little botanical theater...
This is around the time we realize that Oxbear left with the Toyota keys in his pocket and he's an hour south... so he drops the keys at Ellen's land for us to grab later... and the kids and I drive Puck out to J's in what is already becoming a rager... one of the neighbor's pine limbs cracks off into our yard from a witch-like wind a few minutes before we drive west...
With Puck then established in O'Fallon until tomorrow... it's another studio run for myself and the kids...
While we drive... Patience eagerly dispenses historical facts learned earlier that day about French cabins and the speed of the Missouri River... as more cold dark rain boxes in the city...
Ninety minutes later we're driving back from class... and after the kids have fought over about every topic and reason they can think of... they peacefully tuck into their blankets and bunks as Oxbear calls from his cabin before building a campfire to read to them from “A Wrinkle in Time”...