April 28th
It's Oxbear's day to run... off work but never really off work as parents will be... while he's busy taking Yali to Hobby Lobby to buy a bundle of soft banana yellow flannel for his robot costume...
Patience is feeling sleepy in the Spanish classroom that morning... road trips leaving marks... but not enough to stop her from embellishing Kindergarten projects with colored tissue paper fringe while I help craft a “coral reef” out of paper plates, Solo cups, and empty TP rolls...
Home again... cardboard scraps still everywhere...
While Oxbear and Yali are still out borrowing Theodore's truck and picking up Chick-fil-A... Puck processes career options in depth with me while Patience listens... drops of Nutella somehow sitting between her eyebrows...
Around this time I employ the critical error of allowing myself to begin a “quick” genealogical dive into my Icelandic line before hitting classwork with Yali... an hour quickly evaporates as I discover that my paternal 36th-great-grandmother appears to have been one of the first settlers of that mysterious island... so basically the laundry doesn't get done that day...
After a lunch of over-cooked CFA nugs that smell suspiciously of canola oil... Oxbear and Puck leave to rent a trailer, pick up Puck's Jag, and drop it off at the Big House to show off to a pack of extended family including uncles B and Francis to share advice...
Bookwork concluded in the afternoon... out into the wind and sun warming things into the mid-80s for a neighborhood walk... which includes two kids getting along amazingly well...
...until back home and the rough-housing leaves Yali with a bloody lip and Patience with the wind about knocked out of her... “I didn't mean to!” they both protest... which is always probably about a half-truth...
There's still cardboard everywhere... Yali is robotically walking around the yard strapped up in more cardboard and duct tape... both kids jumping on the trampoline in their pajamas before bedtime... honeysuckle blossoms bursting out of all the hedges...
Pale sunset into evening...
Puck borrows my car for a work-out with friends in O'Fallon...
Oxbear returns the trailer, the truck, and picks up the shopping on his way back...
Tuck kids into bed reading all the “funny” names in 1 Chronicles to them... they pick favorites... Patience is particularly taken with one : “Jashobeam”...