April 8th, 2025
The kids are busy preparing lunches for Yellow Bird in the kitchen that morning... Patience pulls out a knife and an orange... “BLOOD CIRCLE!” she announces before she slices... Scout knowledge passed down from Yali...
Chinese culture class that morning... both kids get a little worked up over the atrocities of Mao in the 60s and 70s as Yali vividly imagines how he'd take him out if he'd been there...
Puck then joins me to drop off the kids for five hours of learning about plants and their ways... listening to and discussing Gustav Holst's “The Planets” as we drive... then stop by a packed Home Depot for eye bolt screws... “Have a good one” Puck nods to the elderly cashier as we leave...
Back home to push more laundry through the system and scramble eggs for Oxbear which involves another broken plate and my new maroon sneakers sliding over a slick butter patch someone left on the kitchen tile...
Then more medical appointment scheduling via phone calls as Puck and I discuss his wisdom teeth situation and he shows me how to do a “deficit push-up”...
He stalks back upstairs later to blend another protein shake which he pours into a candle goblet bummed out of his grandma's junk box... he insists it's a drinking glass...
The rest of the day is back-and-forth...
pick up kids from Yellow Bird where one of the moms explains how a tornado ripped the roof off her sunroom last week as they were preparing to sell...
drive Puck to work for a four-hour shift...
back home... where Yali fully gears up in every piece of Nerf and knock-off Nerf he owns to battle imaginary legions in the back yard...
throw a sausage and potato tray bake and a pan of biscuits into the oven for dinner...
Drive Patience to the studio... Yali wearing his Stormtrooper helmet next to her in the back seat...
while Oxbear is at his first elders meeting at church...
back home for under an hour... as Yali declares once again his intention to continue attempting to eat “VENGETABLES!” (he understands veggies so little, he still can't say the word quite right)...
pick up Puck from work... with a bag of buffalo chicken wings and strawberry yogurt pretzels from work... grab some cold drinks on the road...
back home for about fifteen minutes...
pick up Patience from the studio wishing one of her besties “bon voyage” for Worlds in Dublin...
and... finally home again by nine-fifteen...