August 27
Friday, August 27, 2010
Over at the house early that morning, Snuggles had trapped a mole in his jaws.
“Bad cat!” Puck cried. “Bad cat!” And then he went back to his bowl of plums, strawberries, and raisins, until he thought of something else to say. “You can have that mouse!” he declared. “But no more mousies!”
8:45. Out the door. Francis behind the wheel, having just returned from breakfast at iHop with Henri and the other dudes.
“Guess what they did at Scouts last night, Collette?” he asked with a shiny grin of his hated braces. “They were shooting marshmallows with crossbows.”
The office was busy, busy, busy. Babe Ruth was in for most of the day placing calls for those requesting assistance with utility bills, etc., which provided for entertaining conversation. Collette realized that it was the first time she had met someone from Rhode Island, (an ocean community as he put it). Rhode Island used to be her favorite state, though she had never been there, because it was the smallest, and was sort of like a tiny square.
Sometime in the middle of the day, OLeif called, heading home from work. He was nauseous and had a bad sore throat. So while he napped, Collette pushed through another four hours of putting together the bulletin and rainbow litany of inserts.
Four o’clock: quiet office. Dishes. The inevitable lunch containers and half-filled coffee pot that someone forgot about in the course of another crazy week…
OLeif was feeling better after his nap. The family living in the farmhouse preparing to go to the mission field in South Africa around Christmas sent over their daughter with the mail. The bulletins were arranged in the bread baskets in the foyer and sanctuary, smoldering in a stuffy eighty-nine degrees Fahrenheit.
And sometime nearing five o’clock, Collette finished her day, and OLeif picked her up for… well, nothing that any excuse could make good: Kentucky Fried Chicken, QT sodas, and from a quiet Target: Oreo Cakesters, trail mix: banana chips and chocolate-covered peanuts, and an enormous bag of Kit-Kats, Hershey’s, Reeses Peanut Butter Cups, and Rolos. Enough sugar and fat to kill a small panda. Collette told her guilty conscience that it was only because ‘tomorrow is our anniversary’.
They camped out in the library over a viewing of the latest BBC comedy, discovered first by Grandma Combs, and then by OLeif: Doc Martin.
Sometime around eight o’clock, Collette’s eyes glazed over in a slow state of total sugar wipe-out.
“You gone?” OLeif asked.
Pretty much…