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Thursday, June 30, 2011
In which work is done and things are learned…
Puck was inspecting the back of Collette’s Native American feather-print shirt with his magnifying glass.
“Just checking out your beads, Mama. They look much bigger with my measuring mirror.”
Early morning drop-off at the house, where Francis was busy mowing the lawn before eight…
The office was once again quiet.
After nearly two hours, Judah and Hesed rolled in. Judah had a sinus infection, and they were leaving the next day for a month in Queens. Hesed was fast, and learning how to open lids. He took a stab at the white-out while sitting on Collette’s desk. And she held him a couple of times while he made a pass at the phone. Bright-eyed blue-eyed baby. He had also learned a new word that day to add to his 30+ vocabulary: ‘animal’. Then he took off for the stairs.
“Where you goin’, Wallace?” Judah chased him down.
Back at the house…
Puck was running around with a plate of egg salad and busy finishing flannel-graphs. He had also visited Grandpa Snicketts with Dad earlier in the day. And he had found a ‘Jesus box’, ‘to remind him of Jesus’, filled with an odd assortment of keys, and also some dominos…
“Here, Mama. You can make some domino raisins [races].”
Joe hit up Green Lantern and the post office.
Carrie was whipped from a round of fasting and early morning blood work, and finishing up further contract opportunity letters, complete with QR codes.
Francis was leaving the following evening at five o’clock with all the scouts for Philmont. His pack had already been dropped off a couple of days ago. So he and Puck were getting busy with the firecrackers.
Meanwhile, Linnea-Irish was about to spend her second night in a row with Eleda. They had plans regarding something about ‘hobo fires’. And then the next evening would be a ‘dive-in movie’ with the youth group at Hansel’s and Gretyl’s. Her social calendar was always full, it seemed.
And while Mom worked on a little needlepoint, they caught up on the matters of the week, and various odds and ends, including Carrie finding bracelet cuffs from England stamped with quotes from Pride & Prejudice and Doctor Who, and about the woman who had woken up from a coma at her own funeral in Ukraine and died twelve minutes later from a heart attack resulting from the shock… freakish things.
The heat was bad.
The air was filled with swimming pools and barbecues.
A pick-up of Yo Yo Ma at the library on the way back home.
Puck was having trouble falling asleep immediately.
“Mama, could I do something real quick?” he called from his room.
“Tell me what it is, Puck.”
“It’s a secret.”
“Tell me.”
“I… I… forgot. I’m just gonna show you.”
“Show me quick.”
The little devil emerged from his room.
“Come here, Mama,” he said with a grin. “I’m gonna show you.”
He then went promptly to the couch and did a headstand on it.
“Weren’t those amazing gymnastics?”
Then a call-up from Uncle Harry to discuss the potential scandals of the drunk Texan father of Collette’s great-great half-uncle…
“The cricket shall possess all your trees…”
– Deuteronomy 28:42a