Bailed Out
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
It had been a rough night. Four and a half hours of sleep, weird dreams, pounding heart, feeling pretty sick, and nothing but baseball plays running deliriously through her head, left Collette feeling very poorly at 6:34 the next morning. But she got up anyway to join the boys on the way to Puck’s 5-year check-up with Dr. Box.
By the time they got on the road, Collette felt less miserable; something about getting going and moving. The cloud pattern in the south resembled Mt. Fuji as Puck requested that OLeif read every single sign that they passed for the first few miles of highway.
At the house, Puck was asked about his fender bender with Gloria over the weekend…
“I didn’t mind,” he had told Carrie. “As long as I didn’t get picked up by the police.”
Meanwhile, Mom offered to take Puck to his appointment instead, so Collette was administered a plateful of supplements from Carrie-Bri. This was followed twenty minutes later by the closest Collette had come in 19.33 years to losing her groceries. The result of zinc power… That was a feeling she didn’t miss, not since her eighth birthday…
“Sorry,” Carrie laughed. “I didn’t meant to break your record.”
Meanwhile…
A grand bunny battle the previous afternoon had landed Lon with an emergency three-hour visit to the vet with a chunk out of his rear end. Joe and Magnus had been witness to the aftermath.
Carrie pulled out a homemade strawberry cheesecake from the fridge, swirled on the top. Business was also going well; plans moved forward with the various cycling clubs, blueprints, the search for an architect, etc.
Mom described their visit to the Cathedral Basilica on Monday morning, followed by lunch with the O’s at Fitz’s. The largest collection of mosaic in the world, of course, completed between the years of 1912 and 1988. A stunning masterpiece.
And then there was Lucia… who had ended up in the ER after falling heavily on her shoulder and severely internally bruising it.
Earnest hopped out from the room, in trouble again…
“This is your third time-out of the day,” Carrie scolded him. “You know the vet rates them on their tummy gurgles. They always come back with comments like, ‘Great tummy gurgles!’”
“Earnest has an attitude,” Linnea said. “I don’t like it. He always tries to look innocent… Carrie, could you dye my hair? White or silver.”
Puck returned with a camouflage band-aid over the arm, received in bravery, with his height and weight measuring in at 3’ 9” (87% percentile) and 45 lbs., 12.8 oz (81% percentile), respectively. Though one of his eyes came in with a 20/50 read… taking after OLeif again.
He then got busy selling his cookies.
Rose’s birthday gifts to Puck arrived in the mail – “Marry Poppins” special edition DVD, and all the way from Lancaster, England – a plush Shaun the Sheep. Puck gave him a squeeze, admiring his dangling dancing legs.
“I was going to get you a real sheep,” said Joe.
“Yeah, I was going to buy you a spaceship,” Francis added.
Francis swiped all the air packing pillows to stomp on the patio with Puck, but not before he had stuffed them all under his shirt to let Puck pound him like a punching bag.
“What is it? A boy or a girl?” Carrie asked him.
After lunch, Mom, Carrie, and Linnea took Puck to the Hair Saloon for a treat first professional hair cut. He returned with a snazzy front flip, chugging a complimentary glass bottle of Sprite, and toting a bag of tootsie rolls. Francis immediately began razzing, which sent the two outside…
“Don’t wrestle me real hard, Francis. I just got stitches.”
Rose called in the afternoon…
“Are you a grandma?” Carrie-Bri asked.
She was.
Two gray and one orange, mewing, blind, and deaf.
“I don’t know what to do anymore,” Rose said after awhile of video chat. “They’re kind of boring.”
But she was giggling at them all the same.
When OLeif arrived to pick them up for the evening, Collette was feeling pretty horrible, as she watched an episode of the “new” Doctor Who. Puck had been less than exemplary at church, according to reports. And a perfectly red-orange light patched through the trees from the sun.
Back home, in Puck’s usual slew of questions…
“Dad, why don’t I have ‘flint’ in my belly-button?”…
Collette asked, “You didn’t have any sugar tonight, did you?”
“I had a Popsicle.”
“Oh boy…”
“A brownie.”
“Uh huh…”
“And some lemonade,”
“Oh wow.”
“And… another Popsicle.”
“Yikes.”
“And… that’s all I had.”