Better as Dudes
Carrie-Bri showed us the new ladder golf set in the backyard, just in time for the Fourth. Practiced a couple of rounds while Francis and Puck set off fireworks in the front yard. Francis had also hooked Puck’s new blue and red hammock (another Puck-and-Grandma-box speciality) in the tree house before leaving for work. Then Mom and Irish showed up from Irish’s chiropractor appointment – those old volleyball injuries – with a rescued cracked-shell turtle from the side of the road. Mom just can’t help herself.
So Mom and Puck had a date scheduled for the afternoon. While they visited McDonald’s and about 30 showcase Rvs – honoring Puck’s most recent obsession – somewhere over the river, I had about three hours of quiet. Don’t even remember what I did, really.
By the time they returned, it was mid-afternoon. Irish and I followed a fast Puck on a fast scooter down the street for a mile walk sometime before egg salad dinner.
While I peeled eggs, the girls were teaching Puck how to play baseball in the backyard. With a badminton set. Actually, not a bad way to start. The kid started hammering birdies to all fields, even tried playing catch for about seven seconds before he gave up on that idea.
Rose breezed through the screen door at the dinner hour, joining the other sisters out back for more ladder golf while I pulled Puck back indoors for another spend-the-night. Occasional cannon boom of nearby fireworks.
Irish brought in two bags of snacks: Reeses, chocolate-covered pretzels, Cheez-Its, as we sat down to watch 1957’s “Abandon Ship.” They paused it while I brought Puck another cup of water. Always some excuse.
“Now, Mom,” Carrie had warned her in advance, “if something happens in this movie that makes you upset … I don’t want you to be upset.”
She had been warned. But when I walked back again, Mom was participating in the current conversation of cannibalism.
“I wonder if you started eating yourself, if you’d lose weight.”
“Actually, I guess you could eat someone else’s arm, and then he could eat your arm.”
Girl talk.
“Aw, we should have been dudes,” Carrie suggested again. “I mean, Irish and I were outside this evening pretending to be Yadi and Joe Kelly.”
I guess El Oso, at least, doesn’t agree. He joined us half-asleep from an orchestra rehearsal at Memorial Presbyterian and read his Kindle while the five girls finished another 79 minutes of gangrene, mutilation, murder, drowning, and suicide.
Good stuff.
Adoption Status Estimate: Down: 4 yrs, 10 mos; To Go: 1 yr, 5 mo.