Burning Energy

“TOAST! OH YEAH!”

Yali walked into the living room with a bag of burger buns, tossing them up into the air. Clearly, he had already made arrangements for breakfast.

Sunday School was over. I walked back into the sanctuary.

“Want to get Yali?” I asked Oxbear. “He’s running around crazy with Puck.”

“But I just sat down,” he protested.

“But you can contain him better than I can,” I urged. “You’re way bigger than me.”

“Exactly,” he grinned. “So it takes more effort for me to get up. I burn more energy standing up than you eat for breakfast.”

He rose from his seat.

“Pretty proud of that one. Aren’t you?” I asked.

“Off the top of my head.”

Before lunch at the Big House, the boys rummaged in the little wilderness of scrubby brush at the back of the yard. They emerged with burs, handfuls of old pennies I tossed out there about fifteen years ago for Francis and Irish to “treasure hunt”, and several pieces of junk that I didn’t examine thoroughly. Puck switched on the garden hose to wash them off, eventually saturating his hoodie in the 58-degree weather.

An old family friend was in town from Nebraska. So after pizza, salad, and chit-chat, Francis lit a bonfire in the backyard. Because you can’t visit the Snickets family in the fall without experiencing a bonfire in one form or another. This batch included mostly cardboard boxes and rotting jack-o-lanterns.