Calvin's Mom
After we explored dinosaur eggs this morning, Puck was all ramped up to start the dig.
“I want one of my very own, Mom!”
[Since when did he leave off with “Mama”?…]
“I’m afraid we would have to give a dinosaur egg to the museum, my friend,” I explained. “In fact, they might buy out the whole neighborhood and dig it up.”
“Well. We have to telephone them and tell them there might be dinosaur bones in our backyard. You might want to come. I’m going to go search for them now.”
Before the determined chap marched out the door with shovel and pick-axe, I stalled him with a snack. You know – mosquitoes, snakes [Linnea tells me she’s even found a Copperhead back at the house, though I don’t know how that’s possible…], spiders, ticks, dirt… Hey, I can completely handle this daunting project. Absolutely. I love it when little boys play in the dirt. [Some of them never grow out of it – cough, cough – Joe.] But I just wasn’t prepared for the volcano of flying mud today. Because where there’s dirt, there’s always mud.
Instead, while I sterilized the toothbrushes [yes, I do this every few weeks], Puck naturally and easily amused himself by digging forgotten elements out of the couch cushions, tapping into a wealth of pens, pencils, coins, scissors, and other vital instruments of daily life.
“I’m an archaeology man,” he grunted, poking the steak knife sharpener [metal rod] into all the cracks.
So he got his dig in after all.
“Mama,” he inquired importantly of me later, flashlight in hand. “I think some mosquitoes have been making nests in our couch. I saw a little hay in there. I think we’ve got a little friend here.”
After lunch, Puck took off his sweatshirt.
“Um… Puck?”
“My tummy has to breathe, Mom,” he explained, entering the bathroom.
When Crackers bolted from the bathroom soaked in toilet water about fifteen minutes later, I was predictably Calvin’s-mom-angry.
“What were you thinking?” I naively asked.
“Don’t get made at me, Mom! It was Cracker’s idea!”
When Francis arrived with a sack of lunch to participate in further adventures in algebra, I found Puck attempting to jump halfway up the stairs onto the mini trampoline in the basement. Until… Francis caught the fifteen-minute Reading Rainbow Star Trek clip on Youtube and finished it off with a “five minute” nap.
About the time an orange wedge ended up in the ceiling fan blades, I was ready to call it a day. Most certainly.
“Could I have dessert, Mom? I’m still really, really, really hungry?”
Since when is he ever not?
“You already had dessert.”
This kid never gets dessert; well, rarely…
“Huh?”
“You know little boys and girls in Japan and Korea have fruit for dessert too.”
He was momentarily paralyzed by this revelation.
“But I’m still really, really, really hungry, Mom!”
I offered a double breakfast in the morning.
And with it being the Bear’s night out on the town with the guys, I huddled up with a stack of books and files of notes, hoping for a little rain and good news out in LA from all our fine boys in red.
The Bear also purchased an Epson WorkForce WP-4530 4 Color Printer. It’s about time. Being a seminary student and all… Of course there’s always the high risk that I’ll go paper happy at some point. Suggesting a box-purchase of 2,500 sheets just to start us out was even a little too much for me to personally allow.
Thought of the Day
I wonder if 1950’s Christianity was the height of syncretism in America. Reading literature, even revolving around that neapolitan-icebox-cake-family-life from this period of history, you tend to find a heavy emphasis on: expected belief in luck, paltry witchcraft [and by witchcraft I mean its emergence in “kids games”], and often blatant superstitions revolving around legends siphoned from other lands and ages. And yet, it is almost uncommon to find any fiction or nonfiction example in which the family will not attend weekly church services, while at the same time, discussing and, almost prolifically and unquestioningly believing these superstitions. It was a seemingly prevalent imbalance.