Ch. 171; Vol. 10
Lick, lick, lick.
Crackers cleaned the inside of the glass Italian lasagna pan while I packed the last three squares into The Bear’s red-topped Tupperware, with a side of Honeycrisp. Everyone has their tastes, I guess. Even cats.
The Bear was conducting an interview at 9AM. So we were deposited on time at Mom’s and Dad’s again, another very green world of almost-summer yard and trees and rose bushes.
Carrie was behind the wheel of Mom’s Fit that morning, driving us out to church a little late. Linnea took shotgun to apply make-up in the mirror. She’s sort of a night owl.
“It was funny at Annamaria’s shower,” Carrie was telling me. “The English’s cousin, she was petting Ketseh and I told her that he was an old bunny. So she asked me, ‘Is that why his ears fell down?’”
Puck was on his third bowl of popcorn. The kid can pack it. He sat on my lap to finish it, hot kernel prints melted into the bottom of the styrofoam bowl while he watched the other kids sing and hand motion to the music. Everyone seems to experience a general increase in appetite during Vacation Bible School; we’ve compared notes.
More mountains of sticky coins. These kids had brought in almost $500 in the first four days.
Ivy brought me another Sargento cheese stick, talking about the vacation she and Nicodemus were taking to Yellowstone, the Tetons, Badlands, and Colorado in July, after she flew with Peter to her sister’s in Florida for a week, where Peter would stay the summer.
Mom and Carrie picked us up, heading towards Aldi after they dropped us off at home in another warm day, offering the squishy-cooling pillow from Costco for me to try out instead, since it hadn’t worked for Dad so well. Rose would be next in line if my neck didn’t like it, because like me, Rose also has neck issues. Not from turning somersaults in the backyard, however, followed by partial paralyzation and a nosebleed. As I can boast. Just to clarify – I was 5 or under at the time. And Mom let me watch “Mr. Rogers” while she called the pediatrician, who wasn’t worried at all.
Puck begged two grilled cheese sandwiches off me at lunch. Green pepper. Ripe peach. Andy Griffith. The kid was slammed with hunger after another intensive day of playing. Crackers was hanging out, stuffed in the eggplant blanket beside him, on my chair of course. Puck whisked a red towel around in front of her…
“Are you attracted to red, Crackers?”
Wrong animal.
Legos and a cat. That would keep Puck occupied for hours, which was what I had in mind as I caught up on the house and all other responsibilities I had lagged behind. Of course halfway through Quiet Hour – he just can’t help himself – he found the green-backed “director’s chair” in the coat closet, which I had completely forgotten that we owned. He unfolded it, climbed up into it, and asked with a grin…
“Who needs directing?”
Audio CDs crusted the bottom of the tub. I think that sometimes I see Puck walking by with “things”, just unsuspecting things, handfuls, and I almost forget to ask him… “why?”. So this time, he figured that, while he was going about getting himself scrubbed down, he might as well include the stacks of forgotten CDs from the basement and give them a good soapy soak. Sermons, lectures, dramas, etc. And so…
Dinner: fat peanut butter and jam sandwiches. Movie Night: “Fun & Fancy Free” including the old Mickey Mouse version of Jack and the Beanstalk, which I had completely forgotten about. Puck has this contagious belly-giggle that gets going sometimes, like tonight during the film, and sometimes he almost can’t stop.
Concluding the evening with stacks of books…
“Before we read, I’m organizing all of these CDs, Mom.” Like narrating a PBS cooking show. “Please pray for Crackers not to knock them over. It would be a real hard job to do. I don’t want to have a big mess of CDs everywhere.”
A quiet evening with blackberry Izze, preparing for a weekend of Cardinals baseball. Two or three games, The Bear’s uncle and cousin in town wearing blue and Texas.
I was pretty excited.