Ch. 232; Vol. 10

4:54AM.

Purr-rr-rr.

“Not now, Crackers…”

But it was too late. By the time I had deposited Crackers downstairs, I was awake for a long time until it was almost too late to fall asleep again, but I did.

. . . . .

Fluff… fluff…

Something was dusting my face.

Hazy sunlight through half-closed eyes – Puck swishing the duster in my face.

. . . . .

Squeak, squeak.

Squeegee on the window.

Somehow, I was too tired to fully process.

. . . . .

Lip smack.

“Puck. Did you get into my chocolate?”

Silence from the other room.

“Puck?”

“How did you KNOW?”

I was awake.

Out in the world of living things, Crackers had already chewed through a second pair of yellow rubber dish gloves in one week.

Puck had washed the windows.

And was working on another giant aluminum foil airplane.

“Look, Mom. This is weird.”

Puck had pinched a chunk of his skin around the ribs between two freckles…

“See that little freckle? It must have been created over the years!”

It was around this time that the older Snicketts kids and The Bær exchanged various texts regarding Grandma Snicketts. She had fallen early that morning, taken via ambulance to the hospital, X-Rayed and CT-scanned to reveal a broken pelvis.

So…

“Mom? Can I have my macaroni and cheese without the cheese?”

“Ok sure why not.”

He almost wanted the pasta fish completely plain, without even butter.

I actually got to read the second chapter of Cloud Atlas during the meal while Puck stared down another episode of “Adventures in the Book of Virtues”.

Small wonders.

Puck stomped out of his room in the middle of Quiet Hour…

“That does it! I can’t take this anymore!”

He disappeared into the kitchen. I was in the middle of some heavy edits, so I didn’t notice what was happening again until he walked back into the living room with a hack saw where he began to saw a red Lego the size of his pinky finger in half…

Where does he find these things?

“Puck!”

Three boys chucking walnuts in the air, hunting rocks, toads, another evening at the park with the Rye family. Puck was having so much fun, he actually split his pants. Or shorts, in this case, pretty much blissfully uncaring that his blue robot underwear was exposed for all the world to see. In fact, he cared so little about it, that he even announced to a couple of women on an evening walk…

“Don’t look at my backside, because my pants have a hole in them.”