Change Your Plans
Crackers had been removed to the basement for breakfast. After a time of contemplation, Puck opened the door and spoke carefully to her…
“Crackers, you may come upstairs now. Tell me what you did wrong… I let you go, and you made the wrong choice… Are you bored of watching birds, Cracker Silvers… Crackers Silverspoon?”
Mr. Sing passed us on the road this morning to his church. We’re not the only early birds around here.
I passed off the digital thermometer to Dad for a second loaner, this time for Linnea. Mercury thermometers just take a little longer to read and a lot more squinting.
My Sunday School room was running late. Finally, Puck couldn’t stand it anymore and burst through the door. He marched right over to me and declared loudly…
“Sunday School is OVER!”
“From the mouth of babes!” Babe Ruth laughed. “Hey, go tell the man teaching across the hall the same thing.”
Puck thought about it.
Veggie Tales, crispy French fries. We were staying home for the day, for obvious reasons. So while Puck soaked in vegetables in various ways, I rang up Mom. Linnea’s fever was reduced and there was, always, new news to pass around, both ways.
Puck decided to destroy the bathroom, more or less, during a highly rare Sunday Quiet Hour. After some ramble of noise…
“Puck? What’s going on in there?”
Laughter…
“I tried to give Crackers a bath!”
After I instructed him to cancel the bathing, he emerged to grab the plastic red tool box stuffed with matchbox cars instead, muttering something about…
“I have to… clean up the mess. As soon as Pluto is destroyed… Look out for the scuba diver! Planes that diver underwater.”
I couldn’t let my son play in the sink all afternoon, though. It was, almost disappointingly, still warm enough to switch off the heater and open the window in my bedroom. So this meant another round at the park, naturally. He eagerly hailed his potential accomplices, a girl and her younger brother…
“If you want to know my name, it’s Puck. What’s your name?”
“Anna.”
“Oh, that’s cool. That’s a cool name… I’m five, by the way… Do you live in a neighborhood, or the city?”
Puck was confined to the couch for thirty minutes after our return from dropping off books at the library, for arguing and a sass-back tongue.
“Time to think about your sins,” I informed the teary chap.
He covered his eyes…
“I can’t concentrate with the earth, or the house, or space.”
When events were confessed half an hour later, we resumed normal activities by way of Paddington Abroad and goldfish crackers, some Adventures in Odyssey we picked up from the church library… What more can a five year-old ask?
The Bear hit St. Louis sometime after six. Red Strike drove the extra miles to deposit him on the doorstep. We were at home waiting for him. His knee was still gimpy but manageable. He had spent two full days in Texas blowing things up, pushing over trees, and cleaning up rotten food and… a deer head in the fridge.
“We spent four hours shooting stumps and things one afternoon,” The Bear explained, displaying some video. “We tossed aerosol cans into the air and tried to hit those. We didn’t get a single one.”
We caught up over some necessary reunion fodder – The Bear’s choice – mini Reeses cups, cracker pepper water crackers with smoked gouda, and cold sparkling cider or sparkling red grape juice.