Chapter Ninety-One
Puck stood under the ceiling in the living room, vigilantly watching the green and orange sticky hands from Nagle’s stuck dangling several feet above his reach. Hands outstretched, hoping for a fall…
Kloonk.
Pop.
Puck caught the orange one with a grin.
Kloonk.
Pop.
He caught the green one. Then he slung them back up to stick again, to start the game over. While he waited for the show to continue, he read Garfield aloud from memory to himself, his red running shoes sticking over the edge of the couch…
“How can I tell if these have super super super grip, Mom?”
He held up the sole of his shoe towards me. I looked over the still-white and neon yellow-green rubber molding.
“If you have grip all over it, that’s pretty super grip.”
“Let me test it out.”
He zipped up from the couch across the living room and back, and plopped back onto the couch with a satisfied look on his face…
“Yup! I got super grip alright!”
We resumed our reading of “The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe”, oscillating somewhere between a Welsh and Scottish accent. I think. In fact I’m pretty sure I ended up with some sort of Highland-Bulgarian blend by the end, but who’s keeping tabs anyway?
And, yes, Puck had a stomachache that morning…
“I knew I shouldn’t have had that much candy yesterday,” I heard him mumble to himself.
He recovered fast. About as fast as it took me to start another load of laundry, ladling the blue powdered detergent into the washing machine with a garden trowel. The scoop had been temporarily misplaced.
A little Mr. Rogers over peanut butter sandwiches, carrots, banana, and a glass of milk. How much more old school 1980’s American can you get? Puck sort of swayed back and forth to the brass quintet fanfare as Mr. Rogers explored music. How you can “sway” to a fanfare, I don’t really know, but he did.
I guess it’s only appropriate that we didn’t get through the morning without Puck destroying about half a roll of toilet paper for no very good reason. He tries. It just doesn’t always translate: those tries into successes. But I won’t complain.
“Finish your peanut butter, Puck.”
“Mess ma’am.”
He looked back at me slyly over a stained blue shirt, as if he’d just told a good joke.
“Get it?” he asks.
“What does that mean?”
“Mess ma’am. Get it? Mess, ma’am?”
“I’m not sure I get it…”
“It means you clean up your mess. Heh heh…”
He’s still about on par with five year-old Francis jokes. He works on those, too. He continued to dig into the peanut butter, very distractedly. The wearing of a short-sleeved shirt and plaid turquoise shorts had finally caught up with him on a 45 degree afternoon. He reached out to grab my arm with his two [rarely] cold hands…
“Ah. Your arms are so soaping warm… And I’m so soaking cold.”
But he just wasn’t locking in on this idea of finishing lunch…
“Mom? Would you like it if the door was made of iPads?”
I carved up a pound of asparagus for dinner, and eight potatoes, and other things I usually ignore. With Italian sausage. Because I’m trying, I’m really trying here.
Carrie rang me about interesting pieces of news. And The Bear walked in with the golden celebration of “The Peanuts” from the library for Puck. Puck who had captured his fuzzy pet to bed down for the night. She had napped an hour next to him during the afternoon. I think we’re seeing improvements. Even if the meows of annoyance every evening would suggest otherwise…
Not that anything’s really changed since spring training games started back in February, but the Cards were in Arizona for their first official game of the season. And all I could say to myself was…
“Good thing you don’t have television anymore, Collette Silverspoon. Good thing you don’t have television…”
Adoption Status: Down: 3 years, 7 months; To Go: 2 years, 8 months