Chapter Sixty-Five

“Mom. My clock will not read seven o’clock. I saw a seven at the end of the time.”

Oh boy…

“Puck, what time does it say?”

“Six! Zero! Seven!”

“Go back to bed, bud. I’m really tired. When the first number is seven, you may get up.”

Two minutes later…

“It’s never going to get to seven, Mom.”

“Try, man.”

One minute later…

“Six! One! Zero!”

Another minute…

“Six! One! One!”

And again…

“Six! One! Two!”

It was going to be a long morning… Puck was taking forever to finish his breakfast orange juice. Guess I’m not the only one in the family who isn’t interested in citrus pulp. So I switched on some mournful Native American flutes to supplement the morning. As if that would help anything.

It was St. Patrick’s Day at the Snicketts’ House. Usually is for about two weeks every year. I am certainly not complaining.

So around all the sparkly shamrocks, I had been assigned to help Francis with his two graduation bios, one for the ceremony, and one for the yearbook, which included valuable information such as his favorite colors of Battleship Gray and Red, or his favorite food – “a nice juicy steak, medium rare”. 80-90 words were all we were allowed, thankfully, but with 62 students it still promised to be some sort of snoozefest come May…

Francis decided to give Puck another swimming lesson at the pool. I shopped with the girls for groceries [a little Aldi chocolate] and hair dye for Linnea. I guess it was her first real interaction with anything other than sun-in, and she chose “Truffle” for her induction. But not before Carrie received her letter from the FAA, registered mail, I think. I didn’t even know they did registered mail anymore. When we drove back up the street, we passed Francis and Puck in Shelley. Puck had been shedding some tears, rethinking the whole idea of the pool after all…

“Mom! Moooom!” I heard the wail as we passed.

Nothing Uncle Francis couldn’t fix, though. When I picked him up 45 minutes later before Francis’ evening shift, he was happy and victorious. He had jumped into the deep end. I cut up a pear to split with him for dessert before church.

Church is a blur when you sit in the same room for two hours with thirteen kids ranging in age from three to eleven. They did end the evening by “skating” on sheets of waxed paper in the cold foyer, though. Anything to let out some bottled energy. Wednesday nights are just way too long…