Chapter Sixty-Seven
My laundry detergent rash continued. I wasn’t feeling too clever about having fallen into that trap. Curse you, foul blue syrupy substance! Puck was making triangles out of green and blue drinking straws at breakfast. [We haven’t quite graduated to the expensive Italian restaurant etiquette quality yet. But then again, most people probably couldn’t handle that level. We’re working on it.] This triangle eventually morphed into some sort of Seuss-ish fishing pole. Dribbles of breakfast milk flew through the air onto my laptop…
“Puck. What is that?”
“It’s supposed to blow air in Francis’ face!” Gleeful eureka face. “He always blows air in my face, so I’m going to blow air in his face! I’m practicing.”
Giggle, giggle.
I decided to can the textbooks for the day. It was supposed to be nice. Puck doesn’t really get holiday breaks or spring breaks or summer breaks. So we took off to Heaven Scent and picked out something from the bakery shelves. I took back a chocolate-stuffed square donut, and Puck chose the oversized chocolate petite four with the green shamrock iced on top. He laughed his way through more Garfield on the drive back while listening to Riverdance. We know how to party around here.
I opened the windows when we got back, Puck helping. Then he consumed his cake in all of thirty seconds, starting with the top and working his way down. But it was way too cold for open windows, so we latched them up again and read books until lunch. That lunch included a peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwich for Puck. With a side of oranges and red pepper. He lifted a shiny red slice from the container and coaxed it between the gooey layers of his sandwich…
“Really, man?”
“Yup.”
He took three large bites.
“Good?”
“Yup!”
I heard the grinding of metal panels as Puck inched open his ancient bedroom window during Quiet Hour. He had retreated to his inner sanctum with the drinking straw pole…
“What are you doing back there, Puck?”
“All I was doing was picking up new smells with my smell straw. I won’t let any birds in though, Mom. Don’t worry. You have to be careful of bugs though, Mom. A fruit fly might fly in here and say… and say, ‘Mmm! I smell trash!’ So. Be aware of bugs. And get the bug slapper ready. Alright?”
The Cards were at Space Coast Stadium that afternoon. Sometimes it’s sort of fun just to read the names of these places. Matt Carpenter going four for four. Grand slam by Shane Robinson [hitting .520 after two weeks]. All against Washington. Some things are worth noting… Puck thundered up and down the driveway, over and over, on his Strider bike. He had been waiting “for Uncle Francis to come have his Popsicle”, the remaining Bomb Pop he had saved in the freezer.
When Francis couldn’t make it, we drove to the library instead. Puck is a little obsessed with Garfield these days, I’ve finally realized, so he carefully selected a new copy off the shelves as the day grew gray. And then…
“Chick-fil-A!”
Yes, I indulged us. And probably went through a drive-through for only the third time in my life. And survived. Yes.
Joe was taking Rose with Jaya, Annamaria, and Thunderbird to the Budapest Hungary Summer Missions Trip Trivia Fundraiser night at the English’s church, so that meant Puck and I were going to camp out at the house for the evening. Sort of a last minute call brought us over while Puck was wrapping up the last exhilarating minutes of “In Search of the Castaways”. He was pretty enthralled with that one, just as all us kids had been growing up.
He marched right up to the door in his space ship footies, yellow boots, Garfield, drinking straw pole, and SpongeBob slippers in tote. Carrie asked him if he had already had dinner…
“No, I had dinner. Chick-fil-A to be exact.”
Puck took awhile to finally get down for the night. Carrie handed me a tube of two years-expired Target anti-itch cream to plaster on my neck, while Puck found a couple of extra excuses to stay up even later than the extra hour he had already managed…
“Oh no… I forgot my eye covers…”
Carrie produced another pair for him…
“I’m de-hy-duh-rated!!!”
Linnea was busy researching foreign radio stations as part of the meteorology class Carrie was putting her through, including a storm spotters class with Francis on Saturday. And Carrie brought up homemade pineapple ices from the basement freezer.