Chinese New Year

The Year of the Wood Snake begins at about 4:15 in the morning to the cats caterwauling and hissing... the bad one jumps onto the bed and stands on my back for a longer period of time than seems necessary... her way of apologizing for clawing my arm yesterday?... finally fall asleep again near dawn and wake not much later to Yali screaming in joyful competition as he and Patience play some intense games of Stick Fight on the Xbox... there'll be no more sleeping today...

While preparing for the morning, discover that the bad cat has – inexplicably – used the bathroom scale as a litter box... if anything, she was apparently anti-apologizing...

Kids on school break for CNY... oh happy days...

Patience and I leave to volunteer at the old school at our usual time... as Patience's last class leaves the Spanish room, one of the preschool boys throws both arms around her as he leaves (sweet)...

At home, Puck asks for help arranging the rest of the storage room into his workout room... he then spends awhile marveling over, and discussing with me in detail, the fantastic pair of punching gloves he ordered through the mail... he demonstrates by lightly punching things like the refrigerator and my violet thermos... “Wow! Look at that! I dented it and I was barely touching it. Wow!”...

Then back to the studio through a light traffic just for an hour this time...

A box of Chinese take-out at home... as the kids begin to indulge in sweet and sour chicken and crab rangoons... bring out the red envelopes... and a viewing of “Jungle Cruise”... but the kids aren't able to finish the whole film before bedtime, which Yali does not appreciate at all, so he turns to me and lands one of his finest insults... “You're old!”... a few minutes later he emerges from his room to say, with humility... “Sorry for the insult...”