Continued Happenings
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
In which Puck resumes acquaintance with the sometimes-adequately-appreciated club of ‘baby singers’…
Shortly after one… thunder. O, sweet sounds of life. And with it, the rain. Falling still throughout the morning.
Back on the ranch…
Word around town was that Dad had permitted Rose to bring home the cat from Louisville. She had already filled out the adoption paperwork.
“I was sneaky about it,” Carrie-Bri explained. “So I filled up this grocery sack of all these foods Dad likes: caramel-glazed donuts, teriyaki beef jerky, M’nMs, and cherry cola. And then at the bottom of the bag was an envelope…”
The envelope read:
“legal document enclosed”
“And because I knew Dad wouldn’t read the fine print, I made a double fail-safe and put an asterisk by it…”
“Opening this envelope is legitimate compliance to adhere to the contract within.”
And inside…
“Congratulations! By opening this bag, and accepting the treats within, you have hereby entered into a legal contract that allows for the addition of a fuzzy new family member! Thanks and enjoy your snack!”
“And then Dad came up from the basement with his smile lines and said, ‘You’re lucky I didn’t eat any of this’, which of course I knew wasn’t true. Then I had him read the fine print, and he got his silly laugh and just went back downstairs.”
So Rose was making her plans.
There were other stories at hand. Earnest, who had received his bunny surgery the previous week, was still a little bald below, so…
“He was playing with Fiddler [Carrie’s stuffed dog from ages ago] and he pulled out some of the stuffing because, as you know, Fiddler has a broken neck. And then he tucked the fuzz over his bald spot and hopped around with it. Then it would fall out and he would tuck it in again.”
Meanwhile, on top of the wealth of cereal boxes decorating the top cereal-shelf of the pantry, including the forbidden Trix and Life, other tasty sirens lured from numerous corners of the kitchen: cold chocolate pie (left over from Rose’s and Magnus’ visit to Whole Foods for Rose’s Bible study), bars of dark chocolate, a half-box of Krispy Kreme donuts, two types of ice cream sandwiches, and a marble cake prepared by Linnea-Irish and Gretyl…
“We modified the recipe and made it better,” Linnea explained.
They had also made headbands out of ribbon and elastic. There were now four new ones stuffed in the glass cookie jar on her dresser.
“And look what the drummer gave me at the concert on Sunday,” said Linnea, clutching one of the drumsticks. “We were talking and I asked if I could buy his drumsticks, and he just gave it to me.”
And Puck was stashing it in: two glasses of milk, fried eggs, a nibble of cake, Baby Bel cheese, and a bowl of Life cereal. (The way Collette saw it, he had scarfed away all of 640 calories before nine o’clock.) As he worked his way through that one, further thoughts spilled out…
“Remember, Mama, some day God will burn your computer… And this bowl.”
“Sun!” he declared. “It’s a rain day! Movie and popcorn!”
“Well… if I can kiss your bellah.”
“OK…”
“Let me see the goods. Mwah! How did you get so cute? Did you go to cuteness school?”
And the rain continued to fall…
“Just like Ireland,” Carrie mused, who was little a fan of the country, or rain, in general.
So while Collette got down to the matter of tutoring and Joe had gone off to his second day of training, Mom and Puck bundled themselves out on the front porch in blankets with piles of books.
Carrie was still recovering from her cold, wrapped in her oatmeal tunic garden sweater and one of her Egyptian scarves in stripes of: marigold, purple, persimmon, and pomegranate, over Dalek t-shirt and black leggings, while she indoctrinated her face with Dead Sea salt.
Francis, or ‘Bunny Defender’ as Carrie had come to call him, left to complete some more paperwork at the ‘Y’ before returning for two fried egg sandwiches, at the hand of Collette.
And Dad returned from his run in between rainfalls, for his 6.66 miles.
“I beat the devil again,” he said.
During Linnea’s algebra session and researching degrees in Chinese, Arabic, and Japanese, a knock at the door from Waste Management.
“He’s at the door!” Linnea cried, throwing herself backwards, sideways, on the chair so that her head almost hit the floor.
That Snicketts trait…
Once he left, Linnea was staring off into oblivion again…
“Linnea, you’re so spacey. What do you think about all day long? What’s the principle thought of your day? Boyzzzz?”
Linnea laughed…
“No.”
“What is it? Be honest.”
“Things to do before I croak.”
“Like?”
“Land on the moon. Visit every country in the world. Eat a frog…”
Then she explained her recent volleyball tournament, and the competition (during down-time) between all the girls on her team of who could get the most people to wave back at them…
“And I waved to three punks on a bench, and one of them waved back. Then we went to Taco Bell and handed out those sauce packets to people, just for fun, and they dared me to give the punk one of them. So I did, and then later he gave me his number. It was… weird…”
That same day they also gave one of their coaches a Henny Penny and a package of chewing gum wrapped in foil for his birthday, which turned out not to be his birthday after all…
Later, when the Portuguese program continued to crash, Collette decided to postpone the session.
“And the whole Earth heaved a sigh of relief,” Linnea said with a grin.
The mail arrived and Dad hustled out to retrieve it, sheltered under the awning of Puck’s space ranger umbrella.
Carrie checked in with an acquaintance from her old Arabic class, pale girl with bright red henna hair who had converted to Islam, married a Jordanian, moved to ‘Petra’, and was currently studying Conflict Resolution at the University of Jordan.
The afternoon was getting along.
Joe returned from work to discuss business ideas with the sisters, before catching up on some Richard Hammond biography, and then to meet up with Louis over coffee to discuss further possible business endeavors.
Dad was chopping away at the old dissertation, to complete before the next contract, while continuing to explore some ideas regarding the academy.
Carrie briefly napped off her throat irritant on the couch.
Mom set to light the armada of candles and oil lamps about the house, including her new Hazelnut Coffee from Yankee Candle.
Linnea-Irish and Puck snuggled together on the porch, the rain still curtaining, while Linnea plunked away at the ukulele. Puck, blanket over head, would wave to Collette and Carrie at the dining room table. He had a sort of Shirley Temple wave.
And Rose had an eye appointment after work.
5:00 sent them off to church for Puck’s second year of Kids Choir Connection. All of his former pals were present, and Collette was relieved to only clean up one lemonade catastrophe, and no repercussions from the Oreos. And in the end, Puck won the jumbo box of peanut M’nMs, which Linnea had helped him to guess the number. His jaw dropped in amazement, and he passed out pieces to his classmates at the end of the evening, seven o’clock. Then Collette hoisted him up to the window of the youth building with his prize…
“Linnea! I won! I won! And you get to have some!”
OLeif picked them up, and that was the end of Wednesday.