Creepy Corners
6:21 AM. Still wasn’t feeling so great. But things had to be done. I was back out serving up fried eggs in the groggy black morning. The Bear’s lunch had to be packed, which he forgot of course. I remembered it was Hallowe’en about an hour later. And it was a frosty one.
We said farewell to the creatures after nine, and joined the family for holiday-ish activities such as algebra and confused lifeguard schedules. Library cover letters, postal return shipments. Peanut butter. And a little ibuprofen. Blug. No one seemed very interested in calculating formulas, however. Linnea-Irish glowered like an electric pink monk over a tumble of variables and numbers. Francis wasn’t feeling the inequalities that day either.
“Hey, Grandma. Want me to teach Francis his math?”
Puck squawked a chunky piece of orange chalk across a small slab of slate to demonstrate his mathematical abilities.
“You know how Bonnie doesn’t like wrinkles?” Carrie was saying. “She always smoothes out any wrinkles on Linnea’s bed with her belly. Well yesterday, she saw Linnea’s face and started trying to smooth it out too.”
“Mom. Uncle Francis is causing trouble for me, and I have a lot of work to do tonight.”
“What work?”
“I have to go trick-or-treating and get people to help me eat all the candy. I have a lot of work to do tonight.”
He followed up this list with a cuddle [against his will] with me and castle designs with Carrie-Bri. A Spanish flavor had been his most recent preference – red exterior [for the Cardinals], diamond windows, and a tower fifteen feet tall, set in the lake country. And steel doors. With an observatory. He was very proud.
“Can you make it with your magic, Sun?”
Florissant is a creepier environment for ghoulish corners and haunts than is Weldon Spring, so we decided to pack up costumes and candy sacks and head up north for the evening. Mom, Carrie, Puck, and myself started things off – after a significant delay in Illinois dropping Linnea off for a spend-the-night – at five o’clock with Grandma Combs in the old town. Rose joined us for chili mac…
“I had to crawl through the ceiling again.”
There were gifts from Grandma, including Tony La Russa’s recent autobiography for myself. And I caught Rose trying to convince Puck that getting a cavity was a good thing…
“They’ll fill it with metal and you’ll have super teeth. You can chomp through airplanes.”
We’re a little obsessed about donuts over here. Usually Krispy Kreme, or if we’re in Florissant – Old Town. [It remains an eternal mystery to our entire family why they expunged the Highway K location in recent history. No human soul could have been so heartless as to deprive the local populace of such sinful rings of sugar and air. Air. Snort. Yeah right. But there was also Old Town, and Grandma had ordered three boxes for the occasion which we hauled over to Uncle Mo’s and Aunt Petunia’s for the rest of the night.
So while The Bear wrote up Greek cards and discussed the inerrancy of Scripture with Dad and Uncle Mo, I followed Mom, Aunt Petunia, and my little Yip-Yip into the prime activity of the evening.
“I’m coming too!” Francis jumped up to tag along at the last second.
[Probably to keep an eye on the goods.]
A mildly cold march across the dark old farmer’s field, which now belongs to Mom’s and Uncle Mo’s elementary school…
“We found an old rusty pitchfork back here once,” Mom noted as the Yip-Yip bounced across the grass into the adjoining neighborhood.
He lasted a decent amount of time after following around a couple of princesses and I believe a Spiderman, then rode Francis’ shoulders back to the house where they pulled their own trick, hiding behind a large car to scare Mom. It worked.
“Here are your choices,” Puck announced moments later, ladling the packages of sugar onto the table.
We left just before eight. I’m all for my son having a good time, but a clock’s a clock and I have to be responsible on some level.