Dad's 51st

In celebration of Dad’s 51st birthday, which was that day, Collette and Carrie-Bri took it upon themselves to clean out his entire office in the basement.
It took about three hours, not quite. Telescopes, crystal radios, recording equipment, two trumpet cases, the old white-topped kitchen table from his childhood years (with the dark turquoise plastic seat-cover swivel chairs), and perhaps a thousand books, CDs, DVDs, cassette tapes, and videotapes from the dark ages. Not to mention the black mold from the Flood of ’08, ’07, ’06… it happened every year — water pouring from under the windowsills, and the layers of dust as thick as the moon’s on numerous boxes of outdated computer software.
Dad was a meticulous person, very organized in every sense of the word. But six children, two dogs, and five cats later, even his office couldn’t withstand the subsequent piles of stuff, accumulated from the aforementioned.
Dad’s other gifts would include gooey butter cake.
While they worked, Mom took Linnea and Puck to run errands. This included a trip to Dierbergs where Puck sat in the car grocery cart and drove them through the aisles.
Later, in the kitchen, after the disaster had been rearranged to some semblance of organized mess in Dad’s office, Francis and Linnea were debating terrorist action against the United States, etc.
“Why can’t we just tell them their religion is stupid?” Linnea asked, organizing her nuclear disaster kit. “Then they’d stop trying to bomb us.”
“It doesn’t work that way, Linnea,” said Francis.
“Kids!” Carrie cried. “Can you just stop discussing U.S. foreign policy, and get back to work?”
Then Mom and Carrie ordered flowers for the spring, including blue moon hydrangeas, tri-colored Rose of Sharon, and red storm tiger lilies for Collette.
And Rose walked around the house with Snuggs wrapped around her neck.
“It’s the latest fashion,” she said, hoity-toity.
By the time Dad had returned from work, he took everyone out to Culver’s for dinner, in the cool evening.
When asked what he wanted to do later that night after Scouts, Dad just smiled. “I have reading to do. It’s just another day in time. Nothing special.”
Everyone laughed. That’s what Dad always said about his birthday. That, and when asked what he wanted for a gift, “I just want well-behaved children.”
“Well, we’ll do gifts Sunday,” said Carrie.
“Yes,” said OLeif, flourishing a hand over his cheeseburger, “for your birthday gift, I ate food that you paid for.”