Early Ireland
6:30 wake-up call. For no other reason than that Puck felt like waking up at 6:30 like he always does: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and, well, not Sunday. I don’t know why. He just sleeps in on Sundays. Anyway, as Puck opened our Saturday, my most recent dream crumbled into anti-reality: pushing myself through a McDonald’s buffet in a wheel chair, chicken nuggets and Fanta in hand, waiting on the fries, I think.
We had plans for the morning. First: El Oso decided which eyeglass frames to keep. Puck, convinced that El Oso was plumb blind without them, held out his hand:
“Come on, Dad. I can guide you along, since you can’t see farsight.”
Mailbox. The boys took the truck to Home Depot for equipment and materials to reinstate the severed limb. And a sack of bacon sunrise croissants: Hardee’s. In the end, they ran out of time to completely install the mailbox, and had to substitute sandbags at the base for the present.
10:30. Piper and fiddler outside the Hi-Pointe where Mom and Dad were waiting for us in funeral clothes. The visitation of Uncle Hilario’s mother was in Columbia at two o’clock. But there was first time for “The Quiet Man” and buttered popcorn to share. An old-fashioned cinema by the giant historic Amoco landmark off Skinker. It was a lot of fun, sharing some hearty Irish laughs with a crowded cinema who all sort of found the same things to be funny. Dad and Puck got going pretty good in particular, Puck laughing half the time about things he didn’t understand, but enjoyed all the same.
We left in the very Irish type of mist blanketing the city since early that morning and lingered all day. Chick-Fil-A for lunch. Sometimes we save up these fast food outings and splurge all at once.
And the Silverspoon’s where Carrie-Bri was working on Gloria’s nails before picking up Irish and a friend from the mall:
“I don’t know what little girls do at the mall these days when they don’t have any money,” was Carrie’s polite way of saying she thought it was a wasted trip.
POM pomegranate juice in the fridge, hidden Reeses peanut butter cups just for me, Theodore and El Oso fixing the mailbox (Puck helping by watching), after working up another masterpiece of Sharpie, pink highlighter, and pencil on paper:
“There’s a dog hair on my paper? Seriously?!”
Tortured artist. And then a couple of episodes of Too Cute (newborn animals, documentary style) a Gloria-find. Puck reasoned why the mama cat rejected her kitten in the first episode:
“She had too many suckers, too many kittens who wanted milk.”
We left near seven, Puck walking backwards out the door munching mini cucumbers.