et ainsi voeil estre ades a son acort.
Thursday, October 19, 2006
It was Tor’s fifteenth birthday, or at least Collette was mostly sure that it was his birthday. Every once in awhile she forgot the birthdays of one or two of the ten siblings in the English family. It wasn’t always easy remembering all the dates.
Meanwhile, Thursday started rough with a sinus headache that had lasted the whole night before (which had woken her several times) and there was no heat in the office, still. But life was like that sometimes – things hardly worth complaining over anyway. The office was warmer than the outdoors at least. After all, it was only 42 degrees outside. Besides, the days were still gray and cold and wonderfully October.
From reading the prayer requests for the bulletin that morning, Collette discovered that Joe’s old buddy from Kirk, Jimmy Sparrow, was on a tour of duty in Afghanistan. He must have been 21 years old by then.
Later in chill of the day, Ivy dropped by briefly to pick up some work and bring it home. She, too, was not feeling well and did not want to infect Collette. In addition, Ivy had also cracked her toe on the same foot that was healing from being smashed by the hair dryer plug. More rehab.
As a result of all of this, Ivy decided that she would likely not be joining Nicodemus and his mother on their annual drive to look at the autumn leaves the next day. Collette could hardly blame her as Ivy limped back down the stairs to her car.
And so Collette was quite alone until Mom dropped by some sinus medicine, a pomegranate green tea, two fully ripe pears, and a cinnamon vanilla candle to add a little warmth to her corner. It made the office smell like Christmas.
In the afternoon, Jimmy brought three-year-old Meg through the office. She addressed her usual questions to Collette and when she heard Jimmy coughing in the other room she said most seriously:
“Daddy’s coughing. I have to go cover his mouth. I’ll be right back.”
Apparently Jimmy was also not feeling great and Rosemary still coughed a good deal from her own office. They were a rather sorry lot that day.
It was also rumored that Mercy and Catalina were headed to Scotland. Everyone was going somewhere it seemed…
Later that afternoon, Mom drove Collette to her appointment back in the city, as OLeif was meeting Justus of Orange for dinner. Time to catch up with an old pal. So Mom and Collette caught a bite at Bread Co. on the way back until OLeif came to pick her up.
Upon arrival at the house, Frances and Linnea were allowed to stay up somewhat later to watch the ballgame. Dad had just returned Frances from Scouts. Carrie was not much interested and took her blanket and a warm drink down to the basement for a movie. Rose was still at class till about ten that night, constructing ceramics. And Joe had just returned from the store to finish adding to his work uniform.
“Green Lantern is so amazing,” he said enthusiastically. “I spent four hours just reading through folders. And everything is so secret there, that I can’t even talk about it.”
According to Mom, before they could even hire Joe, they had to check his record and make sure that he had never worked at another car wash in the past. Apparently some kids were paid to infiltrate Green Lantern and learn their secrets, passing them on to other car wash companies. It was rather humorous.