February 24th, 2025
Spring birds are back...
Discussing the art of ancient Chinese calligraphy with the kids that morning listening to the stringed kora of West Africa as Yali digs into a self-crafted plate of breakfast nachos(!)... Patience lets the dog back inside... her snout is caked with black mud... leaving Yali actually rolling around on the floor in laughter... this somehow seems to remind Patience of the chocolate cake leftover from yesterday... “Only one slice today” I remind her // “What?!” // “You guys can't hold your cake”...
Around this time Puck emerges from his room with a tweaked back... “I need someone to punch right here...” he points to his shoulder blade... Patience shoots her arm into the air... “I'll do it!”... Puck looks uncertainly at her... “You're gonna miss and hit me in the head” // “I won't! Let me do it!” // “Okay...” **PUNCH** “Wow, that actually kinda worked”... well enough for him to get on the treadmill a few minutes later...
As the dog gets busy growling from behind the window at mothers walking their young children in the neighborhood as she will do...
...Puck returns from his first of two work-outs to pick up Patience's fuzzy pink panda unicorn journal stamped with silver butterflies carelessly lying on the table and a live reading begins... Patience is loving the attention and everyone is laughing hard for about an hour over the funny misspellings from old excerpts...
When Puck returns from weight-lifting to join Patience in a plate of popcorn chicken (Yali prefers a chimichanga)... he lodges a complaint over the lack of small plates in the kitchen cabinet which puts him on his usual soapbox of why the dishwasher isn't run every single day even when it's only half-full...
...as he brings lunch to his room Patience sighs...“Oh, that kid... working through some issues..."
After we return from Patience's afternoon appointment in South County... the kids spend some time screaming happily on the trampoline now free of both ice and snow... running back inside later for Yali to dig up a roll of Egyptian blue crepe paper from the basement... “Patience, let's wrap me up like a mummy, okay?” // “Okay!” // “Mom, can you play some Thriller?”
Play pauses for Patience to join Miss S. for a speech therapy session online...
...then back outside again where Yali somehow manages to snap the sealant on the inside of one of the living room windows by whip-cracking an old jumprope at the screen (which fortunately does not also break)... they carry on for awhile until the world grows suspiciously silent...
...take a walk out back through ground so snow-soaked it's pudding growing late winter sprouts... the kids are playing with C across the street and jubilant when I assure them they don't have to come home for dinner yet...
All that pink county fair cotton candy sky in the east... dark lavender chalk sketch in the west....
Kids return... Yali inexplicably feeds his lamb burger with smoked cheddar to the dog because apparently he's too full of cake or something...
After a big fight with each other after dinner... the kids tuck into their bunks while Oxbear prays with them over the phone and reads a passage from the Bible to their wounded spirits...
...and Puck returns with a bag of honey mustard pretzel twists from work to join his late burger plate...