February 25th, 2025
When I get up that morning there is already bright orange paint splattered in the kitchen sink... at least “someone” had remembered to wash out the paint brush... a minifig with electric orange hair is drying out on the art table...
Yali is Minecrafting before breakfast, excited about creating “the biggest castle in Minecraft!”... he consults with me in detail about varying styles of turrets...
Both young ones return to Yellow Bird in 60s sunshine as the day continues... to learn about earthworms at the park...
Back home between hours of things like pulling dirt-encrusted helicopters and G.I. Joes out of the ground and washing milk out of endless tumblers... Puck begs a pan of bacon while he washes out his small lion's water fountain (the cat thinks he's some kind of lion-dog anyway)...
Yali and Patience return from Yellow Bird with freshly-painted garden stepping stones and gummy worms and lots of story about outdoor adventure with friends...
Puck leaves just before four o'clock for “another boring shift”... there's absolutely nothing left to do after six o'clock he says, but corporate continues to insist that each department will be supervised till eight o'clock each night... before he leaves he deposits a joke-purchase in my Amazon shopping cart of a $23,900 Japanese microscope...
While he drives off, I work on getting Yali into the shower, which is always a chore bigger than it should be... “Come on, Calvin...” // “WAIT!” // “Come on now...” // “BUT WAIT!”
While he finally gets to washing off a week of dirt and other boy-grime, Patience needs to discuss a gaslighting issue with me (female friends can be intense, even in grade school)... feels better a few minutes later and begins singing loudly to pop music on her tablet, unable to hear herself over the headphones...
Driving back to the studio with the two youngest while listening to something that sounds like German lounge music on the radio... conversation meanders through topics such as kimchi ramen and Daniel-Radcliffe-inspired wardrobe shopping (e.g. Converse shoes) to a spontaneous ode to sunflowers and their seeds composed by Yali...