February 27th, 2025
Dreams : small private museum featuring ancient civilizations and the cosmos, posters advertising concerto competitions, Hungarian forints changing hands...
In the real world Yali and Patience are arguing over the chocolate cake carrier... shut that down... but not before Yali has sneakily tossed one of Patience's Stanley thermos collection out into the yard as punishment...
As they sit with me for math worksheets Yali chucks a mechanical pencil across the table accidentally hitting Patience on the side of her head... fortunately no retaliating violence ensues...
Yali later chomps into a late breakfast apple... “This tastes like ant guts”....
...while Patience argues with Puck over her Mandarin lesson...
Late morning Oxbear leaves for an appointment at the Toyota dealership... the van suddenly has about four lights screaming on the dashboard...
Close out the morning with the first half-hour of “Ben-Hur” for the kids... about all the literature/ancient Roman culture they can handle on a Thursday morning...
What they really need is the outdoors... back out there after lunch... Yali walking around in sunshine and wind chimes wearing Gryffindor robes... then offers to rake up all the sweetgum balls for pay, switching out of his robes for ear buds and a CamelBak, pausing occasionally for a few dance moves in the zoysia...
Patience takes a break from the wind and sun for a violin lesson indoors while Puck sits nearby complaining about the noise as he repeatedly tosses a pair of scissors in the air to see if they'll stick in the floorboards... they do... somehow Patience's violin lesson ends with scorch marks on the floor, peanuts rattling around inside the f-holes of the instrument, and both Puck and Patience laughing about events, incidental and otherwise...
As Puck leaves for four hours in Produce...
...Yali finishes up the lawn with the leaf blower, feeling pretty awesome and accomplished about his hard work, and a few extra bills in his wallet...
Push another couple of loads through the wash before five o'clock as Patience and I leave for the studio...
Patience reads Swedish-American historical fiction the whole drive there (and back)...
Waiting on the parking lot for ninety minutes... amongst other things, a little South African drama via hotspot...
Puck texts me on the way back to ask if we're out of milk, just as I'd thought the same thing... ask him to pick up a gallon while he's at work... “Pay me back” he replies...
Return to the dinner table smorgasbord-ed with Q-tips, isopropyl alcohol, various glues, bowls of unknown solutions, and wadded paper towels...
Half an hour later Puck also returns... with eighteen dollars' worth of Oberweis bottled milk...
“[We are] a seed patiently waiting in the earth: waiting to come up... in the Gardener's good time, up into the real world, the real waking. I suppose that our whole present life, looked back on from there, will seem only a drowsy half-waking. We are here in the land of dreams. But cock-crow is coming.”
– C.S. Lewis [the year of his death, 1963]