February 5th, 2025
On the day Dad would have turned 67...
Though the kids are both fighting at me that morning for the usual panel of benign items... wait for them to sort out the whines while checking an article on “Why are rubies red and emeralds green?” (trapped light)...
Yali – sitting at his math sheet – is suddenly inspired to create himself a ham sandwich for second breakfast and his mood completely improves... as he notes that the house is beginning to smell like a swimming pool...
Apparently Oxbear is using bleach in the bathroom and it's beginning to overpower the house... enough that it wakes up Puck down the hall with his door closed...
After math class Oxbear brings Yali to an appointment in a cold gray rain...
While they're gone Puck walks out to annoy his little sister which she loves... the conversation strays to... “Puck, what do you want for Valentine's Day? Do you want me to find you a girlfriend?” **giggle giggle** “I can find you one!” // Puck tries not to smile... “What.” … and eventually leads to Patience practicing her punching fist on his arm as hard as she can while he laughs at how little it hurts... he then retrains her how to make a fist... and somehow a hole is accidentally burned through Patience's space-age pencil pouch...
Out to a glassy patch of ice covering the windshield as Patience and I leave for KDS...
An hour of volunteering for the both of us... while sorting papers hear what sounds like one of the supervising police officers' tasers being demonstrated for one of the 6th grade classes... shortly later I can hear the students begging for the officers to stay longer so they can continue “wasting time”...
Home in a lightly driving rain for pizza wedges in the air fryer... everyone partakes except for Oxbear stuck in another two-hours-straight of online meetings...
Yali and Patince race each other through spelling sheets after lunch... elbow each other through an animated analysis of the Book of II Timothy... Yali pauses to create a drum set out of an overturned plastic snack bowl, two yellow mechanical pencils, and a dog grooming brush for the pedal...
Puck calls me downstairs to check out the new weight bench he's put together... tests out Dad's old weight set...
Back to the studio in cold misting rain... Mama sits on the lot for an hour with a C.S. Lewis biography and a podcast Sally sends over exploring the slums of India...
Home to pressure cooker sweet potatoes and leftover chickens from the smoker as I try to calm the kids' worries for their annual cleft palate clinic in the morning...
"When the sun goes below the horizon he is not set; the heavens glow for a full hour after his departure. And when a great and good man sets, the sky of this world is luminous long after he is out of sight. Such a man cannot die out of this world. When he goes he leaves behind him much of himself. Being dead, he speaks.”
– Henry Ward Beecher