Food for Thought

I woke sometime in the middle of the night with that feeling of being chased. Turns out I was being hunted in a parking garage by some faceless thing. Maybe I should rethink parking plans for this weekend…

Puck was getting dressed for school. Sort of.

“Ah! Yali just hit me with a cheese stick!”

Cheese sticks, Yali’s favorite snack. Of course he equally enjoys whacking Puck with anything, while giggling. Fortunately for him, Puck doesn’t usually mind.

I guess it was sometime later in the morning that Yali found an old “Lord of the Rings” disc case in the living room. He pointed to the photo of Aragorn on the front cover.

“Neh-neh (Daddy)?”

Still trying to understand what similarity he saw there.

I hadn’t done it in about 25 years. Flashback to Dayton, Ohio, circa 1991. I was a very grumpy young lady that particular morning because oatmeal was on the menu for breakfast. I hated oatmeal. I decided to express my disapproval by angrily dressing myself in the other room. Halfway through pulling a lavender turtleneck over my head, I felt it happen again. Neck sprain. Painful enough that I couldn’t move, and walked with my head tilted all the way down to my right shoulder for a couple of weeks. Anyway, I felt it lock up again somewhere during carpool, maybe from toting that Colombian baby around everywhere. And it settled in for some good old fashioned pain the rest of the evening. However, these days I have too much pride to walk around with my head at a perpetual 90-degree angle. I also have pain patches.

We met Oxbear for Five Guys Burgers at dinner. Puck had forgotten the goodness of these fat bacon cheeseburgers. He ordered his with the works. You could see his eyes glaze over.

“What is this madness?! Dad! We must learn this ingredients!”

Grammar flew out the window in the wake of deliciousness. He even started dancing in his seat after awhile.

Puck and I rounded out our day at the Magic House with the rest of his school. On the drive to Kirkwood, he had a few thoughts for me.

“In second grade when Mr. V gave me that math pack, that’s when I started to love math. That’s why I’m good at it now, because I love it. I’m like Einstein. I started off with nothing. And now I’m a nerd.”

So while “Einstein” took off with his buddies, I hid out in a few quiet places … until some of the kids found the patriotic karaoke machine…