Friday Nights at Their Best
Friday, January 14, 2011
As soon as Collette heard that distinctive rustle-rustle that morning, she knew she had made a mistake in not putting away the package of Reeses peanut butter cups the previous night. Far… too… tempting…
“Puck?”
Squeals.
She took the peanut butter cup from the thief’s hand.
“What happened to the other one?”
“It’s in my tummy.”
“Ohhhh… now you’re going to have a massive stomachache.”
“Why?”
“Because you ate sugar before breakfast.”
Shortly later, during his yogurt parfait and banana…
“My stomach hurts, Mama.”
“Uh huh. That’s because you ate that chocolate. What do you say to that?”
“That is true.”
Mom and the kids arrived at eight, pretty much sharp.
Mathematics was on the table, and discussions for the following week’s travel plans. Mom had been shopping for Bermuda shorts. Carrie had found some sort of natural tanner/sunblock that was coming in the mail. And Cherry Pie was due in the following Thursday.
After their ten o’clock-something departure, Collette and Puck bundled up for a walk in the cold, which became longer and longer as Puck had to stop to shovel every couple feet of snow and pick up ice blocks as large as his torso. Plus, the slush was pretty fantastic.
“Slush is the best,” Collette said.
“Yeah,” Puck agreed. “Slush is the best.”
Into the afternoon…
Books, by OLeif’s selection: volcanoes and sleepy animals. They also learned that the eruption of Mt. Krakatoa in Indonesia, in 1883, was, reportedly, presumed to be the loudest sound ever heard by man. The explosion could even be heard as far away as 3,000 miles.
This was followed with a sleepy, cold afternoon movie on the couch: The Parent Trap.
Puck had his own comments to interject at various points throughout the presentation…
“You know, boys can’t get married because they don’t wear dresses. Only sometimes they do.”
“Is that wine? I can’t have wine. Wine would make me hyper so I would run on the walls.”
“They forgot to pray before they eat.”
OLeif was home early again, so Collette hurried out while there was still light for a very brisk mile walk. Or, as translated, around: 2,200 steps.
Then back to a warm little house, all golden-red, where OLeif was teaching Puck his new card-system to get things done. Puck was listening to OLeif read off the to-do items on the cards, and eagerly attending to them as they were given.
“Straighten the pillows.”
“Put away the box.”
“Stack the books.”
And Collette got on the soup for dinner.
Everything got just a little goofier when OLeif was home.
“Look, Daddy!” Puck announced later. “I’m slapping my belly!”
That night, OLeif pulled out the stops and brought in Dairy Queen waffle bowls around more of The IT Crowd. Joe texted OLeif about being hired on as one of the Assistant Managers at Philmont for the summer. Rose shared links to OLeif’s favorite Opal Icelandic candy, funky beeswax candles on Etsy, Lucia rumor-edly being hired as a publicist at a modeling agency, Arabian shop finds: pirate ceramic dishes, Turkish coffee grinders, and glass boxes, whenparentstext.com, the Netflix link to a rather ridiculous-sounding John Wayne flick taking place in North Africa: Legend of the Lost, and the matter of avocados going three for a dollar at Soulard on Saturday.
Friday nights at their best.