From Literature Debate in the Morning to Curry at Night
Tuesday, August 1, 2006
Back on the home front, Tuesday morning, Collette reviewed amoebas and Irish moss with Rose, while Frances and Linnea stuffed wads of cotton in Rose’s oscillating fan to prevent added noise from the whirring of the blades. And then Mom took the kids over to Grandma Snicketts for a traditional trip to Nagles.
“Bring me back something good!” Rose squawked from the basement, as Mom called from the top of the stairs to say goodbye.
Meanwhile, Rose had thoughts on other things:
“What animal would you be if you could be one? I’d be an ant and lead a revolt!”
She had previously considered how easily ants could take over the world if they decided to attack and eat every human with whom they made contact. Apparently she hadn’t considered the inhabitants of Antarctica and other frost-bit regions of the world.
Later, she and Collette had a grand debate over who wrote The Prince and the Pauper. Collette said Mark Twain; Rose said Charles Dickens. When Collette presented proof in the encyclopedia and Rose still wouldn’t concede the argument, Collette had to throw a pillow at her. It had been a long morning… if that was any kind of redemption.
It was probably a good thing that Joe and Rose left shortly later with the youth for the Ozarks, where they would spend the evening on the Giraffes’ boat, and then at Mr. Giraffes’ hotel for the night, and back to the lake for the entirety of Wednesday.
“Be careful,” Carrie called to them on the way out. “Be safe on the boat. Don’t jump in the water after anyone else. Youth group trips are notorious for drownings.”
“We’ll be careful,” Joe assured her, as he hurried Rose out the door with her backpack. “I love you!”
Dinner was curry, rice, yogurt, and cucumber at the Rye’s. To Collette’s surprised surprise, she discovered that eating vegetables, even tomatoes and cucumber, was not all that bad. In fact, it tasted good. Although by the time she was two-thirds through her plate, she could feel that her temperature had risen, and had pushed up through to the skin. Ice water eased the heat, but she could not finish her plate. Collette had never been acutely exposed to Indian or Mexican on a regular basis. And so she concluded that the culinary experience of the evening had been successful, seeing as the pile of food left on her plate at the end of the evening was not as large as she might have feared under usual conditions.
After, the four gathered on the couch for the next two hours and OLeif and Evangeline ate bowls of vanilla ice cream and peaches while the conversation stemmed into many realms of thought. There were times Collette wished she could whip out a transportable set of social butterfly wings, bright and cheery and full of witty conversation and deep verbal insights. And yet, she was silent as usual. It was not a purposeful thing that happened, but it always happened the same. And she found that by listening she had always been enlightened far more than if she had said something. But such things were much dependent upon person to person.
In other news, Evangeline’s sister was due in from Costa Rica for a full month within the next days.