Game Day
Wednesday, August 25, 2011
In which the opulence of vacationing continues…
Pancakes.
For the boys.
“Want another pancake, Puck?”
“No thanks. It will spoil my skin.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. If you eat too many pancakes, you will die.”
OLeif back to the website. He had clocked in about three and a half hours of repairs the previous day and another two and a half to three of actual work before he had joined Collette and Rose for the evening.
Puck’s first ballgame was at hand.
1:15 start.
Heat advisory.
Huge mold counts.
So the three left the house at 11:30, dropping Collette off to tutor on the way.
Back on the ranch, the usual ‘everything’ underway…
Mom, Carrie-Bri, and Linnea shortly returning from T.J. Max. Time for bunny-cuddling. While Carrie had been on the phone earlier, Earnest, wanting to be held — an highly unusual trait of bunnies in general — had nibbled a hole through her jeans to attract the necessary attention.
Dad had come successfully through his yearly physical at 8:30 that morning, and was now officially off the slow-carb diet. [Blood results to be determined.]
“Guess what?” he said. “I’m going to go on an all carb diet.
A brief run-through Joe’s detailing business ideas with Dad, while he chased a wasp out of the girls’ rooms, followed by an everyone-except-Dad brainstorm session of possible names for Joe’s company, including the variable laughable suggestions of…
- Son of a Fish
- The Pampered Car
- The Squeaky Squeegee
Naps for Mom and Francis. These were often accompanied by the comforting warm-weighted cats curled on the stomach.
Crown-braid Linnea’s hair.
Whole Foods for Collette with Carrie… No fresh cilantro plants for Earnest. Ingredients for Carrie to make her own Bumble Bars. Clams and Mussels: good source of B12. At some point on the drive home before hitting the Daniel Boone Bridge…
“Oh no!” Carrie realized. “Those things are still alive, aren’t they?”
“I think so…”
“I can’t do it. I can’t kill them. I can’t do it… Ohhhhh… I just brought home a ton of pets!”
No one else seemed willing to steam them to death either, not even after Collette suggested that it would be sort of like ending life in a sauna. Joe flatly refused. The suggestion was made to go down to the river and ‘toss them back in’. And Dad hinted that maybe they were actually already dead, though Collette read that it was inadvisable to cook already-dead clams. Eventually, Dad obliged Carrie by driving out for a bottle of cheap white wine in which to cook them. Someone was going to do the dirty deed after all…
Evening plans were pieced together…
Mom and Dad out to dinner to celebrate the end-of-the-diet. For Dad anyway.
Joe was intending to go out for a run in the heat to Star’s (and her Canadian-no-television-Christian-converted-Jewish fiance) wedding at seven o’clock. He had plans to present them with an unwrapped toilet seat garnished with festive bow.
Francis to further testing at the Y. [He had passed the swim-test the previous night.] After he ate dinner, which he had somehow commissioned Linnea to create for him. He would occasionally check in on her work with his incredibly charming inquiries…
“How long till my dinner’s ready, Tubby?”
And…
“I’m not seeing much progress…”
And Linnea would be shortly departing for youth group after discussing possibilities of Arabic and Chinese Majors paired with an Archaeology Minor.
Meanwhile, OLeif and Puck had returned from three innings of the Cards game, two city parks (involving cool splashing fountains spouting up from the sidewalk, cherry trees, and iron fences…), a tiny candy store called Lolli-Lolli, a milkshake to split, and fat stick pretzels at Gus’. [The stay at the game had been short due to Puck’s concern regarding the intense heat.] Apparently he had concerns about the players…
“I said that they were killing themselves out there with the sun burning,” he explained seriously to his grandma. “So I didn’t want to stay.”
Home again.
Further web-work for OLeif.
An early anniversary check from Grandma Combs, in addition to the previously-gifted Finn Inn gift certificate, labeled in the memo as ‘a mite extra’.
Aldi pizza. Couldn’t have a ‘vacation-week-mad-feast-of-food’ without at least one pizza.
And the revelation of Gloria’s great-something-grandfather being John Alden. Yes, the Pilgrim John Alden.
Asleep before midnight…