Half a Century
Dad was fifty, or “half a century”, as he put it. Somehow “fifty” seemed much younger. But then again, Dad hadn’t seemed to age much over the past twenty years anyway.
Tuesday was reserved for painting. And as fascinating a project as this was, it still failed to stimulate Carrie’s creative senses.
“Ah! I can’t take any more of this!” she cried.
So for awhile, the brush disappeared. Primer. Trim work. Collette also had to admit that it wasn’t the most interesting job in the world. She kept thinking about Tom Sawyer and his whitewashed fence. And by the end of the day, it seemed as though very few sections of the walls had been actually painted white. They were mostly still the same forest green pocked with holes and scratches from ten and a half years of kids running into them, knocking inanimate objects into them, and doing who knows what else to them.
Upstairs, Joe and Rose had just returned from running errands, which included bringing back industrial strength “Curious Cat Catnip” for Snuggles and Pumpkin, and a bone for Troops.
“Oh! I’m going to get a bunny!” Rose exclaimed loudly to everyone within earshot. “There’s a big fat one at Petco that smashed itself on top of a castle! It’s nose was wiggling around.”
By this time of the day, the rain was falling hard. Thunder cracked somewhere in the west. The snow had almost officially melted everywhere.
Carrie-Bri returned from voting.
“You know what Linnea asked me?” she said to Collette. “She asked me, ‘Carrie, are you voting for Bush, Hillary, or Clinton?’”
But, as everyone knew, Carrie was voting for Ron Paul, and was doing her best to convince everyone else to do the same. Most everyone her age, that Collette knew, seemed to be more than happy to do so.
At around 3:30, Linnea pulled out her basket of colored pencils and drew Dad a birthday card on a sheet of construction paper. The cover included a large “50” and a bright red balloon.
On the way home, lightening cracked once through the frozen sky. Collette had never realized before how very pink lightening could look.
Meanwhile, OLeif was sick. He also had a headache. He used this as an excuse to have Jack-in-the-Box for dinner, with his favorite curly fries.
“Just what you need to get back on your feet,” Collette thought.
After this OLeif-inspired dinner, he stretched out on the red couch with several blankets that weren’t long enough to cover his legs and crashed two pillows over his eyes, his most sure way to cure a headache any time, any day.
And Pocahontas was going to Rome that weekend, now that she was back from visiting green old Ireland, albeit in January.