Happy China-Korea
Monday, January 23, 2012
After waking at 6:53 from some intense bear attacks on the front porch, the two small aggressor bears had somehow turned into blonde-headed twin boys. Collette had allowed them to stay.
“Maybe it means we’re going to adopt twins,” OLeif suggested.
“Blondes from Columbia?…”
“Maybe from Missouri then.”
The Missouri state flag did have bears on it. But then again in the dream, an angry mama bear had come charging for the house the following night for her cubs, which were no longer cubs. So obviously…
Collette woke up to look through Puck’s glass bead collection with the always ambitious, lengthening tike. Gray and chilled winds accompanied the early morning. Collette locked the front door.
Seeing as Chinese New Year had once again arrived in all its un-noted pomp, the morning began with some wailing Silk Road Journeys with Yo-Yo Ma. French toast also somehow got mixed into the morning while Collette looked up fortune cookie recipes and began reading the instructions…
“Place teaspoonfuls of the batter at least 4 inches apart on one of the prepared cookie sheets. Tilt the sheet to move the batter into round shapes about 3 inches in diameter. Be careful to make batter as round and even as possible. Do not make too many, because the cookies[sic] have to be really hot to form them and once they cool it is too late…”
“Too late” was all she needed to hear…
“We’ll make sure Daddy picks up some extra fortune cookies tonight, buddy.”
Meanwhile, Puck was busy learning the art of shoes without laces.
“Why is my foot being so dumb?” he asked.
“It’s not being dumb. You just have to pull up the tongue.”
“I did,” he sighed. “But the ton [tongue]… kept doing its job. Its bad job. And I threatened to fire it.”
As Collette prepared lunch, the smoke detector started screaming in an annoying way again. Collette removed the Hawai’ian roll from the toaster.
“Stop!” Puck screeched back. “Else or we will have to throw you away!”
When the siren had ended, he marched into the kitchen in his “super shoes” to see what the trouble was about. Then his eyes opened in surprise, as if he had done the smoke detector a great wrong…
“Mama!” he said excitedly, holding up the peeled carrot on his plate. “It thought there was a fire because it saw something red!”
Close, buddy… Close.
Collette cracked open Dad’s first volume of Spurgeon’s sermons during the meal and read aloud the first eleven pages. Death was a primary theme…
“Why do people have tombstones?” Puck wanted to know.
“To mark where they are buried so we can remember them.”
“And they put flowers around them because some of them are wives.”
King Herod’s death was arrived at next…
“I know what happened to him,” Puck said with moderate authority as the text was read. “And God said, ‘See that man out there, worm? Go get him.’”
The sounds of the Orient continued throughout the day.
Given the holiday, during the dinner hour, Collette allowed Puck a viewing of Chop Kick Panda, or as Puck put it, Chop Chick Panda. Mostly a spoof of Kung Fu Panda but shorter, and also available for streaming on Netflix.
OLeif returned just at seven with the wealth of China King: sweet and sour pork, crab rangoon, and of course, the fortune cookies. O, crab rangoon, vicious faux-Asian tempter. On the roster for the evening, a surprisingly good Netflix find by OLeif: Castaway on the Moon, the Korean (oh well; close enough) version of Cast Away.
Meanwhile, Collette’s fortune was apt:
“You are next in line for promotion in your firm.”