Holiday
Monday, September 5, 2011
In which the holiday is spent waffling between various locations…
7:19.
Awake.
Collette could not manage the idea of ‘sleeping in’ very well.
Sweater weather.
At least to start.
Back to the Silverspoon’s on another Labor Day.
OLeif shook over on his bike, perhaps his last ride before switching with Iwo for his Suzuki…
Curly was just leaving for Nashville. Gloria insisted on him giving everyone hugs. He came over to Collette last.
“Bye Collette…” came the droning obligatory farewell.
“Oh, that was a soft hug,” Gloria protested. “Come on. I want a real hug.”
“It’s an in-law hug,” Curly teased backing away. “Different bloods. They repel each other, you know.”
After the send-off…
Theodore and OLeif went hunting up supplies to change the oil in the bike.
Gloria and Izzy took advantage of holiday sales to find Izzy a winter coat.
And Collette and Puck took off on an hour and a half walk of 1.6 miles to visit the lakes. Piles of small boulders just waiting for action…
“This is a miracle, Mama!”
Chunks of rock tossed into the water. Maniacal laughter. Train whistle.
It was very much a scent-of-the-Caribbean-in-autumn-One-Morning-in-Maine-Chiefly-Asian-Family-Neighborhood-80’s sort of day…
Back for more grass-fed burgers.
Izzy returned with a leather jacket…
“Now I’m ready to get a motorcycle,” he said with a grin.
Almost all the Silverspoon-Snicketts boys had been bit with the bike-bug since April.
There was also a Happy-Birthday pair of flip-flops for Joe, who had accustomed himself to wearing the girls’.
And Izzy cleaned out the tarantula cage to drop off with German’s family before he left with Theodore and Gloria to spend the afternoon with families from church.
Over to the house for awhile…
Joe had used birthday funds to purchase the much-anticipated Go Pro Hero camera, and was at the Pepper’s with Wally and Lolli.
Linnea was napping on the couch after a birthday party of horses and staying awake until seven in the morning.
Rose and Francis were at Home Depot and PetsMart, stocking up on stains for the cabinet and special food to ‘make Snuggles fat’.
And Carrie narrated her ridiculous night downtown with Lucia the previous evening. This included being photographed by an amateur photographer in his 40’s in Forest Park, who seemed to be very interested in feet… and returned three times to see if Carrie would be willing to participate in a photo shoot and to ask for her email address… both times declined. Before a fourth attempt could be made, the girls departed for coffee in The Loop. And while Lucia carried on conversation with an illegal immigrant Bosnian man in his 50’s… Carrie was met with an old familiar face, a severely-crazed homeless fellow, who immediately began a one-man production involving Carrie as his muse… it wasn’t long before he was having the crowd convinced that Carrie was Brooke Shield’s younger millionaire sister and was charging fees for people to meet her. For other passerby carrying a kitten, he easily convinced them that Carrie was a veterinarian. He then proceeded to tell her that she should come visit the cabin he had built in Canada before the world ended with the half million he owned from a bank in Africa. By this time, even the police were laughing. These sorts of events seemed to be a common occurrence in Carrie’s life…
Meanwhile, Rose got to work staining the cabinet. The only person in the family who had ever attempted furniture restoration, and results were very good. The hardware had been patented in the late 1800’s, so the piece itself had been semi-dated, and looked practically new after the stain.
Carrie began the chicken parmesan for dinner and a frozen peanut butter pie for desert. She handed Francis the mixing spoon to lick. He was slightly hesitant…
“Uh oh. What do I have to do now?”
“Nothing.”
Lick.
“You are now my bond servant forever.”
Puck also got his chance at a teaspoon-size, barreling around in his tricycle. Calvin. Opie Taylor.
Some further sun outside while Puck got to work on the sidewalk chalk. [Collette was already a little burned from the morning.] And Collette and Carrie discussed dyslexia.
Back inside, Francis was anxious for the removal of the peanut butter pie. It had not set yet…
“Francis, stop asking,” Carrie commanded. “You have no idea. You are the worst chef ever.”
“No,” Francis replied, pointing a finger at Rose. “She is.”
“I am not! I made chicken parmesan in like ten minutes.”
“Fine. Then you’re the second worst.”
Somewhere around Rose explaining that it had taken ten minutes to prepare the chicken, not cook it… a call from Mom and Dad on a five-hour return drive from Yosemite.
OLeif had also returned from his drive. He had decided not to take the Suzuki. Good thing too. It was a very ugly bike.
Not long later…
“Can I get the pie out now, Carrie?”
“You have to let me kick you.”
“No!”
OLeif glared at him…
“Let her kick you!”
The pie was served. Tasty.
Francis then proceeded a further attempt to prove his good cooking skills, like in the old days when he had prepared some sort of tuna-cucumber concoction and brought it to his favorite people next door, the Pearls, which they actually ate. He had made some for the mail lady as well…
“Hey, at Scouts, they like it when I cook. I was the only one who cooked scrambled eggs without the yolks being all runny. They were all congratulating me.”
Time to leave.
Francis was busy chopping up old stumps with a wedge and sledge hammer near the driveway.
“You want him doing that right now?” OLeif asked Carrie with a grin.
Carrie shrugged…
“He’s asserting his manhood.”
Not long later on the road, Collette received a call from Rose. As was typical, they had heard sirens at the house and called to be certain that the departing family members had not been involved in a crash.
That night, OLeif sneaked in a Reeses Big Cup for Collette, though Collette had proffered a dozen rebuttals to his insistence…