Home Again, Home Again
Sunday, November 14, 2010
“Munch, munch, munch… Crackle, crackle…”
Not. Again…
Collette opened her eyes. Puck was snuggled down in the pile of blankets and pillows and fat throw pillows, which he called ‘hot dog pillows’. Collette smelled the evidence, besides the exceptional guilty look on Puck’s face. Something sweet and…
Four snack-sized chocolate bars. Demolished. Someone had left her chocolate stash open for chubby baby hands. And it was a good thing that he had not managed to down anymore before being discovered.
Meanwhile… the little Hershey’s thief had been awake off and on since 4:30 that morning. And by the time eight o’clock had arrived, Collette and Linnea-Irish took him down to the pool, accompanied by Francis.
It was Puck’s first time in a ‘real pool’. It was a huge success. And he finally was lured completely off the three steps into the shallow end, at three feet in depth. He had been, at first, unsure.
“I can’t go down there,” he said. “I will float out there in the deep.”
But then he had managed it, and let Linnea give him piggy-back rides around the rest of the pool into the deeper end, while Francis messed with the water jets in the hot tub whose warning sign read: “Excessive exposure my lead to nausea, dizziness, and fainting.” Francis thought this was very fun.
After various running around back and forth to different places, they returned to the hotel to, as Dad put it…
“To remove my CIA bug traces, wipe everything down for prints…”
Back on the road, and to Waffle House, where their young waitress called them all ‘Honey’, and they loaded up on waffles, bacon, chopped steak, eggs, and hashed browns. And coffees for Mom and the boys. Waffle House: one of Mom’s favorite places. Hers and Fernando’s apparently.
While there, Collette was reminded of her Great-Great Grandma Jewel. Her husband could span her waist with his hands, but not her hair, which, apparently, hung nearly to the floor. How she managed to stand up straight at all, Collette couldn’t quite figure…
Six hours of hills and autumn leaves. And Collette thought about what the various lives might be for the people living in “Nowhere Land”… The National Quilt Museum. The Purple Toad Winery. Strange sorts of attractions… and then the gleaming silver of the Arch in the late afternoon sunshine.
They finally rolled back into town at about four o’clock, where the three boys had already landed, OLeif having concluded the reading of his third book for seminary classes in the twelve hours of drive-time throughout the weekend.
So once back to the house again…
“Home again, home again, jiggity jig,” said Dad.
It was pizza time, courtesy of Dad.
And the gathering in the living room for exchange of information.
While they had been gone those two days, the girls had listened to a sermon for church and participated in further Embroidery Hours. This time, the subject at hand was extolling Saint Louis, and all its glories.
And Carrie had helped compile clothing suggestion lists for the various girls in the family, all of which Mom enjoyed. But then again, what did Mom not enjoy?
“Oh, it’s so darling. It’s so cute!” Dad mocked, laughing.
Then Joe came in to do a little interpretive dance to Lawrence Welk, followed by Dad, and then another punching round with Francis, after which Francis rested on the floor, with Trooper for a pillow.
And Rose showed Collette her latest library find: Shahnameh, The Persian Book of Kings, which seemed to be a fantastically long collection of histories. Right up Rose’s alley.
The evening concluded with Joe and Rose heading off to Applebee’s with Magnus. And OLeif fixed his iPhone with cannibalized parts from a cracked iPhone from the old work days before they returned home for the night.