Hoping for Better
It’s not exactly a ritual, but I usually find myself checking news around baseball before most to-do items every morning prior to breakfast. This Sunday was no different. Puck heard me mention something about Albert Pujols hitting 500 home runs, and had to ask:
“He hit 500 home runs today?”
“Well, he didn’t do it in one day. It took a long time. And he hit his 500th a couple of days ago.”
“Oh… So what does that mean? Do we get free donuts?”
If Albert Pujols still played here, I’m sure we would have had free donuts. Heck, everything in St. Louis probably would have been free that day.
Several hours later Puck sat through the sermon inspecting a red Tootsie Pop wrapper crane that El Oso had folded for him before the service.
I watched clouds speckle up the sky into a growing blanket that we hoped would spawn severe thunderstorms.
At the Big House, almost everyone together for lunch, including Stinkerbelle, obviously enormously displeased with our company, slashing angrily at Rose’s face.
Considering that it was Joe’s last week at home, before venturing into the world of apartment-renter-ship, part of the lunch conversation centered around who was going to get his old room. The results were still somewhat inconclusive.
We took turns checking windows all afternoon, walking out to the porch. Several hours in, we gathered outside to watch Joe and Dad break dead branches off the trees with their bare hands, in anticipation of the storm. Joe speared a few with a ladder, crashing through the air. Rose photographed from the roof. Small green buds leafing out, dogwoods, redbud, small winds, cooling now, rumbles of thunder and spitting rain … this is what we wait for, the calm before.
I watched Waino shut out eight innings for his fifth win of the season. Francis left for an in-service, Irish for youth group, Joe and Jaya off for an evening wedding downtown. Carrie returned in time to drive Mom to her dress fitting, arms still lightly covered in blood – assisting with bunny surgery all day in the city; sadly, there had been one fatality. Puck, often oblivious to these unfortunate life events, sat on the couch between El Oso and Rose, watching Wall-E:
“Dad. If I burp after I drink milk, I smell milk. Why is that so?”
“I guess that’s because everything has a smell.”
“Not rocks though. Rocks don’t have smell.”
Lightning flashed us home from dark blue clouds in the west. We hoped for improvements in the storm category this season.