House Sit
Thursday, October 20, 2011
In which Collette is reminded that allowing herself to watch competitive sports is never, if never, a good idea; not even an occasionally-good idea; no, not even a rarely fractionally good idea…
Game 2 was on the roster for the evening at Busch Stadium, as the city still proverbially basked in the glow of first-game victory.
But first, it was out for another three days of creature-sitting in old St. Pete at the Silverspoon’s while Theodore and Gloria were in Nashville with Curly.
Gloria had brought in the goods; the cupboards were full.
“She’s trying to tempt you to eat her food,” OLeif said, laughing.
Brownies, lemon squares, pumpkin pie. Enough meatery and poultry to sink a tanker, the makings of quesadillas and paninis with salami and provolone, cinnamon rolls, juice, and apple cider… and a cake of lye soap at the sink for washing hands.
And Puck got busy with about two and a half hours of ‘reading’ the library’s Tin-Tin adventures…
“Why’d he say ‘Holy snakes!’? Prob’ly ’cause he was French…”
A call from Judah in Alberta.
By the mid-afternoon, after another three quarters of an hour perusal of another edition of Tin-Tin during Collette’s indoor walk, Puck hunted up scraps of autumn leaves for the dinner table centerpiece…
“Here, Mama, my love,” he said with a big dimpled grin under Cards’ knit cap.
Despite the brisk weather, a shock of rich pink roses still bloomed in the front lawn.
Linnea arrived shortly before four. She had taken on the afternoon watching Luke and Leah in Lake St. Louis, and was now to join Collette for further mathematics, English, dinner, and Game 2. Puck immediately took on the important roll of tour guide…
“Lila, I will show you all of the rooms in this house. Follow me.”
Sometime later, Collette heard him introduce the garage…
“And now the most scariest room of all!”
A call from Great Uncle Harry in New Mexico.
Down to business with the algebra while Puck was allowed Toy Story 3 and a bowl of popcorn…
“Watch this wiff me, Lila. It’s beautiful.”
By seven o’clock, the nail biting had begun again, Linnea and Joe rooting them along beside Collette over a glass pan of fudge brownies, and OLeif by nine. For three hours, once again, everything else was forgotten. And by ten, Collette had reached Fury Level 9. She never did well with sports, and the game was a fluke in the end, despite the good efforts of an outstanding team in 50-degree weather.