Hoy no es mi día
Puck sat at the breakfast table with a box on his head. A box as tall as his body, and more thin, with two eye holes cut out at the bottom.
“What’s wrong with the basement, Mom?” he asked.
“People wanted to make cheap houses fast a long time ago,” I replied, irritated. “That’s what’s wrong with the basement.”
The box with eyes stared back at me…
“Then we will tell the President. The President of the United States.”
The Drain-O hadn’t been magical this time, so… The Bear placed the call. The dreaded plumber’s call. Failure, alas. Puck, more distraught with things like oatmeal for breakfast, took a plastic Target bag from the stash and began parachuting himself around the house.
The Bear was home for the day to study before the big final, Wednesday. Nothing like taking a vacation day to kick some paradigms and vocabulary. So while he chugged away, Puck, for the second day in a row, counted to 100 by himself with his laminated counting chart. [Sometimes I just look for excuses to laminate things.]
When the plumber made his show at two, Crackers was already a little terrified. Immediately, she buried herself deep under our new yellow comforter – which I realized showed gray cat hair more than I had expected – and just hissed and growled.
Dinner approached rapidly.
“Thanks for making these guys, Mom,” Puck launched a triangle of white cheddar and apple smoked gouda quesadilla into some sort of offering. “I love these guys.”
Accompanied by Guatemalan honey dew melon.
I decided that Puck could use extra shut-eye instead of a couple of Christmas carols in a church that was, for once, not bright enough to blind Bartimaeus. Again. Before he was blind… Instead, they packed us in the church where The Bear and I had graduated a brief nine-point-five years ago.
The little things that fill up the space the one time you get to drive solo at night again since… whenever. Tiny thoughts and things you remember from a day that went too fast to get everything done… The shark Lego Puck left in the bathroom. My old argyle socks from Dieberg’s that I found rolled in the back of my top drawer. How it’s almost infectious sounding any ending-in-‘ay’ word with an Hawai’ian accent now, ever since I re-listened to the 2011 NLCS.
We made it in time to hear the kids sing. It’s not the same, of course.
Kids these days. They have no work ethic! – Crotchety Granny Collette
Still. It’s true… Francis, who was somehow the Bass Section Leader in the Concert Choir, presented Bluebell and Mr. Sing with gifts, labeling himself as “Eye Candy”, while patting his stomach, when he came over to chat with his two oldest sisters.
On the way home, Dad treated Carrie and I, and himself, to Deter’s vanilla frozen custard while he told us about the days he worked at Skaggs.