I Need to Save Up

Puck was halfway through his oatmeal and honey this morning when he stopped to audibly clarify a thought he had obviously been working through for awhile.

“You can’t stop time by stopping all the clocks in the world, like the cartoons say that you can. Because the Indians didn’t have clocks! So that proves it! You can’t stop time by stopping all the clocks in the history of life. Besides, there’s too many! There’s even a clock in Grandma’s bathroom!”

So, while Puck learned more about life and its curiosities at school, I worked my tail off tapping away at the laptop while Crackers explored the dishwasher.

Also, Wally the Woolly Bug had disappeared. I’m not sure when, or how, but he was missing from his box that morning. We could only hope that he had crawled away someplace to make his cocoon.

“Well, if we see a tiger moth flying around in here sometime, we’ll know it’s him,” Puck told me later.

On the drive home from school that afternoon, Puck had new plans.

“Can some people just live in their cars?”

“Some people do … if they don’t have a home to live in.”

“I want to live in my car when I grow up.”

“How about a tiny house instead? You could drive it around if you attach it to your car.”

Pause for thought…

“Yeah! I’ll buy some land and some livestock and put the tiny house on the land. Just a little bit of land. Can you buy just a few inches of land?”

“Maybe… We bought Kitty a foot of land in Scotland.”

“Maybe I will just ask her for a few inches of her land. Where is Scotland?”

“Across the ocean.”

“I’ll just buy land here.”

“Will you have room in the tiny house for your family?”

His eyes grew big as they lit up the rearview mirror. “I have a better idea. I just won’t get married. I should start saving for the land. The tiny house, the car, and the land. Those are three big things I have to save for. Except I’m saving for roller shoes first.”

After homework, Puck took turns with the neighbor girls dumping each other over inside a large red trash can in the street. Sometimes I don’t ask questions. I made pork sausage from the farm with Kerry Gold butter on Great Harvest honey wheat toast for dinner. All that good stuff.

And Crackers whittled under my comforter for an hours-long nap while Puck laughed over another 1970’s Disney, “The Shaggy D.A.”