Impending Replacement
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Collette woke up to far dark gray skies and a tornado watch that Thursday. It was a beautiful morning. To the east, the sunrise had been pushed back to only a whisper of yellow light. Down the street in the blue winds, several girls jumped rope at the bus stop. Those were perfect mornings.
OLeif was to be in The Ozarks that weekend, as were Dad, Rose, Francis, much of the rest of the youth group, and five other leaders, including: Ivy, Jimmy and Loraine, Judah and Evangeline. Collette suspected that with a larger crowd of attendees this year and because of the warmer weather, that there would be more leisure-time activities than swims in the pool and lunch at Denny’s. They would probably be out in the town more, aside from going to a nearby nursing home to visit some of the elderly.
The year before, the whole weekend had been cold enough to keep them inside. Collette spent most of her weekend helping supervise at the indoor pool while drops of condensation fell from the ceiling onto the pages of her Bible. And then for their outing around the town, she and OLeif eventually brought the five high schoolers to a Starbucks where they stayed until it was time to return for the evening small groups and games.
The rain came with a fury that morning on the drive to work, mixed with a little hail as the clouds seemed to swirl a bit in the north. Some rotation. But the storm passed and was followed with much rain. By the time the rain had ended, the day was muggy and unpleasant.
News came to the office that day that Ivy and the personnel committee would be interviewing a potential replacement for Collette that same evening. Collette hoped that the new gal would be hired, as she noticed that she was down to three to four weeks left in the office herself. Time was running a little tight.
Meanwhile, Rosemary battled it out with the old copier. Sometime soon, someone needed to update the ancient machinery used by the church office. But it didn’t seem a likely thing for which to hope. Soon, Collette would no longer have to pull and pry at hidden compartments, jammed papers, knobs, buttons, and drawers, to solve the vexing problems of the office copier. And that was something to which she could look forward.
Baby apparently thought it was funny to start punching during the day at random times. Feisty fellow; either that, or he was getting very cramped.
Come evening, OLeif hurried over to the Pi’s to fix their computer. Mrs. Pi was also fixing him dinner for the evening in exchange for his efforts.
First, he told Collette about Lucia.
“I walked by her today and she said, ‘Hey!’ And I said, ‘Hey, Lucia.’ And she said ‘Hi, OLeif.’ And I said, ‘You’re not trashing my house, are you?’ And she said,” OLeif imitated her gangster attitude, “’We trash your house every day.’”
Carrie-Bri and Lucia sometimes came over to the house for lunch. Sometimes the proof was a trail of crumbs on the counter or a Burger King bag in the trash can.
And Lucia was getting a reputation, it seemed, for being a nut. Perhaps this was because she called herself “a gangstah from Florissant”. Her manager thought she was crazy, but he got some good laughs over her conversations.