January 3

The aftermath of the late Doctor Who… sometimes Collette couldn’t quite treat fiction as fiction, and not as important as reality. Sometimes it was just a little too hard to leave it alone, to remember that her favorite non-realities were not actually a part of reality. She had, for example, spent four or five days in a state of thought-depression after watching The Last of the Mohicans when she was in high school, until she rethought the ending. Some endings were just completely unacceptable, fictitious or not. Either way, Collette promised to give Francis a rewrite in book form by the end of the summer, as Francis tended to agree with her regarding the fate of the Doctor and Rose…

Meanwhile, in the real world…
Joe relayed his conversation with Creole that morning to Francis: “Yeah, I asked him if you two were going to take a break from causing trouble today, and he said, ‘Yeah, it’s your day of rest.'”
Joe then departed with Curly for Rolla.
Linnea was back from Iowa, sleepy, and sewing together a pair of rainbow-striped gloves from a pair of old socks.
And Puck, after having disappeared to the back room for thirty seconds, had destroyed two of Carrie’s plants, claiming that he was ‘planting a tree’. Collette attempted to rescue the naked little aloe, which Carrie had dubbed ‘Seneca’, but it was too late. His leaves were gone. Puck promised Carrie that he would ‘buy her a new one’. And Collette banned him from Carrie’s room.

In the afternoon, with windchills beginning to dip to zero, Mom, Collette, and Carrie-Bri left for Borders, where Carrie used her Christmas gift card to purchase a classic Doctor Who episode. And then to Whole Foods where they picked up apples, oranges, rice milk for Carrie, and large rolls and challah bread for dinner (with dipping oil and fried cheese), which was good… Everything looked amazing to Carrie, who was on the third day of her vegan diet, from the enormous chocolate chip scones, to the olive bar. They were then checked out at the register by two Caucasian girls with large dreadlocks — one of them was dyed pinkish-red.

Then back into the freezing temperatures.