January 4

After the excess of holidays, Monday morning did not, at first, feel quite like a Monday. And despite the deceptive green of much of the grass, the temperatures hardly rose above fifteen degrees.

Before leaving for the morning, Puck got a huge grin on his face.
“Tomowoh’s Cwistmas Eeeeeeeve!” he called happily. “It’s Mama’s not Cwistmas Eve. Cwistmas Eve is sleeping.”

Over at the house, to begin with, Linnea had a bad cold. This was the result of walking around Iowa City with Cherry Pie for six hours, albeit dressed warmly.
Rose was busy with a final math class and putting together her resume and job applications.
And Mom and Carrie, who was busy snacking on sesame seeds and rice milk, took Puck with them on their morning errands while Collette helped Rose with the above.

The afternoon was reserved for further algebra tutelage and merit badge catch-up while Francis and Linnea prepared blue lemonade slushes for themselves.
Joe came up for a temporary distraction: “Hey, Francis, want to help me make a running track that goes all the way around the basement and upstairs?”
“Sure!” said Francis, with his usual catching grin.
Then the boy swapped goofy stories for awhile, including the time that Francis, Creole, and Puff ‘o Lump built an enormous bonfire of leaves in Puff ‘o Lump’s backyard.
“Then we got tired of it and walked to McDonald’s,” said Francis. “And when we looked back, a haze was covering the entire neighborhood.”

That evening at dinner, while OLeif sculpted a Puck face out of his old clay stash, he asked Puck about his day.
“I went to store,” he replied seriously. “Aaaand… I got ffings (things)… and stuuuuuff…”

And that was all there was to that day.