joie demener.

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

With another Cardinal’s victory, the week continued with promise of much rain.

Back at the house before the tutoring got underway, Mom set out several platters of buttered pancakes for breakfast, and the rain misted outside.

The rest of the day went slowly.

After Rose returned from class she told Collette that she could get three college credits from her trip to Egypt if she wrote a fifteen-page paper with it.

“Wonderful. Go ahead and do it,” Collette said.

Rose just groaned.

Later, Linnea pulled out her sticker collection to show Collette before she left for choir. She stored in in the old colored fix box that Grandma Combs had purchased for her in North Carolina when Collette was ten.

And upon returning from choir, Linnea found Collette on the phone with Diana. Linnea smiled and held out a bag of Cheez-Its to Collette, which she had taken from the vending machine for her. She saved her quarters weekly to purchase treats for the family.

Meanwhile, Diana was preparing to have friends over that same night from church for chicken Parmesan (a traditional English dish it seemed). And nothing had been fully decided over England as of yet.

After she got of the phone, she saw that Joe had returned from work.

“Guess how many cars we got to wash today?” He asked everyone.

Collette looked at the rain drizzling.

“Zero,” he said. “We had absolutely nothing to do for five hours.”

Collette wondered what kind of business he would be seeing in January.

In the meantime, Carrie was preparing to set up a photo shoot for Elizabeth and Lucia, who would be arriving in the hour.

And Rose was babysitting Hansel and Gretel at the house for an hour before kids choir at the church. They were quite the comic pair. As soon as Carrie and Rose picked them up from the bus stop, they plopped their backpacks on the kitchen table and pulled out their homework. For about ten minutes there was quiet. Then Rose overheard a minor bit of trouble and reported to Carrie and Collette who were in the back room.

“Hansel said that he needed an eraser but he didn’t have one. So he left the table to get one and Gretel thought she would help with her eraser. So she went over and erased his entire page,” Rose laughed. “Hansel came back and saw it and said, ‘No, Gretel! I didn’t want the whole page erased!”

Collette wondered how much make-up homework time Gretel had unknowingly bestowed upon her brother.

Collette returned to the apartment that evening to find that the work men had been industriously hammering on new siding that very afternoon. Upon opening the door she found that the hammering had done its effect by knocking several items off the hearth, including her red china rose which Grandma Combs had given her when she had been baptized ten years ago. One of the petals and the leaf had cracked off, but maybe with a little glue… and the rain continued to fall.