July 9
Friday, July 9, 2010
At around nine o’clock, between adoption papers, Puck pulled out a small table in the living room.
“Attention, everyone!” he called. “Have your seats. I’m makin’ a speech.”
“Will you start with a prayer, Puck?” Carrie-Bri asked him with a grin.
“Yes,” said Puck, folding his hands over his podium. “Dear Jesus. Thank You for saving us. And for patience… and seashells.”
Meanwhile…
Mom lunched with Gloria.
Carrie had made giant chewy gingersnaps earlier. Dad had eaten so many the previous evening, that he got sick. And the sounds of South American pan pipes were coming from Carrie’s room.
Puck’s conversations were always developing, copying, applying, re-inventing… The previous evening, on the drive home, Collette pointed out the dark gray storm above the house. Puck looked up.
“The little Puck thundermonster… may… may… may… maybe… maybe he should, should go with his nana monster to get… get his new, new Donkeymonster.”
In other news, Joe had clocked 50 mph down Pike’s Peak on his bike. When leaving the following public message, “This is one of those days you don’t call your family and tell them what your about to do…”, Ichabod had responded, “[Joe], are you making cupcakes again?”
Collette discovered that Carrie’s favorite player, Messi, had taken a gold medal in the Olympics in Beijing. How she had missed the madness of those 58 matches played two years ago… who could say?
She also, discovered while watching Mr. Rogers with Puck, that his Tree, Tree, Tree song, was basically the same tune as Bring Him Home, from Les Miserables.
OLeif picked up a book on bee keeping from the library… go figure.
And in further other news… Grandma Combs had dyed her hair, quite incidentally, electric green! She was fortunately able to cover it with blonde before all was said and done.
And Thursday night, it had been raining by ten. Beautiful sound.
After the usual math and Portuguese, etc., everyone scattered. Linnea was being picked up at three to spend the night with Forget-me-Not’s daughter. And Creole and Puff ‘o Lump were dropped off so that everyone else could bring them and Francis to the Bananas’ house for swimming and tubing.
On the way, the boys waxed scientific in the back seat.
“Those black holes are crazy, man. Can you imagine somethin’ like that comin’ at you?”
“Yeah, I know. But there’s nothing you can do about it.”
“Yeah. You know, I’ve heard a lot about Tesla. He was crazy. He like made stuff like a death ray.”
“Yeah, I’m kind of glad he didn’t make that… but he made a Tesla coil, I think, that you could throw in the water and it would kill all the fish.”
“Or that x-ray gun.”
“Yeah and he and his friend were going around shooting each other with it.”
“Wouldn’t it be cool if you could use that to sorta like make yourself invisible?”
When they arrived at the Bananas’ house, Gaston came running out Joe-style, with both arms flown up in the air. Then he crouched behind the van, ready to spring as the boys got out of the car.
The rest of the afternoon was spent selecting new bedding, etc. And there was a package of cream horns to split before the girls’ prepared their Friday-evening plans. And Puck made the out-of-the-blue-statement, “Onion likes to call me ‘Stinker’.”