Keeping Tabs
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Puck was ready to go at 6:34, hankering after breakfast and a set of clothes for the day. When asked if he would like to cuddle under the blankets for a little while, he replied…
“I don’t want to sweat you, Mama.”
– He tapped her lightly on the head. –
“But I will cuddle with you another day.”
Shortly later, he returned in corduroys and sweatshirt…
“Mama, you’re like an egg in a pearl,” he giggled. “You haven’t moved at all.”
He was also intent, since falling asleep the previous evening, about “selling cookies” to all the neighbors…
“I will put a chair by the freezer and put the cookies in there and wait for them to come and buy the cookies,” he explained methodically.
“Mama? What are we doing tomorrow?”
“You have a doctor’s appointment. Then Grandma’s. Then church.”
“Will I get a shot?”
“Maybe.”
“And it will hardly hurt at all,” he shook his head in the little sideways bobble that often accompanied his pleasant resolution to potentially unpleasant circumstances. “It’s just like a little bug went chomp!”
As the morning progressed, OLeif checked in. He had re-pinched a nerve in his back.
And Puck was still trying to sell cookies…
“But, Mama! That’s how sales work! People have to come over and buy stuff! You don’t know how sales work, do you?”
While Collette prepared a grilled cheese and beef sandwich for Puck’s lunch, he listened to “Adventures in Odyssey” while flicking a button he found on the steps of the Arch back and forth across the floor, and thought about unrelated things…
“Mama? Why do girls’ feet smell so good?”
He began to examine his finger, checking out the growth level of his cuticles, which was a sometimes-habit…
“Look at those naughty naughty tentacles, Mama. They just keep growing up.”
He spent the first part of his afternoon siphoning Wendy’s pickle buckets of water back and forth to his playhouse in the back yard.
After dinner, Puck sat on the couch and listened to Collette sing the old songs to him while she stitched a wallet for him at his request.
OLeif returned – fine dad that he was – with a package of lemon cookies for Puck to sell to family the following day. Puck did not seem to even mind that he was not allowed to eat any of them himself – Collette had denied him sugar until his ear had healed. He merely wanted the opportunity to sell something. OLeif handed him a dime for ten cookies before resuming work for the evening in his library.
Into the evening, a sore throat that Collette had experienced upon waking, returned with a higher level of soreness, which she hoped was only allergies. Everyone seemed to be having trouble with the devious things, despite the cooler temperatures.
OLeif’s back seemed less worse than it could have been.
And the blown game in the 10th against Chicago was maddening. It would have been an outstanding win led off by Wainwright if it hadn’t been for two incredibly unbelievably bad calls by the umps.