Land of Gold
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
In which Collette and Rose attend a lecture on Andean gold…
Temptations were monumental that cool morning over at the house.
Dilly bars.
A box of Krispy Kremes.
A plate stacked with giant homemade peanut butter cookies.
It was a cruel, cruel world…
Meanwhile…
Dad was working from home for the day, and out for a run later.
Mom was out jogging for the morning before the rain came in.
Carrie-Bri was listening to R.C. Sproul.
And at Linnea-Irish’s basketball awards ceremony, she, with all other participants, had received a new basketball.
Linnea also had a swollen nose, due to, they assumed, some sort of inflammation.
And Puck was ready to go ‘mice hunting’, but not before he amused himself in the kitchen sink with the old Grecian ten-dollar table fountain that Collette had bought from Sam’s thirteen years ago, which Francis filled with red food coloring.
Between students, Collette looked over satellite images of Iceland, fantastically barren in almost all its parts.
And the rain came in.
Things were busy in the kitchen for lunch. Dad and Puck were sharing a bag of pistachios. And Rose was in the fridge hunting for cheese.
Thud.
“What happened?” Dad asked Rose.
“I… fell.”
“Are you OK?”
“Yeah.”
“Mentally?” Dad teased.
“Are you OK mentally?” Rose retorted.
“Yeah. Certified.”
Into the afternoon…
A pair of heavy gold metal vintage Macy’s earrings arrived in the mail to serve as Francis’ pirate earrings. Carrie and Rose tried them on.
“You look just like a mom!” Puck declared.
UPS: Mom’s leather walking shoes and traveling hair dryer for Europe.
Joe was chowing down on a plate of peanut butter waffles.
And there was choir, library, paint pick-up, groceries, etc., for Mom and the kids.
Izzy arrived after 2:30 for a consultation on his pirate midget costume. Carrie had plans to attach a plastic crab with googly-eyes to the end of his cape as it dragged behind him on the ground.
After Linnea had been returned from choir by Dad, she made herself a glass of hot chocolate while she and Rose got busy arguing about cats.
“There’s no way that Mom and Dad are going to let you get another cat,” said Rose. “You don’t brush Pumpkin’s fur enough, and you aren’t making her lose weight.”
“You can’t make cats lose weight.”
And the rain continued to fall.
For the evening…
The kids had pulled their used textbook money together to purchase the long-awaited ice blue Kitchenaid stand mixer so that Carrie could continue her gourmet meals…
Carrie put on their old favorite as kids by Andy Williams: Home Lovin’ Man, which they had all danced to somewhere under the age of 13.
And Collette and Rose were scheduled to attend a lecture at the History Museum: 4,000 Years of Andean Gold. When Mom asked Carrie if she would liked to join them…
“Are you kidding?” said Carrie. “I hate history.”
“Remember on the dig in the desert?” said Collette. “She smashed through everything.”
“It was in my way,” said Carrie. “The only thing I didn’t destroy was that sling-stone, because I couldn’t smash through it.”
Into the cold, rainy night…
The lecture hall was crowded, heavily towards the senior citizen category. Parking had been limited, so Collette and Rose crashed across the street of puddles to arrive just in time for the guest lecturer from California. He had been unable to attend, so he sent his wife to present his lecture notes and slides featuring the Papyrus font…
“Just picture me as about six foot, gray hair down to my waist, and a deep booming voice,” she said.
It was an interesting, basic, 45 minutes. The professor’s wife, who had a PhD in cave archaeology herself, described her husband’s work, chiefly in Peru and Tibet, and then once in Ethiopia, where he was captured and held hostage by rebels in the 1970’s. He never returned…
In addition to the descriptions of ancient gold…
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Her husband ‘happened to find the oldest gold in the America’s, a necklace of gold beads, which had been later featured on SNL and Jay Leno.
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Ancient Peruvian peoples had learned how to freeze-dry potatoes.
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Jabba the Hut spoke an ancient Peruvian language from the area of Lake Titicaca.
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The cultures of Peru created their own sort of psychedelic ‘fun houses’ (for spiritual purposes), underground, incorporating: frightening statues, rushing water, and disorienting shafts of light.
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They were also into shape-shifting.
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Sometimes wore entire suits of gold, to be ‘sun gods’.
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And drank human blood.
As they left back into the night, Collette glanced forlornly over the following reception, offering soft-baked cookies and apple juice.