Let's Just Speed This Up

Maybe my best accomplishment in this drag of a collectively mounting things-I-have-to-figure-out week…

Finally convincing Puck that Kleenex is his friend.

The house smelled so heavily of Vicks Vapor this morning, that I quickly shoved open all the windows. I guess I overloaded the humidifier a little last night. The kid will sleep through anything, even a Niagra Falls of coughing.

Oatmeal.

“Eat up, kid.”

“I’m distracted by the wonders of life, Mom,” he replied, staring out the patio window into tropical sunshine.

I finally got him outdoors by eleven, where he grinned down at me from the swaying tree with a bowl of raisins in the wind and sun…

“Could I have a cough drop, Mama?”

My son likes Ricola.

I don’t even like Ricola.

Guess that’s no surprise.

Puck distracted me with his cucumber “mustaches” during lunch as the sun took retreat after twelve.

Just a grinning chubby-cheeked kid designing worlds on the stoop in the gray breeze. Two houses down a dad tossed a football back and forth with his kids. Crackers curled up in a pool of gold lamplight on her favorite chair. I guess she’s been around long enough to have a favorite chair now. Rain. Just what we wanted.

“Mom,” said Puck with energy at dinner. “Let’s go outside. I’m determined to.”

That wasn’t happening. The temperatures had significantly chilled since the late morning and the yellow afternoon dimmed into rose and then the dark gray-blue of the evening rolled in with thunder somewhere in the south.

The Bear returned to Greek it up with a fresh power cable in a box so new I had to tug it open, for my long-suffering laptop. And I made him chicken sandwiches, watched a little odd-ball Chinese comedy… Chocolate. Ok, so sometimes nothing’s new.