Lost Tooth

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

Monday had been a day for running about. Collette was far too sore from the aggressive badminton tournament to do much of anything active; she was ashamed.

But there was laundry to wash, dinner to fix for the kids (cold fruit, sausages, cheese, and barbecue), mathematics to teach as usual, and Nancy Drew to read to Linnea.

Carrie studied Arabic in the tree-house while she began adding new cloths and hangings to the branches. Rose beaded necklaces during math class, which Collette decided could no longer be allowed. Joe worked out his plans for his Eagle project and went clothes shopping in the evening with Mom, Carrie-Bri, and Rose.

Rose was at least, signed up to teach Bible classes over the summer and would be in Kansas City with Annamaria for two weeks of training. Collette was glad she found something good to do with her three months of summer.

Carrie researched timeshares in Cairo for the following summer, excited with the results. And Dad pulled out Linnea’s first tooth.

Beforehand, she had been talking about chocolate with Collette as she folded laundry and let the kitties out to play in the garage.

“Collette, would I get diabetes if I ate all five of them at once?”

“All five of what?”

“Five chocolate bars.”

“Well…”

“If I ate them all at once.”

”Maybe you’d just get a bad stomachache.”

Moments later, Linnea returned, not with a stomachache, but with a freshly pulled tooth. Meanwhile, Dad was convincing her that the tooth fairy would come. Linnea, Collette thought, really believed him.

Later, she put her hands on her hips, and asked Collette”

“Who’s the real tooth fairy?”

“Me,” OLeif bellowed, putting his hands on hips too.

Meanwhile, OLeif was restless again. He didn’t exactly want to move, but he was looking up photography schools and digital media schools in California, New England, Florida, and everywhere but St. Louis. Apparently, St. Louis was not a highly digitalized media zone. Collette hoped he’d find what he was looking for soon.

Tuesday there was not much going on. Collette cleaned and put together several study materials for the kids. But she was still amazingly sore from Sunday afternoon.