March 3rd, 2025
Dreams – endless problem-solving – to six o'clock alarm as Oxbear prepares to leave with an Uber for the airport...
The kids are pulling bowls of cereal over SpongeBob to begin their morning... tears are few and only from Patience as Oxbear scoots off...
While Oxbear is mid-air flying south to Fort Myers for a few days... I prepare math sheets as Patience busily explains to me the recent fallout over the bathroom club at the dance studio... “Some of the girls kicked out V while I was gone and that's not even fair because I hired her in the first place and they can't do that!”
Oxbear lands in Florida during Creative Writing... texts future travel updates for spring... Mexico has been changed to the DR...
Meanwhile Yali has taken this distraction opportunity to pull a kitchen sponge from the cabinet and begins cutting it carefully in half... “It sounds like I'm shearing a sheep...” he says to himself... then gets busy with a Sharpie... “Patience!” he declares, holding the face-sponge to his sister... “This is Bob Ross! He's gonna be watching you in your sleep! Ha ha ha!” // “No!” Patience squeals... “Throw him away!” … Then Yali moves on to recreating anime scenes with his 3D-print sword before “order is once again restored”...
While we transition from reading about a day in the life of a 4oo year-old Wampanoag boy... to Patience learning how to speak phrases like “hot tea” and “hot porridge” in Mandarin on her tablet...
...Puck emerges with the welding helmet he's bedazzling with hundreds of disco ball mirrors as a gift... the mirrors aren't cooperating and he needs advice... we work something out with a bottle of superglue before lunch...
...which Yali has already anticipated... walking around with a PBJ, crusts carefully sliced off and fed to the dog... as the monthly tornado siren test fills the air... “Oh good!” he declares, opening the front door... “Sirenhead's here!”
While I return to laundry and dishes and picking off multiple layers of dried superglue from my fingers...
...Yali and Patience are outdoors in the sun and wind before the storms arrive this week with advertised 50+ mph wind gusts... I then agree to truck them to the park to bike two miles before dinner... though both their bikes have now become pathetically too small for them since the fall...
Puck is at work till eight o'clock... after the park we stop by his place of business for a loaf of sourdough bread and pomegranate juice while he's stacking yellow onions in bins as Patience dances up to greet him and Yali pretends to punch him in the back... I think by now he's immune to the embarrassment of younger siblings...
While working on some documents at home... smell burning from the kitchen... “What's going on in there?” // “It's okay, Mom! We're just burning marshmallows over the stove!”
Those marshmallows provide the energy to continue running around outdoors as the sun dips... laughing and yelling... Yali wearing the dog's harness for no very particular reason... as various neighbors drive past the house probably wondering what kind of circus we run around here...
Blue tone on the world and wind chimes rolling as evening brings paninis and Minecraft and Vat19, and readings over the phone from Oxbear, and Puck back from work to play with his yellow cat...