May 2nd

Friday morning is entirely spent mitigating the 56 fires that explode daily in a family of five with three and a half pets on the side... school books and coral reef crafting and laundry and managing finances pushed in all the cracks... like condiments between sandwich layers.. yet nothing so organized...

About the time – in a brief moment of morning silence – I'm speaking with a receptionist at the hospital to schedule Yali's bi-annual imaging and nephrology appointments... that's the moment the dog chooses to howl banshee-level at a passing dog in the street... there's yelling at the dog for howling... dishes are dropped with a wholly unnecessary crash into the sink... and Puck elephant-sneezes next to me with no attempt whatsoever to muffle it...

Mama brain dead... driving Puck to a six-hour shift at work...

...notice the kids' friend across the street hosting a bake sale in their garage away from a drizzling rain... Patience runs over with dollars to purchase homemade chocolate cake pops and sugar cookies for herself and Yali... helps pay for summer camp...

Then Patience back to the studio for a private lesson after texting map screenshots to Elmer of a flutter of sizable quakes in the Antarctic Ocean south of Cape Horn...

While Patience practices intricate crossover footwork on the other side of the glass... take a call from the studio owner regarding various topics...

Home to hunt for the dog's meds and Patience's show team costume – in a house this small it's almost fantastic the amount of items regularly misplaced – while Yali pauses from painting monster teeth to also hunt for his snake he hasn't been able to locate yet that day... I mean... come now...