May 5

Double birthday – Lace Hobcoggin and Ben-Hur Pepper. Also, as usual, Cinco de Mayo.
Meanwhile, the crew had returned from Wisconsin, each with their own riveted airplane wing (the miniature type).
“It took a day and a half to make that thing,” said Carrie. “Riveting isn’t easy.”
The boys agreed. But it had been a good time. Carrie had taken pictures of things, including power lines. Signature Carrie.
Frances was at the counter doing math. The only calculator to be found was Puck’s large toy cash register, which beeped loudly at every punch of the button. (No volume control.)
Puck spent part of his morning helping Carrie with yard work – putting sticks in the fire pit. Then he helped Carrie mix the tuna for sandwiches at lunch. The rest of the morning he spent scooting around the floor with a metal tea kettle in his hand, laughing at himself.
“Mom!” Joe bellowed from the stairs. “This is the second time you’ve tried to kill me!”
Mom usually put items meant for the boys’ rooms (i.e. laundry, shoes, biking and air-softing paraphernalia) at the top of the stairs on the first few steps. Occasionally Joe would trip on these things when walking down the stairs. Today was one of those days.
Later in the afternoon, Carrie and Linnea worked on tree house revisions by sketching plans on the back patio with sidewalk chalk.
Come evening, when OLeif was back to watch the Puck, Collette returned to the house where she accompanied Mom and Linnea (and later Dad) to Frances’ third baseball game of the year. On the way, they picked up a fellow teammate, Sleepy Creek.
“So, what you been up to lately?” Frances asked him.
Sleepy paused.
“Uh…. getting ready for the game.”
“No, no. I mean, like, in the past few days.”
“Well, on Sunday…”
Sleepy paused so long, that another conversation began. They started talking about chicken.
“Yeah, barbecued chicken is the best,” Frances was saying.
“Yeah… And it’s good cold too.”
“I made fried chicken before I left.”
“That’s good too. But not cold. Fried chicken is sick when it’s cold. But barbecued chicken is the best cold.”
Then they went on to talk about how Frances occasionally ate things that he found on the ground.
“Yeah, once at Scout camp, he saw this cookie on the ground. And it had been raining. And he ate it!” Sleepy droned.
“It was good. Once I found a piece of unopened gum on top of that nuclear mound. That was good too.”
As they pulled into the sports park, Sleepy asked Frances if he had been working out.
“No. How long have you been working out?”
“Seven weeks.”
“Let me feel your muscle. Mine’s bigger.”
“Yours is squishy.”
The boys rolled out of the van to get to the ball field. Dad pulled up shortly after the first inning had begun. And he quickly had Linnea and Mom order hot dogs from the concession stand. They came back with the hot dogs, two bags of pop corn, and a slushie for Collette and Linnea. Later, as the innings went on, Dad and Linnea brought back pretzels and cheese dip. It was a ball park feast.
In the end, the Falcons lost by a large margin to the Sharks, but it hadn’t been nearly as bad of a loss as it had been three weeks earlier. Frances was beginning to enjoy baseball.
The evening ended with Collette and OLeif watching “Laura”, with OLeif acting as the peanut gallery for comments.