Meanwhile, Back on the Ranch...

Friday, January 7, 2011

On the way over that morning, the air, though rather cold, was not too cold for a deer staring at them as they passed the back road, but cold enough for the occasional flurry, and yet not too cold for them to pass Mom out on her winter morning walk.

Once in the door, Collette was greeted with a plate of straggling Hershey’s kisses cookies.

There were also piles of huge blue, green, yellow, and pink bath bombs on the kitchen counter: jasmine, lavender, etc., with Dead Sea salt ground in the blender. And more coffee bombs, made at Joe’s request, who had, upon first seeing them, thought them to be edible, and took a large bite…

Then Puck thundered down the stairs to tackle the Playmobil box, and returned with a model airplane that Francis had let him play with.

“People need to go to Egypt in that airplane,” Puck explained seriously.

Then he found Carrie’s old sparring equipment and tried to put on the yellow foam shoes.

Mom had turned on old Bing Crosby records.

Francis was excited for the arrival of his new cell phone in the mail.

And Rose had brought home a pile of Disney DVDs from the library for Puck, to introduce him to that strange, antiquated, halfway sinister world of the 1950’s.

Joe, who emerged from the basement just as Cinderella was turning on, began to sing along in only the way that Joe could do.

“A dream that you wish will come truuuuuuuuuuuue!”

And they were all in absolute agreement that Lucifer, the cat, was Pumpkin’s twin.

Into the later morning, Rose brought out her new lavender hand lotion with goats milk, and her ‘chubby chap’ (giant chapstick) while Carrie explained the cactus monster on vintage Doctor Who.

Linnea had a paper chain out, of which she tore off one chain per day in countdown to departure to the Bahamas.

Francis tried to activate his phone by calling in, and having the man on the line speak with Carrie, who was the line holder. Carrie spoke briefly with him.

“Phone voice,” Rose laughed.

“We all have one,” said Collette.

“And his accent was not bad,” Carrie grinned.

“British,” said Francis.

“You wrapped up that conversation pretty quickly, though,” said Collette.

“Yes, well…”

“You should have talked longer to him,” said Linnea. “He probably knew you were pretty too.”

Then they sat around for a few more moments to discuss the upcoming phases of the moon.

By 10:00, Joe was off to take Wally and Starr to Crown Candy Kitchen and True Grit.

Grandma Combs arrived around one-thirty in the afternoon, where she was also to spend the night and attend Linnea’s first basketball game the next morning. She had brought her new shortwave radio for Francis to figure out, a box of ‘The Night Before Christmas’ mini chocolate chip cookies for Puck, and a package of mechanical pencils for the kids to share that she had picked up at Walgreen’s for nineteen cents each.

And Grandma caught up on all the amazing health products that had come in the mail, like soap from Ghana made chiefly of cocoa pod ashes and palm oil cooked together, which seemed to cure all sorts of troubles. Even Francis had to confess that the Moroccan oil had amazingly softened his face. As it had the top of Dad’s head. Although neither would eagerly admit it.

Rose prepared tea.

Then Grandma discussed various travel shows, including visits to Damascus and the Isle of Man, Viking-founded, where there were tailless cats and goats with four horns.

Meanwhile the snow was once again falling over the lands.

Evening arrived. Dad walked in the door.

“So what took you so long, Snicketts?” asked Grandma.

“Well, my mother-in-law alarm went off at work,” Dad replied, “so I had to stay extra late.”

Not very much long later, OLeif returned. And it was finally time for a date night.

So Puck was taken over to the Silverspoon’s to stay the night.

Macaroni Grill.

Margherita pizza for Collette, and a sampler platter for OLeif. It was loud and they struggled to stay awake, due to the lack of sleep, particularly on OLeif’s part that week. But it was nice.

And in continued other news, Paige Popp was going to have a baby boy.