Moorish Royalty and Pizza Buffet
Sunday, March 4, 2007
A bright cold blue morning.
The service went over by about half an hour that morning. Why, Collette couldn’t exactly tell. However, it seemed much longer because of her back which caused her legs to feel very restless. She often experienced this sensation when sitting for too long. She could only attribute it to the extra weight gain. But no matter what caused it, it was terribly uncomfortable.
Sundays were generally fully occupied those days. However, that Sunday, OLeif was supposed to have attended the guys’ discipleship group. However, it seemed to be unofficially canceled at the last minute, so he ended up joining Collette back at the house where Mom was just serving up lunch.
During lunch, OLeif and Carrie shared stories about all of the odd and slightly crazy people who worked at NAWS.
And Carrie spent a good part of the afternoon working on costume design for Joe’s madrigal dinner regalia. He was to be a Moorish prince, and Carrie had done a little research in the portrait department to gather ideas.
“Now all I really need is to get a long sword,” Carrie mused, looking at several portraits on the Internet. “And some pointed shoes. But I know how to make those.”
Carrie had a bit of an odd and assorted knife and dagger collection, but nothing equivalent to a long Moorish sword. That might take some hunting.
Rose’s costume was also to change slightly, from gypsy to Moorish princess. So she would also being wearing a sort of veil under her eyes.
Then Carrie spent the rest of her time cutting up sheets, old curtains from the apartment, a no longer usable lemon-yellow Elvis-Fest V ball cap, and other odds and ends. These she draped over Rose, (who was acting as model while Joe was dropping off Wallace back at his house). Then Carrie began to hot glue together a turban, using Francis’ head for a mold. He sat there giggling over various things while she worked slowly around his head.
Then Grandma Combs called to talk to him about a turkey shoot while Carrie continued to glue around his head.
“I’m going to go to that turkey shoot next week,” he said, after he had gotten off the phone. “And then I’ll get a baby chick and bring it back for Rose.”
Towards the evening, Mom and Carrie headed off to the store for snack-able chips and crackers and lemonade punch for the evening’s small group, and for extra odds and ends for the costume designing.
Come 4:30 in the afternoon, OLeif, Collette, and Rose shoved off for Pizza Street, where the senior high had made previous plans to meet for dinner. None of the three of them were very hungry. But Collette and Rose were usually able to make room for the “white pizza” – Collette could never remember its name – but it was good, whatever it was.
Samantha Bee had just pulled up when they arrived, driving with her permit.
“I got honked at so bad on the way here,” she was saying.
Collette didn’t hear why, as she was distracted by the number of chocolate ice cream puddles lining the sidewalk in front Pizza Street.
Then later Joe meandered in, followed much later by Augustus and Ben-Hur. The boys stuffed themselves with several platefuls while Collette and Rose watched the last part of a college basketball game on the large television screen in the corner ceiling.
Seconds before the game finished, one of the white-uniformed players took a direct punch from one of the blue-uniformed players. His face was soon bleeding all over the floor. When one of the announcers voiced his opinion that the punch was unintentional, Rose scowled at the television.
“It was so too on purpose,” she declared, perhaps a little loudly.
Nevertheless, the blue-uniformed player was ejected from the game and the white-uniformed players won.
Then Joe scooted back on home to take a nap. Collette figured that he must have been up very late the night before, having spent the night with Wallace.
Everyone else headed over to youth for the evening. And Collette took some quiet time for herself in the office to relax her back.