Never Stop Chasing!
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Wednesday was going to be unconventional. Now that Carrie-Bri and Joe were certified Storm Spotters with identification numbers, they, with Collette and Linnea-Irish, were scheduled to visit Lindenwood at ten o’clock for a speaker series lecture that morning. Francis had also been due to attend, but was instead working at early shift at the Y.
So while 2/3rd of the Snicketts kids departed for the university, Dad took over babysitting duties with Puck, as Mom had been slotted to visit a local church library, followed by lunch with the librarian.
On the other side of town…
PhD candidate Reed Timmer was already autographing. The four took a row toward the back right of the auditorium, accompanied by one of Joe’s Lindenwood and past-Colorado-trekkies. Linnea joined the line of students, grannies, and gramps with the ash smudges already on their foreheads, with Collette beside her to operate the camera. Reed shook their hands and posed for the picture with a big Joe-like grin, then took the scrap of paper (the backside of a medical bill no less) – none of them had remembered to bring anything autograph-worthy – and scrawled across it in blue Sharpie…
To Linnea
Never stop
chasing!
Reed Timmer
As he worked on this note, he nodded towards the screen above the stage displaying an image of him yelling his head off during an episode of Storm Chasers.
“Yeah, that one’s kind of embarrassing,” he admitted.
The eager audience was given a chance to eagerly applaud five minutes later when the show began and the very funny Reed Timmer took the stage, accompanied by slides punctuated with a surge of exclamation points after terms such as Tornado Vortices!!! And some crazy footage, including shots of Reed running around looking completely lost in front of a particular monster twister.
“Yeah, all that adrenaline will sometimes make you sprint in random directions,” he explained.
This was followed by a note about how, while helping with relief efforts, he had consumed 4-5 MREs a day… not realizing that they were composed of 3,000 calories apiece…
“So, yeah… I had some problems,” he continued. “But a ton of energy!”
Puck, meanwhile, had enjoyed a hike with Dad while they were gone. Dad had taken up whistling as they got on their way…
“Do you always whistle on this trail, Grandpa?” Puck wanted to know.
Puck ran out to Collette sometime later from Carrie’s room.
“Mama!” he declared, quite upset. “Sun thinks her bun-bun is a super bun!”
“What does that mean?”
“She thinks he will live forever!”
Collette explained. Puck hurried back to tell Carrie how “wrong” she was. Then he returned even more upset…
“Sun is presuming again! Because all bun-buns die. And there are no super bun-buns. Even supers. God didn’t make any super bun-buns.”
All was appeased when Collette explained that at least some bunnies “wouldn’t die”, maybe, at the end of all things, if they, too, were spirited away to the Great Beyond. And Carrie talked to him about bunnies with wings and such…
Collette and Linnea departed at 1:30 for church as Carrie kicked off for a 2:00 coffee meet-up.
Judith’s dad had passed away on Sunday at the age of exactly 59 and three months, and while Collette attended the funeral, Linnea helped watch the Eight children in the nursery for 35 minutes.
The day was noticeably warmer. 63 by the time Collette and Linnea returned to the house. After a little Peanuts, Puck joined Linnea and the ukulele in the back yard while Francis fished through another lesson of math and Carrie elicited Joe’s skills in a short bunny photo shoot outdoors.
As the evening approached, Mom and Linnea prepared to leave for the Ash Wednesday service at 6:30 after Linnea had cleaned and vacuumed out her room. And Joe was leaving for his own services after hanging out with Brett Grill. Puck was looking at a photograph of the gown Pearl had chosen for the pageant…
“Looks like it would be good on Onion,” he announced.
Then Carrie served up dinner, which included a white marshmallow salad including slivers of pineapple that Dad was afraid might be coconut…
“Can’t fool me. I can always recognize coconut.”
“Well it takes one to know one… Oh. That was good.”
And Puck was concerned about the fatness of Pumpkin…
“Grandpa! Your cat may pop into millions of cats and eat all the people up, including you!”