October 28

Thursday, October 28, 2010

It was really cold now. Gray. And wind. An intended high of 53 only.

As Puck sat down to breakfast, he saw Collette take a slap at a tiny pest.

“What was that, Mama?”

“A fruit fly.”

“Oh, Mama. That’s ok. It’s a fruit fly. It likes to eat fruit. Not you.”

The kids arrived just before eight o’clock that morning, following one of Collette’s many recent dreams of inclement catastrophic floods…

Linnea-Irish walked in bundled up in her long puffy black winter coat and gray woolen mittens, hugging a Captain Crunch box.

“Why did you bring…” Collette began to ask. “Oh, right. You’re out of milk over there…”

The kids sat around scarfing down bowls of Captain Crunch and Puck told them stories about sharks and about how they were coming to get them.

Then while Collette instructed Francis and Linnea…

Rose gave the hefty forty-pounder Puck a bounding dancing piggy-back ride to Francis’ Philadelphia Freedom.

She then helped him make the big box into a Spaceship, which they spray-painted black so that he could draw on it with chalk. Puck christened it the U.S.S. Donkey.

This was followed with the menagerie of animals on the floor.

“No, no, all the monkeys go in the middle,” Rose instructed. “Because no one likes them.”

And at some point, the tunes of some horrible concerto began echoing from the piano, followed by the never-ending chopsticks upon the ivory keys.

“Not that note,” said Rose. “You never play that note in jazz.”

Luke and Leia arrived as usual to continue playing with the small zoo on the floor that Rose had showed Puck how to stuff in the old candy vending machine that had been passed on to Puck the previous week.

And Puck and Luke tried desperately to teach Leia that cows did not ‘rawr’.

Raisins, peanuts, an utterly demolished pomegranate… who knew kids under five could all have such refined taste?… Leia breaking it down to Tarkan, a cold walk, and an episode of Mr. Rogers later, the party was over, and the evening was wrapped up with another jog, steak shewermas, and further devotionals.

OLeif returned late — long week at work — to discuss renovated homes in South City.

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