Oh! Who would inhabit...
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
The day began with OLeif dropping off Collette at the house. On the way, he talked about crows in England.
“They like to eat nuts, apparently, but can’t open them. So, they’ll fly over these high wires into pedestrian areas. And they would drop these nuts on the highway for the cars to run over them and open them. But they found out it was too hard to get them after they had been crushed. So they dropped them over crosswalks and waited until the people had walked over them and crushed them.”
Then he suggested that Rose look into capturing crows by setting out a cage with meat inside and a hole cut in the top. Once the crow got inside to get the meat, he wouldn’t be able to fly out because his wingspan would have to stretch wider than the cage. Of course, because they were such clever birds, they would have to be quickly removed from the cage before they figured out how to climb out.
“I think they’re selling for $150 on the market,” OLeif called from the car as Collette walked up to the house.
Yes, it definitely sounded like a Rose or a Carrie-Bri project.
Meanwhile, Rose was sitting on the love seat in the living room with wet hair from her shower, contemplating the little green house she thought that OLeif and Collette should buy in Cottleville.
“I’m going to be your realtor,” she said. “If it’s too much, I’ll tell them they can’t sell it for that much because it’s by a busy road.”
Then she commenced to cut off small parts of her hair at random with a little scissors, while waiting for breakfast.
“And,” she went on, “there are little barns behind the house where OLeif said Molly and I can keep her pony and my fainting goat.”
Mom laughed. “Rose you would come over every day and chase it around. ‘Aaaaaaaaah! Ha ha ha ha! Aaaaaaaaah! Ha ha ha ha!’”
In other news, both Uncle Mo and Aunt Petunia were scheduled to fly to China the following year on separate business trips. Also, Aunt Petunia’s sister, Aunt Day, was moving to Australia. And so, because the Combs were throwing a going away party for her on Thanksgiving day, Thanksgiving with the Combs was being moved to the Saturday following Thanksgiving.
Meanwhile, there had been McDonald’s for lunch for the sole purpose of Carrie collecting monopoly pieces to add to her and Lucia’s Monopoly chart in the hopes of winning millions.
Mom reminded them that day years ago, when the first McDonald’s monopoly game had been played. Collette had enjoyed collecting the pieces for herself and kept them in a little plastic bag. She remembered which pieces she had. And one day, she found a matching piece. She was so completely certain that she had found the little green sticker which matched the other little green sticker to grant her a prize of $200,000. She thought she nearly squealed in surprise upon looking at it. But alas… the little plastic bag with the missing pieces was not to be found. She searched everywhere. But to no avail. After she and the other kids had gone to sleep for the night, Mom and Dad continued the hunt with flashlights. But it never turned up its little green nose. It had disappeared, and so had the illusive $200,000.
Later in the afternoon, while Elizabeth headed over for a photo shoot with Carrie, Mom, Collette, Frances, and Linnea headed out for some shopping. As Collette and Linnea waited for Mom and Frances to get into the van, Linnea told Collette about their adventures with the trashcans. They were still lying down by the side of the driveway after the garbage truck had come by earlier that morning.
“We got inside the trashcans because they were warm,” Linnea giggled. “And then Frances put the lid on top of me and put me on the dolly and wheeled me around.”
A typical Frances and Linnea escapade.
And so they visited Kohl’s (where Frances careened around with a small cart), and Target (where Frances again took another cart for a wild ride), and then he was dropped off at choir and Rose took his place. The mall was next on the list, where Collette shivered from the chillies of the department stores.
“Here,” Linnea said, “let me hug you to keep you warm.”
She gave her the biggest bear-hug a string-bean nine year-old could give.
“Do you know what I do at the grocery store when I’m cold?” Linnea asked her, as they continued to walk. “I go over by the roasted chickens and it’s like I’m giving them a hug.”
Collette chuckled at this, and they continued to walk the mall until Linnea could no longer walk from hunger.
Mom was also starving herself, so there was a nice Pretzel Time pretzel for everyone. After a lengthy stop at Plato’s Closet for Rose, they made their last jaunt over to the Nutrition Stop for raspberry tea for Collette. And then home.