One Hundred Seventeen
It was nice to have a little monster snuggled in between us again. A rainy Saturday morning sometime before eight o’clock. Of course he’ll never just lie still for more than two seconds, so after a few minutes I get up with him anyway. But it’s nice to have that back.
“Bun!”
Puck pointed past the rain-dripped glass door to the honeysuckle hedge. Indeed. What must be our shed bunny sat plumply in a patch of green grass, staring at Puck. He has survived well these last years.
Puck munched through a plate of eggs in a nest, Chilean purple grapes, and banana. He observed that the basil had outgrown its tiny greenhouse, pushing against the thin plastic dome…
“MOM! Take off the lid so he can BREATHE!”
So we replanted the basil on the cold cement of the porch while the rain dropped. And I started a load of laundry, Crackers swiping her paws into the water as usual.
Around noon Puck and I were snacking on little tortillas stuffed with ground beef and Swiss before Gloria left to give Sebastian a good, old-fashioned dog wash. Puck hunched over in his 55 baseball shirt, his red Chucks propped up in the back of the bar stool behind him.
The Bear let me know – he couldn’t find my ring in the console. He and Theodore were getting the oil changed in the Mazda. This meant I was going to have to do some deeper digging. So I unwrapped a Reeses. Because those two events are connected somehow, I know it.
They walked back in for a bite and a drink, and then dropping off old computers to shred.
With the advent of my second game of the season, Puck knew that my laptop would be 99.4% guaranteed available…
“MINECRAFT TIME! MINECRAFT TIME! MINECRAFT TIME!!!!”
The men returned to sit on the driveway in the wet afternoon with their pipes. The Bear and Puck folded paper airplanes. A meat thermometer arrived in the mail, with a tiny packet of Jelly Bellies. Puck shared one with me – melon.
The rain fell a little harder.
“AHHH!” was not an uncommon exclamation from my son, who was losing patience with both Minecraft and UNO.
The Bear coaxed him through it. He kind of has a way of laughing him out of his frustrations.
Gloria returned. Clean, tired dog.
“I brought you a pizza,” she told me. “I know you like this kind.”
– Home Run. Coincidence. –
“I like my daughter-in-law.”
I guess she knew that I wouldn’t be as keen on rainbow trout. Even if Uncle Claus caught it fresh. I don’t personally have anything against fish, but if it’s one or the other, I’ll take the pizza. Especially that Home Run cheese pizza from Costco. This time it had sausage, too…
“Want some more pizza?” Gloria asked Puck after his first round of hot cheesy squares.
“I’m full!” Puck announced.
The herald.
“There’s ice cream sandwiches in there, too,” Gloria told him.
“I mean… I’m full for pizza.”