One More Snow?
“Easy peasy. That’s just so easy peasy. Because the answer is … easy peasy.” Puck: at his addition flashcards. Despite how much this sounds like stalling, the kid loves his flashcards. When his up-and-coming subtraction set arrived in the mail last night in a shiny blue box, his face lit up and he did a little dance. I won’t tell him this isn’t normal. We’ll ride this wave as far as it goes.
The sun was hard at work, eliminating all icicles from the eaves by lunchtime. Puck had managed to save most of them, still sitting in an empty drawer in the freezer, mixed in with a couple of snowballs. I didn’t tell him another snow was probably on the way Valentine’s morning. Best not to get his hopes up.
WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!
Puck slammed his golf club through a cardboard box in the kitchen. Then another box. And another. One by one, he brought up his cardboard hoard from the basement and steadily demolished them. “This is my job!” he announced. “I will be the cardboard smasher! My job will be to smash things and fold them up!”
However, he took a break from the mangling for a whole cucumber snack and then a writing lesson, while I stitched up my old ink-stained salmon-colored book bag, which I take everywhere. Target: circa autumn 2005. Eight and a half years later, the strap had finally ripped off. But Puck had been pack-ratting a roll of heavy white thread, and offered me a length to repair the damage. Worked like a charm.
Over a graveyard of cardboard carnage, we ate lunch, while Crackers stalked Dark-eyed Juncos snapping sunflower seeds through the patio door. Puck bzzzzzzzz-ed plastic Wall-E – popped off the top of a PEZ dispenser – across the kitchen table: the obsession 5 days running. Everyone easily entertained.
Puck suited up for the last of the dripping snow in the front lawn. Escorted the mail inside, including a small package from California: 99-cent sterling silver wedding band, by way of practical remedy. About twenty minutes into his outdoor escapades, he removed one of his knit gloves, ran it under the water spout and began to wash the car. “Boy will Dad sure be surprised! It will be spark-el-y blue! Just like when we got it! Tell Dad that he never has to wash the car again! I love cleaning it!” Happy news, indeed.
El Oso was taking the kids on his team out to dinner: corporate credit card: so fancy. This left Puck and me with a decision to make about our own meal and entertainment. Sure, we could have scrounged around for something normal and healthy. But Thursday nights can be fun too. So we traveled for a pizza: Dierbergs. And watched Disney’s original “That Darn Cat” in the kitchen with a mountain of honey dew melon for dessert, my Puck laughing his head off with those chubby dimples.
That night, he fell asleep listening to the Wall-E soundtrack just one more time to cap the day’s quota.