Preparing for Winter
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Collette went through another deep uninterrupted sleep during the night, accompanied by unusual dreams, the bulk of which she could rarely remember, though they mostly seemed to carry the same over-arching feeling that most of her green-forested storm-skied dreams often encompassed.
Thursday morning, gray and cool, brought word that Rose had also once again succumbed a second time to the world of strep throat. So Mom whisked her off to the doctor at nine o’clock in order to begin medication and eliminate the contagiousness before madrigals and a potential youth outing Friday night to the City Museum. Somehow Mom, Carrie, and Frances were still managing to avoid it. Though Collette began to feel that old tickle in her own throat during the day, yet again.
Despite this bad news, it somehow seemed like a day for old long-forgotten fairy tales and mystical forests.
Meanwhile, back at work… Rosemary came into the office that morning bundled up in a puffy chartreuse jacket, ready for whatever the weather might bring. The wind was nippy and wintry mixes were scheduled to arrive that weekend. Freezing rain, snow, winter advisories… Typical forecasts for St. Louis, but not usually followed.
And Carrie and Lucia had finally made it over to NAWS to apply. OLeif was also able to give them a brief tour of the operation. The tour seemed to be a little rushed due to the fact that Lucia thought it was “so tense”, which was Lucia’s typical reaction to new situations involving large amounts of people.
Afterwards, Carrie went out for the afternoon with Elizabeth and her new-found friend from the Egypt tour, Grewe Freckles.
Meanwhile, the calendar planning meeting for part of the staff lasted for a solid three hours before they broke it off for Sinai to have lunch with his nephew. And the rest of the staff broke out the pizzas and heavily frosted cake from Jimmy’s birthday celebration for the middle schoolers the night before.
And Jimmy suggested that Collette try to join the youth on their second trip to the City Museum the next evening, saying that she would have no problem crawling through the tunnels. Collette still decided to pass on the opportunity and let OLeif accompany them instead and enjoy all the fun.
After OLeif had picked her up from work that evening, he drove her past a new shop, run by the wife of one of the owners of NAWS – Salon Visions (one of the Whitestick brothers’ many business ventures). OLeif had designed the neon sign for the shop. But he noted that the lighting had not been done correctly. Nevertheless, it was a good design. OLeif had also worked on four preliminary logo designs the night before for Two Rivers Church, which he had submitted that morning.
And the wind howled.
“Only one life
‘Twill soon be past;
Only what’s done for
Christ will last”