RIP Old Put-Put
Monday, March 19, 2012
OLeif chalked up one of his vacation days and pushed off the little put-put to the dealership that morning. Having a car hospitalized was almost like sending off a family member to get checked for strep throat or an ear infection. They weren’t pretty circumstances.
Meanwhile, the meteorologists weren’t even trying to piece out the week’s weather. KSDK merely printed:
“Unsettled weather throughout your work week. There is a chance for rain nearly every day through the weekend.”
Laundry.
That was the thing about laundry – trying to wrap it up in the basement before Puck joined her for the prowl. Whether it was an old TV antenna, party crackers from two New Year’s ago, or a Myst CD-rom in cracked case… Puck Silverspoon was interested.
Word came in one minute before noon from the inspection – rebuild the engine.
So… OLeif bought a new Mazda.
Ug.
Collette and Puck tumbled the ball up and down the drive as usual, sunshine pouring through bowls of gray clouds pushing in with wind and rustling greenery.
Quiet Hour ensued with the rustling of plastic down the hallway…
“Puck?… Puck?… Puck!”
“Yes, sir?”
“What are you doing?”
“In my closet putting my cowboy costume on.”
Meanwhile, Puck had scruffed up another two toes on the driveway.
Collette was going to run out of six boxes of band-aids sooner than she might have thought…
And there was no rain.
After dinner, Collette an Puck learned all sorts of interesting things about hair. Nigerian spirit-dwelling hair. Fat-cones stuffed with cinnamon chips melting on ancient trendy bright green, blue, gold-dust, henna-cow’s blood red Egyptian wigs. Mayan headdresses as tall as your person over long-skulled cross-eyes avocado-velvety hair. Indian hair sacrifices sold to Hollywood. Iraq butter hair. Early American baking wigs in loaves of bread. Indian “shampoo surgeons”. English $16,000 hair cuts. French hair stuffed with dollhouses, vegetable gardens, revolving planets, ship models, live birds in cages, and famous battles. Unthinkable nonsense, but fascinating.
Meanwhile, Rose texted in, toying with the idea of adopting a kitten sibling for Madeline. This time, a boy.
The wind tugged at the door as the night crawled in.
OLeif pushed through the door not long before nine o’clock with a pile of junk from the old put-put. He had also, fortunately, remembered to remove Collette’s Scotland banner decal from the window.
“Goodbye, old pal,” he said to the title, as Collette retrieved it from the fire box.
So…
Not the best day.
But also not the worst either.
At least the Cards took another non-essential spring victory over the Marlins.