Round and Round and Round They Go
Sunday, November 13, 2011
In which the week’s occurrences are shared with the family, as usual, and food is consumed…
On the way to church, Puck spoke his thoughts aloud, which often included prefaces such as…
“Excuse me. I have a question to make.”
His more particular idea was…
“Where is the pastor with strange hair that used to preach always every year?”
At church, Linnea walked in slowly.
“How was Iowa?”
“Awesome.”
“Tired?”
“We stayed up until three o’clock every morning…”
Shortly later, when a particularly tall lady took a seat in front of Puck, he turned quickly to Collette…
“Is she wearing stilts?”
Back on the ranch…
Rose was gifted a hand-drawn sketch of a llama from Gloria, via Puck, as a house-warming gift.
There was always something going on.
Dad got busy grilling burgers.
Conferences held in the kitchen with the occasional walking-in interruption…
Rose: “I need to see a foot doctor.”
Rose again: “That abandoned hospital by my apartment has a bunch of creepy nurses statues in the front.”
Also Rose: “If anyone wants to donate money to my couch fund…”
And Mom: “I was working the coffee table at church this morning, and I had two men ask for a margarita.”
Linnea trucked out two heavy dum-dum-pops boxes of almost-free flea market finds from Iowa City. To be honest, she could have opened her own flea market with the sprawling collection displayed all over the living room floor.
“Excuse me, Lila,” said Puck, pointing to a glass. “I believe some mice had a pool party in there.”
And Puck seemed to be losing his voice; about time. The kid could never seem to speak without shouting.
Dinner was announced. However, the burgers did not yet seem to be completely done.
“Let’s pray until the burgers are cooked,” said Dad.
Shortly later, flames were leaping from the grill…
“Oh yeah!”
“Aw, Dad… Now it’s all trans fat.”
When the platter entered the house…
“They kind of look like Crabby Patties,” said OLeif.
Dad laughed, and then had a different thought…
“So, being from Texas,” he began seriously, “I imagine you all prefer your meat rare?”
The salad was also passed around.
“That’s one thing I won’t need for my apartment,” said Rose. “A salad bowl. I’m supposed to like salad… Because I’m a girl.”
And Carrie and Joe shared their respective stories of the previous evening. This included the standard prayer of their second-oldest cousin, 33 year-old Jashub…
“Dear God. Thank You for being awesome. And please help us to be more awesome like You.”
Joe had experienced his own social events, which began with Wally and Lolli blaring the car horn for him in the driveway, bursting through the front door, asking for the bunnies, and ended with a hijacked road trip to the Casa Loma Ballroom with Pooch, who also was not afraid to introduce Joe ‘The Wing Man’ as his buddy with whom he had sung in ‘home school choir’…
Then Rose bemoaned her camera situation…
“Good thing he doesn’t live here,” she said with wrinkled nose of the miscreant. “He lives in Hannibal. Unless I send the cannibal after him. Hannibal the Cannibal…”
A car drove slowly up the road to inspect the house for sale across the street…
“Aah!”
“Car!”
“What are they doing?”
Rose immediately drew the shade, which did little good given its opaque quality.
Several family members threatened to hide themselves away from the windows.
The car was later ignored as…
“Adel, is there any D-E-S-E-R-T?” Dad asked from across the table.
“I don’t know, my S-W-E-A-T boy.”
Harken to the time Dad had written in Mom’s yearbook:
“To a real sweat girl.”
Then Joe found a moldy orange and departed to slam it into the ground out by the shed.
Somewhere in the afternoon, the two Fits departed (sans OLeif (work emergency) and Joe (movies with Wally, etc.)) for Grandma Snicketts’. She had hurt her back again, but seemed well enough.
As everyone chatted about family news, etc., Puck found the chubby pink pig that Grandma had painted years ago. He looked curiously at her…
“Did you make that before you were old?”
Fortunately, Grandma found this to be pretty funny.
And Samwise would skip his fifth-in-a-row family Christmas, traveling to China again for two weeks with his long-time girlfriend to visit her family.
Back at the house…
Little Caesar’s; Francis sponsored the cheesy bread.
Rose prepared to leave for a co-ed baby shower.
And another business meeting for Carrie with Lucia and their current business partners.
In other news…
The Cards had a new manager.
And, likely to Rose’s dismay, Dip ‘n Dots had filed for bankruptcy.