September 9
Thursday, September 9, 2010
The kids were back over to make up for the lack of tutorage the previous day.
Grandma Snicketts was doing so much better. She had not felt so good in a very long time. And at nearly 82, she was doing pretty spectacular. No worries but for a back that had been driving her crazy. She had also sent back a little milk jug from the hospital for Puck.
The previous day, Collette had looked up from collecting Puck’s stray bouncy balls to see the very man himself dancing to Blue. It was the first time he had purposefully ‘danced’. And at breakfast that morning, from behind a piece of toast, he requested ‘dahb-dee dahb-di’, which was the closest he could come to recreating the sound of the song in preschool verbiage.
After Mom and the kids had arrived, bringing sausage muffins, one for Puck, which he guarded carefully from his aunt and uncle with his life… Mom was reviewing geography with Linnea. Puck went over to inspect their map.
“You see these rivers?” he asked, pointing to one. “They go up to the Earth.”
Later at the table, Linnea-Irish was talking about ‘silly bands’ (stretchy rubber bracelets in different silhouette shapes) and how they were being traded amongst friends those days.
Francis laughed and shook his head. “You know,” he said, ”if we ever go through WWIII and there’s a rubber shortage, they’re going to have problems because people won’t give up their silly bands.”
Meanwhile, Linnea was a little distracted from her paper by the clay creature she had been molding off and on throughout the morning.
“He’s had like ten plastic surgeries already,” she said, poking more holes into his wings.
“Linnea,” said Collette. “Let’s not worry about the pigmy viking troll bat right now, ok?”
Linnea giggled and set aside the creature, until Francis decided that it was his duty to smash it.
The day was so cool, so mild, so breezy, and a beautiful shade of pale violet with the coming rain, that Collette and Puck could not help but take their third walk in three days.
Around the eight o’clock hour, Collette fired up the fish sticks for OLeif’s lunch the following day, in the oven that wouldn’t go higher than 350 degrees. And OLeif had brought back a pack of King Size Reeses peanut butter cups to share after fueling up the car at the gas station.
Meanwhile, Carrie-Bri and Rose were busy at church painting the floorboards and meeting the church mouse, which Carrie had discovered.
In the evening, and all through the night, the windows were open to the cool rains and the chirp of crickets.