Sixteen

“DISCO!”

Puck always finds some creative new way to start the morning. This time he had transplanted his birthday disco ball from Grandma and suspended it from the ceiling fan in my room. Sparkly beginning.

The morning continued with a surprise for the Puckster out at the Big House. Mom, who had been boating with a friend in Lake St. Louis the previous evening, returned with a tiny glass jar swimming with tadpoles. Puck grinned, holding the jar up to the light. Two fat ones.

“I think I’ll name them Junior. And Squiggly.”

Calls it how he sees it.

So while he and Mom drove to the nearest park to collect “fresh” pond water for Junior’s and Squiggly’s new home, Carrie began an all-day project of crafting ricotta cheese donuts in the kitchen. Two eggs had been sitting out to warm up for the recipe’s debut.

“Hmmm, chilly…” Carrie felt the shells. “I might stick these under Earnest’s belly to warm them up. Ah, no, I’ll go stick them under Irish’s arms.”

When I walked back awhile later to get the warmed-up eggs, Irish was flat on her back with Pumpkin sleeping in a fat lump on her stomach. I took the eggs out of her hand.

“What?” she woke up groggily. “How did those get there?”

Slight fractures in one egg, the other unbroken.

So with some wishy-washy gray-and-blue skies off and on throughout the afternoon, Puck got an hour with a friend down the street before we left for another adventure in baseball.

This time, the boys accompanied me on a row of hot bleachers in the outfield. As the sun finally slipped behind the stadium, Puck began intently hunting for dinner. For awhile, the sky distracted him. A few pink floaters drifted in the evening blue above us.

“Look, Mom! I think those clouds have rain!”

“They look like Pixar clouds,” El Oso told him.

Puck pondered the suspended pink fluff for all of two seconds more. “Speaking of cotton candy…”

Even with another loss, the stadium stayed admirably full for a Wednesday night in July.