Skunks & Spiders
Monday, March 12, 2007
Time for thank you notes. A lot of thank you notes – about 34. Everyone was being very generous to baby.
It was a fast-paced day. Two o’clock came quickly after Collette had picked up OLeif from work for lunch. And Carrie-Bri and Lucia had also brought their lunch over to eat at the kitchen table while they chatted about co-workers.
Earlier, Collette had arrived at the house at 7:30 to find Rose still in the shower. This was somewhat of an improvement. And before Collette had left to get back home, she advised Rose to be finished with her shower and out of her pajamas the following morning by the same time.
Meanwhile, there was a good deal of teaching accomplished as Rose sat across from Collette, accompanied by the cats, whenever they happened to pass.
As Rose worked on her soup for lunch, Linnea was sunning herself on the picnic table working on a bit of a project requiring sidewalk chalk.
“Oh, look!” Rose said, somewhere in the middle of a math problem. “Look at Linnea. I told her that spiders wouldn’t come anywhere near her if she wrote them messages to keep them away. Look what she did.”
They all looked out the back door to see that Linnea had taken a large piece of blue chalk and had written:
“no spiders allowd”
This was accompanied with several pictures of one-eyed spiders, most of them crossed out. One spider was drawn directly beneath a very determined foot. Linnea hated spiders. She had almost refused to climb any trees that spring, due to the spider population becoming more abundant at that time of the year.
Rose then began to talk about how people should start installing skunk crossing signs on the roads. Collette did have to admit that there seemed to be a higher percentage of skunk roadkill in the area recently. Rose went on:
“Carrie says that if I were an animal, I’d be a skunk.”
Meanwhile, Francis’ lip was still looking a little protruded, but he was recovering. And Dad had taken Grandpa Snicketts to get his blood tested again. Mom hurried around to get everything ready to go for the afternoon. She, Joe, and Rose were heading out at 12:30 for the rehearsal for the madrigal dinner at The Columns. Mom would be spending her six hours setting up all of the decorations.
Collette left them to their preparations early in the afternoon, and spent the rest of her afternoon hours writing thank you notes, baking a casserole for dinner, and marveling that it was already 5:30 in the afternoon although the sun was still shining quite brightly.
Come evening, she and OLeif drove over to Target where OLeif bought Collette a black dress and a red shirt, thoughtful boy that he was. And they saw Susie working at the check-out. Then it was over to the grocery store for strawberries and Popsicles – a special fruit kind that OLeif particularly liked.
The peepers were out in the evening spring winds. And it was predicted to reach nearly eighty degrees the next day.