Snow Day (again)
Soft flurries, a couple of inches on the ground... windchill ten below... most schools closed...
Puck's cat Cheese – who enjoys collecting plastic – has upchucked a pile of plastic bits and even a bread twist tie on the living room floor...
While Yali stays home with me that morning (his buddies can't make it out in the snow), Oxbear drives Patience to Yellow Bird, leaving with her hair thrown up in a large plastic clip and a backpack of naan bread and embroidery packs...
Puck texts me later... he declares himself “snowed in” one county over for some hours ahead and unable to make his shift at work that afternoon...
Yali – somehow out of ideas – is now walking around in the snow with a laundry basket over his head...
Snow hits pause for awhile...
Internet goes out around noon... Spectrum outage...
Read more from “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” to Yali before lunch...
Oxbear begins smoking chicken marinated in mayonnaise and special spices before the next surge of snow...
After lunch watch a wordless Latvian animated film with Yali...
Puck calls in again... checks on the evening forecast before deciding whether to drive back or not...
Yali gets a mild bloody nose...
After roads have been plowed Puck returns from J's after they were able to get to Lowe's and Taco Bell for $7 boxes and Dirty Baja Blasts... chatting about a variety of thoughts and ideas... gives Yali a six-dollar yellow Volkswagen Beetle die-cast metal car from Lowe's... he then laughingly chastises his cat for eating plastic again, lifting him up to stare into his big yellow eyes... “You're an addict! You're a junkie!”
Patience also returns from a cozy day at Yellow Bird spending it on things like homemade gingerbread cookies and Pictionary to join Yali outdoors in a 1 degree windchill... “Wait...” Puck walks to his room... “I need to get you my baklava...” // “Balaclava?” I correct him // “Shut up” he grins... he fits it over Patience's head... “There you go...”
It's lit candles and hot tea with New Zealand honey when they come back inside a short time later... Patience then gets busy doing her nails with the UV nail lamp...
The kids all congregate together in the evening where Patience is practicing soft shoe across the living room (class is canceled at the studio that evening), Puck is testing out his new Soviet-era issued leather belt just arrived in the mail, and Yali is wearing the packaging on his head like a hat...
And the internet is still out some nine hours later...