So Many Buddies
After another midnight stint – must have slept through the early morning storm – my throat was still sore; I could feel it through the night. But nothing else felt sick, and I don’t yell during ballgames, so I chalked it up to all those thunderstorms and pollen. Either way, it didn’t matter. Puck was ready for action at a relatively decent hour of the morning. My alarm came in the form of a report from the sub-level.
“It’s like a symphony of crickets in the basement.”
All that rain. Sure enough, as I brought up another load of laundry mid-morning, the aria continued from the rafters. I decided to let him sing. Didn’t feel like catching crickets anyway. There were other things to do. Like looking at Puck’s various “Mom! Mom! Look at this one! It’s so beautiful!” patterns from his 5th-birthday kaleidoscope. Between checking out about thirty of these different patterns, I somehow got him through Social Studies, Humanities, and 1/3 of his reading program for the day.
Blinked. Two o’clock. We were on our way to the Big House to fill a personnel gap for about an hour and a half. Mom was lunching with a friend from Old Church. Francis was bored out of his mind.
“Should have taken a second job this summer.”
Irish was lamenting missing out on a float trip that morning, giving Carrie-Bri a shoulder massage following another unpleasant ribcage-related episode.
For awhile, at least, Francis was distracted from the boredom. Fixed up with a late-lunch plate of leftover brats, he supervised Puck and two neighbor friends in the treehouse and treehouse hammock, until Puck and his buddy came inside to rummage through the basement toy room for interesting articles. They walked about the stairs about fifteen minutes later, Puck clad – flip-flops to shoulders – in old Francis-camo. Before we left, Puck go-carted himself back up the street and driveway under Francis’ supervision. The kid had come a long way from the eye-waterfalls only a couple of weeks before.
More neighbor friends were waiting for Puck at home after dinner. I figure, between three houses, he now has a following of about 9 – 12 youthful neighborhood companions. Not bad for the home schooled only child.
Anyway, snap dragons and scooters were on the schedule for the evening. So were mosquitoes. But for some reason, mosquitoes don’t like the street, so that’s where the kids played.
El Oso drove up just before 7:30 with a bundle of blue-and-white hydrangeas, just because. Crackers curled up on the couch beside me for the game, napping through the excitement leading up to another walk-off home run. Typical cat.