Summer Creeps
Monday, March 12, 2012
The windows were pulled open before nine.
Puck was in a squirrely mood that morning. This called for spending as much time out of doors as possible. He stared with an irritated look at Collette while completing his second lesson of the morning…
“Why are you grumpy, Puck?”
“I’m not really grumpy. I’m just not sure I want candy.”
“I wasn’t going to give you any.”
“Yes. But. I’m not sure I want any candy at the parade.”
“You don’t have to keep it. I’m sure Lila will take it for you.”
“Yes. But. I’m not sure I want to walk around.”
“You don’t walk around at parades.”
His mood was still very serious as he began markering the word “apple” on his little school white board. But needless to say, he had some thinking to do before the St. Patrick’s Day parade on Saturday.
Before 10:30, they adjourned to the driveway to bounce a ball back and forth up the small hill.
“Mama! Look!” Puck called from the edge of the driveway.
A small worm was struggling in the tide of the street rain, draining under morning sunshine. Collette lifted him with a stick into the yard. They watched him squirm his way, tediously, back into the mud until he could no longer be seen.
“Why don’t worms need eyes?” Puck asked.
“Because they’re underground most of the time so they couldn’t see anyway.”
“Why didn’t God give them flashlights?”
Then Puck returned to the street to look for more ailing snakish creatures.
“And we’ll have a team of worms going into the soil!” he declared.
Back indoors, Puck was still busy thinking of ways to help Francis with his “sick eye” – which was no longer contagious at least…
“Francis will have to be put in bed for free [three] weeks,” he said importantly.
He then tried a piece of OLeif’s licorice…
“Yuck!”
During Quiet Hour, Puck revised his invented song from the previous week…
“Swing into action, swing into action, swing into action. SAVE THE BUNS!”
Meanwhile, Collette and Puck spent more time outdoors in a very balmy 77+ degree afternoon.
Collette helped Puck find last year’s shorts, t-shirts, and flip-flops, the last of which were clearly outgrown.
“Try these on while we play ball,” she instructed.
“Yeah,” he replied. “But now I can run more faster than I ever imagined.”
Mud pies were on order.
Puck spent the last part of the afternoon in the bath as a result, which ended with him spinning around in the bubbles.
“This is so fun, I could dream of this. This is so fun to skate around on your bum, Mama. I think I would have to sleep in the bathroom. It’s so fun skating. This is so fun, I couldn’t even sleep.”
OLeif returned after five o’clock in time for a fajita dinner, feeling sick, possibly having caught – late – Collette’s sickness from the previous week.
“I was telling Red today that I couldn’t figure out why I was so sore yesterday. It was like I helped a friend move into a third-floor apartment. And he just laughed at me and said, ‘It’s called being sick’.”
During the last of Puck’s dinner, Collette read to him a library selection from OLeif about mice living in a Dutch house, and the sea.
OLeif pulled out the bag of pink and white Good and Plenty licorice as he continued his studies flopped out on the bed. Puck stretched out on OLeif’s back to help alleviate the pain in his neck.
“Puck, you want to try a licorice?” OLeif asked him.
“He tried one this morning and did not like it,” Collette explained.
“I can like it again,” Puck said quickly.
– He popped the pill-like candy in his mouth. –
“Delicious!”
The boys followed this with some rough-housing before Puck’s still-seven o’clock bedtime arrived. When that time finally did come, Puck was having difficulty falling asleep. It didn’t help that 75% of the neighbors had dogs, all of which barked at anything, and 50% of that 75% were yippy-yappy.