Sunday Conversations

For Sunday morning, Puck successfully sat, for the most part of the service, completely on his own, sandwiched between OLeif and Collette on his chair. Until about the time of communion, anyway, when he insisted on talking very loudly about the shiny blue marble he carried in his pocket.

When he and Collette returned to the house, trouble was afoot.
Trooper had gnawed off the end of Puck’s wooden vacuum cleaner that OLeif had carved. The dog that only tore up everything when Puck was around, because suddenly he was no longer the center of attention. This included eating anything, including cucumbers (on occasion), that fell from the table.

Around lunch of caramel French toast casserole, fruit salad of melons, blueberries, strawberries, and grapes, and hickory sausage… everyone discussed which character they would be on the Waltons.

“Collette would be John Boy.”
“Rose would be Mary Ellen of course.”
“I would not!”
“Yes, you would. Either that or the grandma.”
“Yeaahh,” Rose grinned. “That’s better than Mary Ellen.”
“Linnea would be Elizabeth.”
“And OLeif would be the grandpa.”
“Yes!” OLeif exclaimed, throwing up both arms in victory.
“Joe would be the car.”
“Dang right I would.”

This discussion somehow blended into the tortures that Carrie, at one time, inflicted upon her younger siblings.

“You can blame all that on Collette,” Carrie insisted. “It
was her fault. She always got me in trouble on purpose for no reason. So I took it out on the little kids. All that pent-up revenge,” she laughed.
“Yeah, well, you made me jump, like, twenty feet out of a tree,” said Rose.
“Why did you do that?” Dad asked.
“She said I couldn’t be in the Tree Lover’s Club if I didn’t.”
Dad was laughing until his face turned red over that one.
“Yeah,” said Joe. “Once, Carrie rolled me up in that huge carpet downstairs so I couldn’t move and then she jumped on me.”
Carrie just grinned.

After naps, everyone drove out to visit Grandpa Snicketts.
They sat out in the little lounge around the glass bird cage and talked with him about the latest news in the family.
Before leaving, they gave Grandpa a CD of music that Carrie had made for him.

Then they picked up Grandma Snicketts and left for Steak ‘n Shake.
Puck happily climbed into his high chair and wheeled his matchbox cars (borrowed from Grandma Snicketts’ toy box) on the table.
When the waitress began to deliver plates, Puck did his best to call out food boundaries.

“Joe’s ice creen. Mama’s water. Lila’s ice creen. Daddu’s water. Puck’s fry-fries.”
Nevertheless, he still felt it necessary to dig into Collette’s French fries when they arrived before he clasped his pudgy hands together and closed his eyes for Dad’s prayer.

That evening, Collette discovered that Adam Richman from “Man vs. Food” had been at Crown Candy only one day before their last trip there on her 24th birthday. They had been that close to seeing him nearly successfully complete the 5-malt (120-oz/15-glass) challenge.