Testing New Roads

“Today is the DAY!” Puck look happily across the living room at me. “This is going to be the best day of my life!”

I guess starring as one of the five wise men in the Sunday morning Christmas pageant will do that for you.

The kid did good. I have to say. Even helped direct the other wise men when they forgot the next move. And in fact, the pageant was basically flawless. I was almost a little disappointed that there were no flying halos this year.

Puck settled in for a little Minecraft next to his dad before lunch.

“Look what I made, Dad. Hyperthetically.”

Caught up a little with everything I had missed in the last 24 hours, including a few more details about Rose’s Christmas party where she received a spontaneous standing ovation from the company employees while receiving her Unsung Hero award. It’s the Snicketts Way, I suppose.

Grandma joined us for a couple of hours for gifts (a Cardinals superstore) and lunch: subs, brie/white cheddar macaroni, and chocolate peanut butter cup cupcakes, in early birthday celebration. Then as everyone lolled around into naps, Grandma and Joe made their exits.

“Let’s all go over to Rose’s and play Xbox!” Carrie suggested.

“Fine,” Rose allowed. “You can all stay for an hour.”

It turned out to be a bit longer than that. Stinkerbelle was sulking around in complete humiliation: reindeer costume. Rose’s apartment looked great: butternut squash and blue-gray walls, charcoal linen couch, her eclectic collection of wall prints: Persian equestrian, blue icebergs in oils, aerial balloon shots of the 1904 Worlds Fair, etc. And everyone sat around with bowls of Moose Tracks or Cookies ‘n Cream. Stinkerbelle had wiggled out of her costume, sprawled under the ornament-less Christmas tree. Even Puck took a crack at Forza. Actually, even Mom got behind the controls.

“Puck! Puck! We haven’t won yet! Keep going!”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Francis? What are you doing?”

“I’m bored of this. I’m going to come back around and hit them.”

“Francis!”

“Adel! Adel! What are you doing?”

“Dad! Not that way!”

It was pretty funny. Only Joe missed out on the fun: I guess having a fiancé to hang out with even trumps fake auto-racing.

When we finally arrived at home that evening, Puck ran inside after hand-planting in the snow …

“It was like twenty percent freezing, Mom,” he explained, preparing to suit up in his jams.

But not before he had fed Crackers, and made comments on the smell of the trash can when I opened the lid to toss something …

“You just pushed fruit fly city into my face. And it was fruit fly city air.”