The After Party
I was not pleased with the welcoming committee outside my door early that morning. There is something about being greeted by a very brown recluse looking spider in a dimly lit hallway that gives you the heebie jeebies at 6:30AM. So I tossed a box lid on him and waited for Oxbear to walk upstairs and stomp him with his boots.
Meanwhile, rain was already falling as expected.
“I THINK I HEAR THUNDER!” Puck announced to the house after breakfast, in true Snicketts-form.
Turns out he was mistaken. Unfortunately. But more power to him for hoping it.
It was another toasted ravioli lunch at school. Puck’s shift walked through at around 11:30 as usual.
“HI, MOM!” he yelled into the kitchen, waiting outside the door for me swinging his orange lunchbox.
Still not too cool to acknowledge his mom in front of all his buddies. And later, when I walked over to visit his table, he was deep in discussion with fellow 4th grade boys about which words were “cuss words”, and which weren’t.
“IT JUST MEANS DONKEY!” one of the boys yelled to me across the table.
“Yes, yes it does, but…”
Things were getting a little crazy in Hans’ classroom during carpool. What with the trampoline and the candy and Yali trying to sneak into the chalk to write his Spanish vowels on the board…
After awhile, the headmaster stuck his head in the door, probably a little surprised by the amount of children on the premises. “Oh… hi.”
“This is the after party!” Hans explained.
He nodded. “I always wanted to go to one of those.”
Speaking of “after parties”, once Oxbear joined the crew back home, he got busy showing the boys the fancy lightbulb he had installed in the ceiling fan that not only oscillated through the entire spectrum of the color wheel, but was also capable of releasing a seizure-inducing strobe, and “candlelight” flickers. So they got busy having a dance party while I cleared dinner.
“I think I’m going to buy six hundred dollars worth of lightbulbs,” Oxbear told me later that evening.
“You have been a little obsessed with them lately…”