The Big Move
5:25. Yali was awake and ready for action. The rest of us, not so much. But once the three year-old is awake, the family is awake. So we got a significant jump on moving day.
Somewhere around 9:00, Oxbear called me out to the garage at the Big House where we had stored all of our stuff the past month.
“So… a cardinal must have gotten stuck under the tarp and couldn’t get out, and he died on our couch.”
But not before he had destroyed it. It was getting pretty old and beat up anyway. Add that to the chair lost in the first move, and we were running low on seating options.
“Here, have a look at him, Collette,” one of the boys called me over to the lifeless body of the poor cardinal.
“That’s got to be a bad sign,” I suggested.
“I don’t know,” Oxbear teased. “He kind of looked like Matt Holliday.”
Sometime later, I heard scraping on the roof.
“Hurry, come out!” Rose called. “Elmer and Francis are going to throw the couch off the roof!”
I don’t know whose idea that was, but it was surprisingly ineffective. With one big heave, it went over the edge, and didn’t break at all. Instead, they took a sledge hammer and pick axe to it and slowly pulled it apart.
Before we left, Elmer and Francis arranged the deceased bird on one of the couch pillows as a makeshift funeral pyre.
It wasn’t even one o’clock yet, and the whole crew was eating Potbelly sandwiches around the little dining room table. And our house was now full of things.
Outside, Yali and Chet Danger’s little guy were busy throwing things in the small tadpole pond, still filled with lethargic tadpoles. Why they hadn’t transformed yet, no one could quiet figure.
Eventually it was evening. The boys ran around the yard together, exploring the two overgrown gardens, and making plans for future projects.
“I LOVE THIS YARD SO MUCH!” Puck yelled, racing from one end to the other.
At one point I looked over to discover that he had found a shovel before I could stop him.
“Puck! Stop digging holes in the yard!”
“But, Mom! I need to make our tornado shelter!