The Cave, Part 1
Monday, July 23, 2007
Things had been busy.
Sunday, Puck was feeling fussy with himself. So after his bottle at 10:20a in the youth building, Collette cuddled him up next to her on the worn-out dark red couch and let him nap until the service ended some time later. Afterward, he took another deep nap with his dad in the basement at the house.
Meanwhile, Rose was preparing to leave for the week on the youth mission trip downtown.
Puck napped once again during youth. He was experiencing a semi-fussy day. Afterward he spent some time entertaining all – Addicus (who was accompanying the youth on the mission trip), Jimmy, OLeif, Ben-Hur, Augustus, Rose, Mollie, and Sunrise.
On the way home, they first dropped off Augustus (who had been dropped off at youth by his dad because his car wouldn’t start). Before returning, however, OLeif had a craving for ice cream. They hit Baskin Robbins on the way out. Augustus was disappointed to learn that they were clean out of mint chocolate chip, but was consoled with a cup of chocolate chip ice cream instead.
The week ahead would involve various projects. Two of those included typing: transferring Carrie-Bri’s travel notes in preparation for printing later, and editing no less than one thousand pages from Collette’s three-year journal, also for printing later.
Monday, after Carrie had written a thank you note on a sheet of bright blue notebook paper to the Moss family, she sent it off to the post office with Mom and several boxes to be mailed out for the day. And Francis was on a rampage – war against the bees. He spent most of his day shooting off bottle rockets near (or in) their in-ground hive and using other remedies until they dispersed, seemingly never to return.
It was at about two-thirty in the afternoon that Collette and Carrie pulled on their metaphorical gas masks and bio-hazard suits and entered… “The Rose Room”. It had been Mom’s idea to weed out Rose’s room while she was gone that week, organize her pack-rat belongings, paint her walls, and do anything else that was required to make her room once again liveable. It was necessary after awhile for Carrie to dig out two bandannas from her own room to tie around their faces. The cat fur, must, and hermit crab stink had become too much to bear open-faced.
Collette made the first plunge and exited the room with a glass chicken lamp, a slab of mold-stained concrete (on the back was written in permanent marker: “found in English’s creek 2004 or 2005”), and a large telescopic lens.
Carrie took off the black piece of cloth covering the front of Rose’s door. “The Day of the Triffids” poster was also removed, to be framed later. Carrie just looked at the door and shook her head. On it, in permanent marker was written in several places:
“Cats welcome.”
“Only cats allowed.”
“Don’t open this door, or you’ll be dead meat.”
Carrie found a scraper and began removing the maze of glue remnants, where pictures and posters had once hung. And finger nail polish remover was used on the marker.
Meanwhile, the piles continued. After half the living room had been filled, Collette had still not opened the closet to rescue anything. She was not eager to bring out the box of rarely-used shoes, the plastic Coca-Cola dinnerware, or the twisted marshmallow rope (that could have been all of three years old for all she knew), not yet anyway.
Carrie slipped the bandanna over her nose and got down on all fours to look under the bed.
“I’m scared, Snuggles,” she said to the cat, who was looking intently into the dark spider city.
Out came enough trash to fill two shopping bags. Carrie poured bits and pieces into both bags. Miniature mold clouds filled the air like tiny atomic bombs. When the dusty backpack emerged, Collette heard a cry of frustration:
“Spider! That does it!”
Carrie left the under-the-bed recesses for a later time. Instead, she hunted down the paint roller and began to wash the walls jungle green.
When Collette and Puck left later to pick up OLeif from work, it was decided that more drastic action would need to be taken the following day.