The Cogs and Wheels of a Day
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
[6:37am] Tuesday evening was busy as well with the cold north winds a bearin’ down on the city. At Green Gables there, OLeif, Collette, Rose, Molly, and Julia Poach waited around for rummage sale items to be delivered while Dad, Joe, and Frances helped out in the church building. Ivy had also come over to work but she and Collette ended up chatting over church things and such instead. And Molly worked on painting a rummage sale sign over a large piece of plywood which Jimmy brought in for her. She was not pleased with the results, however, circling the board barefoot in the youth building. And so finally she threw down the roller on the board and she and Rose proceeded to clean out the brushes, giving it up for the night. After paint and water had managed to puddle all over the bathroom floor, they cleaned up the rest of it and OLeif ran off with the case and camera lens which Rose had just bought from the rummage sale in advance for ten dollars. (OLeif wanted the case) and Rose took off after him, chasing him in circles and hanging onto his coattails for dear life, before they settled on a compromise – OLeif would pay Rose five dollars for the case. By that time they called it a night and headed off to bring Aimee home after dropping off for sandwiches.
Back on the ranch, over homemade donuts and homemade juice for breakfast, Mom read from Hurlbut’s stories from the Bible about “How Jacob Stole His Brother’s Blessing”. Naturally, no story (no matter how solemn and/or Biblical), could go without a good dose of laughter and joking around the table. And so the narrative went something like this:
“Isaac and Rebekah had two children. The older was named Esau and the younger Jacob… Once when Esau came home hungry and tired from hunting in the fields, he saw that Jacob had a bowl of something that he had just cooked for dinner. And Esau said, ‘Give me some of that red stuff in the dish…'”
“Ha ha!” Joe crowed, “It’s like, ‘Jacob, give me some of your tots.’ ‘No, get your own tots, gosh.’; ‘Jacob, give me some of your tots or else.’; ‘No; give me your birthright, and I’ll give you some tots.’; ‘Fine, I’ll give you my birthright.’; ‘Idiot.'”
Mom continued:
“Then Jacob went and brought a pair of little kids from the flock, and from them his mother made a dish of food, so that it would be to the taste just as Isaac liked it.”
“Yeah, I can just see it now,” Carrie added, wearing sunglasses at the kitchen table, “Rebekah’s sitting there in the field stirring her cooking pot. Esau walks by. ‘Hey, Mom, what’re you cooking?’; ‘Me? What? Cooking? Nothing. I am cooking absolutely nothing!'”
Mom continued:
“Then Rebekah… placed on his neck and his hands some of the skins of the kids, so that his neck and hands would feel rough and hairy to the touch.”
“Man, he must have been one hairy guy!” Carrie interjected again.
“Yeah,” Rose added, “‘I’m here, and I am very, very hairy. And… well, I’m here,'” (a well-known Zorro quote (modified) from the good old Kitts-Carrie-Eve play days).
Meanwhile, Carrie and Elizabeth had been invited to a Lindenwood soccer game that evening.
“Yeah, Thor says they’re playing against the Bosnians,” Carrie laughed. “So he told us, ‘I will bring Serbian flag for you to wave.'”
And Carrie always imitated the accents.
Later, Carrie’s black and white electric guitar arrived via UPS, Joe cleaned the Schwinn bike he purchased in advance from the rummage sale, rubbing away the grime from the Belgian-made tires, and Carrie was gone with a Chow!, out the door for work. Rose prepared to attend youth with OLeif and Collette (after Joe biked her up to the Plums to babysit Susie and Richie) and coffee afterwards where she would turn in her application.
“On the King’s birthday we put to sea,
How I wish I was in Sherbrooke now!
We were 91 days to Montego Bay
Pumping like madmen all the way
“G~d ~~~~ them all!
I was told we’d cruise the seas for American gold
We’d fire no guns-shed no tears
Now I’m a broken man on a Halifax pier
The last of Barrett’s Privateers.