The day the pope died...
Between all of Puck's barking about cats not using their litter boxes appropriately and broken weight clips and discussions about diet changes – “I need lots of meats and vegetables and rice and eggs” – and Patience focused on remembering to “kick her butt” during all her dances that weekend (something the teachers remind all the girls at the studio, constantly) practicing up and down the hall on a shower pan liner before moving to the kitchen to scramble eggs for Puck after she convinces him they're edible and almost drops the whole carton on the floor and myself trying to get Yali to sit down at the table with a notebook and pencil but he's so excited that three of his four toads survived the winter... we're already about halfway through the morning...
After Yali completes his bookwork a couple of hours later... I can hear him and Patience laugh-screaming for an extended period of time over who can lift more bags of freshly-arrived cat litter off the living room floor (this really isn't much of a contest; Yali is entirely muscle)...
I then scoot him “Calvin and Hobbes” style into the shower (which is always a loud ordeal)...
...And a misplaced jar of cheddar cheese dip ends upside-down on the kitchen tile... a glass crash of golden gloop... as the blame game begins...
...That's around the time Elmer texts the sibling group that the pope just died... and that's kind of what life is... people randomly blooming and expiring in the middle of mostly chaos...
Early chilled-sun afternoon... bus Patience to South County for another appointment while I type on menus and shopping lists for the week ahead...
Kids need some time at the park before dinner... they run around with minimal confrontation in a lazy green world while Mama arranges logistics and lists on her laptop...
Back home... Oxbear is between meetings and printing Millennium Falcons and lightsabers with glow-in-the-dark filaments and planning chickens for the smoker... leaves to pick up his work computer “geeking out” about a new rental program...
...Patience dictates a letter to me for her sponsor child in Indonesia...
...before joining Yali in a feast of Yali-requested “octo-dogs” for dinner after I spear the 24 wedges of dog with 144 angel hair pastas to boil (Mama didn't have the patience to make them fully “octo” today).... “YESSSSSS!”... and to finish their trampoline and plush animals imagination before dusk...
...as Puck comes out to raid boxes of cold strawberries... “I know I'm on a diet, but...”
Before bedtime Yali and Patience getting along so well they're actually walking around the house with their arms around each other's shoulders kicking showgirl style singing in unison a ditty of their own composition... “WE STICK TOGETHER! LIKE PEANUT BUTTER AND JELLY!”