The Dishes

Stocks dipped again by 9:45, but by nothing too terrible.
By that time in the morning, Puck had already managed to scribble all over the inside cover of a book about a fox, with a green marker.
Carrie-Bri had made breakfast – homemade applesauce, sweet cornbread, Baby Bel cheeses, scrambled eggs with cheese, and hot chocolate. Around the kitchen table, they discussed futuristic pod cars which ran on tracks, and light-up wallpaper.
Carrie, who had other things to do afterward than finish the dishes, summoned Francis into the kitchen.
“Francis, you get to clean up all the dishes because you didn’t clean them up last night.”
Francis’ eyes shot out of his head, “What the heck is that?
It’s like 3,000 dishes!”
So while MUSE blazed from the kitchen, Francis loaded the dishwasher for the first round while Collette, Rose, and Puck watched a brief documentary on Thailand.
Later, Carrie was busy with tribal fusion. Francis had escaped to the garage to reassemble the old lawn mower, which he finally did fix. And once Puck was down for his nap, Collette hit the road with Joe for errands. This included paper work at the community college for him to transfer to Flo Valley in January for their art program.
Joe was very good at his work. His third piece, a view of the front lawn from the house, through the trees to the street, and the neighbor’s yard, was almost finished.
After the college, Collette waited in the car in Old St. Charles while Joe ran into the Life’s Good shop for a large sticker to put on his coffee cup.
“Rose doesn’t like that store,” he said when he returned. “She’d like it better if it was the ‘Life is Sometimes Good’ store.”
Then it was back over to the grocery store for a dozen Jazz apples (Rose was in a pie-baking mood again), several pizzas, a bag of dried pineapple rings for Joe, and a small bottle of Irish crème coffee flavoring. While they shopped, they discussed the possibility of Joe traveling with the college to Venice, Rome, and Pompeii the following spring.
That night, after OLeif returned from class, he made a batch of white flour tortillas.
Outside, the moon lit pure white through the blackened silhouettes of autumn trees. It was a beautiful sight at late night.