The Gang's all Here
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Not surprisingly… Collette dreamt of vicious bear attacks in the night.
OLeif cooked up a quad of vary-flavored omelets and a side of bacon for breakfast, giving the morning off to Collette. He followed this by resuming the preparation of his first sermon until the late morning while Izzy and Puck took a renewed crack at Minecraft and a little wrestle-around the house.
The afternoon had been reserved to visit Eriic’s and Amanda’s five-month baby girl. They were all in town fresh from D.C., with Martha hosting.
The Silverspoon trio departed for the elder Silverspoon abode in time to pick up two more Snicketts and follow the lead car into Chesterfield for the gathering at 12:30. Although Mom was still ailing from a bad head cold, having spent the past two days over copious amounts of Victory at Sea…
“At least I decided that if I had had any job during the war, I would have been a Seabee,” she said.
Linnea also professed to be sick.
Rose was back…
“Francis just bought his first Macbook today,” she said proudly. “It’s the most expensive thing he’s ever bought. It’s so cute.”
And Joe relayed accounts of the spider carnage from early that morning. Apparently an enormous Missouri tarantula had meandered across his bed, stretching out a spindly paw in Joe’s general direction. Joe – well he freaked out – and nailed it with Francis’ airsoft gun.
“I was wondering why all my guns were thrown all over the place this morning,” Francis had grinned.
Joe’s photo of the storm in Chesterfield had also been added to a national weather page. An impressive shot.
Arrival on a warm sunny afternoon just above The Valley.
Also present in the two-level condo within the half hour were… well, everyone else, really. Except for the current 8 1/2 residents of Indiana, Boston, and South Carolina. (If they were nothing else, they were loyal.)
The newest cousin in the family was slightly overwhelmed by the additional 26 persons arriving in an all-new territory. Her little pink lips turned upside-down a couple of times. But she didn’t whimper when her uncles held her, and all seemed right with the world. Her proud parents, exact-Amanda and quiet-Eriic, passed her around as needed as she began to familiarize herself with her family.
Aunt Tuuli’s back was acting up again…
“She’s just falling apart,” Uncle Balthasar gladly teased her.
Bristol was in his usual sharp apparel of jeans, Carrie-approved squared-toed black boots, and dark collared shirt, untucked. He was working on a second Bachelors, this time in Computer Science, after his original title from SLU in Aviation.
Nerissa was coddling all the children as usual and laughing at Bristol for spending twenty-five dollars at Sam’s on brownies and gummy bears for his desk at work. He wasn’t called a Snicketts for nothing.
OLeif was laughing at what the twins did next…
“Did you see that? Starlight was drinking all of Sunlight’s lemonade. So when Bristol brought Starlight her own lemonade, Sunlight gets this big ‘ole grin on her face and says, ‘Here, Starlight. Would you like to trade?’”
Puck, dashing around with Donkey and a small metal trumpet, momentarily pounded back inside to have OLeif examine his shoe.
“An ant crawled in my shoe,” he said adamantly. “Or maybe it was a pretend ant.”
“Yeah, I don’t think it’s a pretend ant…”
“Yeah’s a bad word, Mama.”
Uncle Hilario, his two boys, and the Luther Snicketts boys were busy chatting and laughing about things in the back, sort of keeping an eye on Puck and the female posse he had following him in the back patch of green and flowering trees blooming with bumbles.
The younger Balthasar son was present as well, with his three girls. Little Heathers was already so much bigger and grinning large, while her marvelously curly-haired sister sat on the couch and talked to Nerissa.
Brit and his little family were there, newly-turned five Liselotte and chubby-faced cutesie, Mary.
And once again, Puck was surrounded by all the girls. They just kept increasing in number. His male to female cousin/“cousin” ratio now stood at one to seven.
Meanwhile, there were various sorts of sandwiches on rolls at the buffet, vegetable trays, chips, and Texas sheet cake and amazingly good gooey butter cookies for dessert. Ice water with lemon and pink lemonade. Of anyone, Martha knew how to be proper in all things.
Two hours after the fact, it was time to leave. Carrie had a birthday party to attend, Joe was scheduled to hang out at Yaotl’s house while his wifi was being installed, Rose had church, possibly followed by another friend gathering at her place, Francis another shift at work… And Puck was busy leading the feminine troops in building nests of pine needles in the trees, by the bushel.
The skies were endless patches, a grab-bag of clouds, as the boys discussed cars and weather on the road home. Funny thing about the weather. For any ordinary person the topic of weather might actually be segway to smalltalk at uncomfortable parties. But in the case of a Snicketts, it was prime conversation.
After dropping off the boys and checking in on Mom, following up on Joe’s battle with death itself early that morning…
“Now, Joe. Spiders are God’s little creatures…”
Or something like that…
“But, Mom! Spiders are trained to kill!”
It was back on the road.
As they passed the Dairy Queen, Puck had thoughts…
“Did God make magic, Dad?”
“Well, that’s actually a pretty good question.”
“I think he did,” Puck answered thoughtfully. “Or Sun did. She loves magic so much.”
Izzy had taken over animal responsibilities at the house for the night. And so the three returned home for OLeif to conclude preparing his sermon. At least for that day.
Four new extra long Duluth t-shirts were sitting in the mail box for OLeif back home.
Puck tramped inside to establish the sound system of “locomotive sounds” that Joe had passed down to him. Over and over, and over again…
Things were quiet. Too quiet. Puck was supposed to run out to the car for something and come right back. Collette opened the front door.
Puck was standing in the street.
“Puck? What are you doing out there?”
He looked up at her, grumpily…
“Can’t I have some quiet? To read this phone book?”
He returned indoors with his little trumpet and glared out the screen of the open window.
Thmpfpmpmfpmp…
“What did you do, Puck?”
He held up his trumpet…
“I sticked my tongue in there. It hooped around. And spit in that bumble’s ear. That should have taught him.”
After OLeif had put in another hour of sermon preparation, the three departed for a hopefully less traumatic Chick-fil-A pick-up than last Saturday’s. On the way, Puck blurted tunes out of his baby trumpet…
“I’m going to name it Squealing Pig House,” he giggled.
“Sounds like a good name,” said OLeif.
He leaned over and smashed a slip of fresh lilac in Collette’s face…
“It’s a good smelling bush,” he explained.
The amazingness of Chick-fil-A was accompanied by a triple-in-one bag of Hershey’s kisses, Reeses peanut butter cups, and Rolos.
O sins.
As Puck went down for the night, he was still hung up on ants…
“I think an ant bit my thumb, Dad.”