The Things They Do
Monday, August 7, 2006
The day of Joe’s Eagle Board of Review.
Sunday had involved suits and dresses to church for the youth (including a blue and white striped seersucker and pink tie for Augustus), corned beef and red potatoes for lunch, a complete surprise baby shower for Lace Hobcoggin (which involved much cake, brownies, punch, oohing and aahing and giggling), and twenty-three other things all rolled up together managed to make a busy day of it.
Collette heard the normal conversation snatches during the shower from the posse of girls on the couch, mostly laughing over the hilarious subject of piano students. But one comment did seem to be rather out of the normal. She heard Jan West say rather loudly,
“I stuck out my tongue at this guy in the hallway once and I said, ‘Thhhhhsp!'” Jan imitated the spitting sound, “And he said, ‘That’s not very attractive.’ And I said, ‘Do I care?’ Ha ha ha ha ha.”
And later:
“Now that Spurgeon is married, Mom’s already talking about wanting grandchildren!”
Meanwhile, Dulcinea ran around with a stuffed polar bear on her head, gift from the West family. And a gal with a Republican elephant tattoo on her back (complete in color) distributed gifts and punch. Chester took the opportunity to escape and jump in the clubhouse pool out back.
At youth, all nine kids were present, and after pizza and after Jimmy presented a mini-lecture on film of sorts on the function of rabbis and memorization of Scripture during the Old Testament and Intertestamental times, half the kids went off for frisbee football while the others mingled over a bowl of cookies, courtesy of the Honeys, on the chairs and couches.
Meanwhile, Augustus was standing on two chairs, squawking an enduring note for no particular reason.
“Ha ha,” Magnus laughed. “You look like a pterodactyl.”
“Do it again.”
“Mwaaaahhhhk!”
“Ha ha! Do it again!”
“Mwaaaahhhhk!”
“Ha ha! Put that blanket around your shoulders.”
Augustus did so and dramatically flapped it open when again:
“Mwaaaahhhhk!”
Magnus doubled over and took him into the next room to consult on how to make the performance better, including some shades, sombrero, and Molly’s red-bowed velvet shoes (of which Magnus highly disapproved).
“Take those off!” he commanded.
“But they’re so comfy!”
“Off!”
“Who made you my costume manager?” Augustus followed him into the other room, blanket trailing behind. “Oh, yes, sir.”
It took Collette a good twenty minutes that Monday morning to process everything that had taken place over the week before, notes she had to write, calendar dates to mark, reminders to write, etc.
And she wondered about the difficulty level of the day when she asked OLeif if he was going to behave himself at work that day and he responded with:
“Nope.”
Back at the house, Collette spent her morning proofing final Eagle project papers and a Grenada Cyclery job application for Joe and tutoring Rose in art and architecture. Rose sat in her room grumpily looking over the engravings with two fountain-like creations sticking out of her hair. Collette sentenced her to a 74-question exam following lunch.
Meanwhile, Linnea recovered from having been attacked with a case of the hives from the night before. And so she cuddled up in a blanket on the couch with swollen ears reading Rose’s duct-taped copy of Garfield. And Rose tried to bag Pumpkin in a pillowcase while she took notes on the functions of the human heart. Early in the evening, after Rose has trimmed a bush for Mom, she ran out the back door with her camera tripod.
“Hurry! Out of my way; there’s a weird old bug outside.”
After the predictable pattern of the tutoring hours had come to a close, and Rose had been released, Collette returned home to make a lasagna while OLeif took care of numerous computer issues.