The Travel Bug
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
School began with Rose that morning, studying the Cold War. Rose had just read about the importance of the fall of Communism in various countries during 1990, the year she was born. Rose thought this was a special thing.
“What happened when you were born, Mom?” She pointed her finger to Mom as she walked by the couch.
“Uhhh…” Mom looked at her oddly. “Alaska became a state.”
“Well, Communism was destroyed when I was born. They said, ‘Oh, what a beautiful creation is coming into the world. We must remove Communism!”
“Well, actually, there were a lot of electrical storms when you were born…” Mom said.
Earlier, as everyone had sat down for breakfast, Carrie and Rose were relaying more Egypt stories.
“So one time this guy came up to us all suspicious and said, ‘Hey, you want to buy some hash?’” Carrie giggled. “And we were like, ‘What? No way, man! Don’t you get the death penalty for that over here?’ And he said, ‘I have… connections.’ Then some guy started walking over toward us and he ran off.”
And later in the day, Linnea sanded down her pine wood derby which she would be submitting (though absent) to the races with her American Heritage Girls. She sanded and sanded until it felt as smooth as silk or finer. She still had to paint it and attach the hardware. But she would be in Disney World during the great event.
After lunch, Collette hobbled around a bit after pulling a rusty muscle in her leg, due to another less-violent encounter with a patch of ice. But it seemed to have mostly healed by the evening hours.
Meanwhile, in order to prepare for the Australian and New Zealand hiking trails, Carrie had made the habit of loading a large backpack with her roller blades and bottled waters, huffing and puffing up and down the stairs. Training.
Earlier, Carrie had been out on a walk with Mom and Trooper. Somehow she had managed to lose the car keys on the premises of the school where they had been walking. She knew that Dad would make her replace them.
“Great, now I owe Dad another two hundred fifty grand,” she moaned. “And my adviser thinks I’m only going to take nine credits a semester? I don’t think so. And now I can’t go on spring break. I need to get out of here.” She wailed dramatically. “Egypt is calling me home…”
Everyone just kind of laughed and went about their business of the evening. Joe had plans for another round of weight training and Mom was off to a ladies’ tea and chocolate cake-fest somewhere around town after dropping off Rose at her class.
And the ever-busy OLeif left work an hour and a half late (trying to wrap up all of his work for the day) only to be able to drop off Collette at the apartment and head out for a meeting with Jimmy Saint at the church. His evenings lately called him away to serious matters, but they were for the good. And Collette couldn’t complain.