Things Keep Happening
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
In which fresh news occurs as always…
Back on the ranch…
Dad was preparing a letter for the universities.
He was also buying Mom her own personal car.
Carrie was leaving to pick up the ‘bun-buns’, rented for the holidays…
“This bunny lady is crazy. She insists that I have only second-cut spring hay for the bunnies; she won’t even ‘get started on the dangers of water bottles’…”
Carrie was also orchestrating weekend plans that may or may not have included second-party suggestions of… bowling… Carrie would have none of that.
Rose was out signing the lease for the apartment.
The three middle children were at work. (Francis had bumped up his work schedule to a frightening 30 hours a week.)
Linnea and Eleda were in Iowa for the rest of the week with Cherry.
Puck had toted over his red piggy bank…
“It’s for you, Grandma. So you can buy stuff.”
And fudge brownie bites under glass.
The morning was spritzing, gray.
At ten, Rose called to check in. The apartment was hers. Potential move-in date: December 1st.
At ten-fifteen, Mom and Dad departed for the dealership to crack out a decent deal on the 2012 Honda Fit. Dad and Carrie had several discussions about the color. Carrie wanted white for Mom’s sake. But Dad had other ideas…
Carrie taught Puck how to bat his eyelashes for treats.
And Target for hair products: Collette was going under the dye again. Macaroni and cheese bites picked up for lunch.
“Should Mama go blonde?” Carrie asked Puck as he hunched down in the aisle, chin buried in his hands. He appeared shocked at this subtle suggestion…
“Sun! You don’t want Mama to be blind!”
As the afternoon arrived…
The day wasn’t getting any warmer. It was freezing, in fact.
The final verdict on the color of the car, three hours later: pale silver. Mom was already looking through Victorian catalogs for embroidered floor mats…
Black mohair dress for Rose in the mail; possibly her final shipment at that address.
Ombre hair for Collette. Somehow her locks had managed to inch past her elbows, despite the trim in the spring.
Puck got a little too excited when Joe returned from work and tripped on the sidewalk, scrubbing up his toe. Joe bandaged him up with one of his birthday pickle Band-Aids. They then proceeded onto a Rose-worthy round of name-labeling, intermixed with Puck’s giggles…
“You know what, Puck?”
“What?”
“You’re a hood ornament.”
“No. You are.”
“No. You are.”
Then the cat joined Joe…
“Yup. That’s what I thought. You like me, don’t you, cat? Mmm-hmm…”
Cocoa for Puck. He was not enthused. Why force the kid to enjoy sweets anyway?
Joe picked up Francis from work, who was toting along a box of Mrs. Field’s chocolate chip cookies from Walgreen’s.
Mom and Carrie departed to sign papers with Dad at the dealership and then to pick up the small creatures. They returned with a trash bag of green grass and two fuzzy bundles that mostly looked as though they had been blow-dried. The bunny-rescue lady who had lent them out had 98 more in her basement.
Into the evening…
Francis was out to a friend’s youth group.
Joe was off to Wednesday evening services at Matthias’ Lot.
Dad would be returning with the new car.
Things happened all at once.
And back to church for another crazy evening of fourteen cavorting small fry. The first thing Puck loudly announced to everyone when coming to sit in the singing circle was…
“Mama got her hair dyed!”