Those Ridiculous Things

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Storms were coming in that cool spring week.

It was the sort of day that reminded Collette of the older times when Mom would take all of them to Sam’s every other week or so. Sometimes in the evenings, Dad would come as well. It was always Collette’s and Carrie’s job to urge Mom and Dad to purchase the flats of giant muffins (their favorite being chocolate chocolate chip) and the bags of double loaves of cinnamon bread. It was never very difficult to convince Dad that these were necessary items for the month. Often, Dad would beat them to it.

Meanwhile, Denae was down in Texas over several days for Kitts’ recital.

Back on the ranch, Francis and Linnea were arguing over the contents of their eggs from Sunday’s Easter egg hunt. Some of these eggs had included miniature fuzzy chickens in pink and yellow. Francis and Linnea called these little creatures “peeps” and had collected as many as possible.

“Francis, give me my peep back!” Linnea commanded quite menacingly.

“It’s mine, Linnea. Go get your own peep.”

“You stole my peep!”

This continued for a spell until Mom heard the commotion and the peep was taken away to some happy little land where all peeps go.

Rose was late returning from class; Dad, who had to pick her up, was not pleased.

“Apparently she went off to fix a teapot at her ceramics class and didn’t tell me about it,” he said. “I was sitting in that circle waiting for her for an extra 25 minutes.”

Rose insisted that she had told him about the teapot.

“My teapot stinks,” she sighed. “Even after I fixed it.”

But she had submitted her ceramics and glass plate, which looked much like a snapshot of the cosmos, for the art show at the college.

Meanwhile, Rose was still making that final plunge, the last huge effort to prepare for the GRE. And her toad once again came out into the kitchen to occupy a tin lid for entertainment purposes during the morning. He was also in the process of shedding his skin.

Linnea sat over by the sink listening to the tunes of Burl Ives, Shirley Temple, and Sonic the Hedgehog while Rose supervised Toad.

“Eeeew!” Rose said, “Linnea, he just ate it!”

Linnea wrinkled her nose. “Eeeew!”

Toads obviously had little sense to distinguish between good food and their natural spring sheddings.

Later, Rose had forgotten about the grossness of her toad and requested that Mom pick up a toothbrush for her at the store.

“I need to give Toad a bath,” she explained.

Mom rolled her eyes.

Still later in the day, Rose had smashed ice packs into Trooper’s ears.

“His ears are swollen,” she said matter-of-factly. “Hold still, Trooper.”

Trooper was not happy with Rose.

Finally, once the ordeal of animals and creatures had ended for the day, Rose settled down a bit. She licked the bowl after fudge brownies had been made and studied the various parts of the brain in her psychology book.

That evening, OLeif was up at church “practicing music for Sunday” and Joe, Rose, and Francis scooted off to “watch Lost at the Glenn’s”. Dad suggested that he, Mom, Collette, and Linnea run over to church and pick up some of their folding chairs (which the church was borrowing, indefinitely) and drop off Collette with OLeif. Collette should have known better. Upon arriving, Dad dropped off Mom and Linnea at the youth building to check in on how the “rummage sale meeting” was going.

“Why don’t you go inside, Collette?” Dad urged.

“No, no,” Collette said. “I’ll just wait out here. They’ll just ask me baby questions.”

“No, they won’t,” Dad chuckled a bit.

“They always do,” Collette insisted.

Then Collette saw OLeif through the window and decided to find out why he wasn’t in the church practicing.

“Oh, they were… late.” OLeif scratched his head, standing at the entrance to the building. “Come on inside.”

Collette reluctantly headed indoors and saw that a whole gathering of the youth were seated around the big room.

“Happy baby!” They exclaimed.

It took Collette a moment to react and she could feel her face light up red as soon as everything registered. Joe, Rose, and Francis were all there, looking very sly. “Going to watch Lost at the Glenn’s”, indeed. Curly and Izzy also arrived a little later, Ben-Hur, Judah, Augustus and Pablo, Molly, Bob B. and his brother and Emerald Buckle, Samantha and her brother, Goofy Nickels, a few of the newer girls to the church, Lilia Roosevelt, and several others. There was a cake on the counter. And there were cards and gifts: various “paraphernalia” as Jimmy called it, to help with the baby upon arrival, including boxed meals and a jumbo tub of coffee, a miniature space wars game, energy drinks, and various other essentials. They were also given a generous gift card. And after a time of prayer, the cake was served and sodas were passed out to everyone. Then the usual junior high chaos ensued for a time until the party had wrapped up in the bitterly cold wind and rushing clouds of the evening.

Collette decided in the end that she should have been more surprised if she had gotten away without a surprise baby shower altogether.