Where Do They Go
Sunday School had only Susie, Augustus, Rose, and Nacchianti. OLeif had just begun the introduction to his 34-week study on the Westminster Confession. As he was saying:
“The Catholic Church tends to look at the Canon as not necessarily being inspired. However, the collecting of the various books is believed to be inspired by God, the actual collecting process…”
“That doesn’t make any sense; that’s stupid!”
“Once again, Augustus’ undeniable logic,” OLeif laughed. “I agree with you. But still… Well played, Sir.”
“That’s like taking mud, making a cake of mud, and calling it an actual cake,” said Augustus.
“Much better. Much better analogy,” said OLeif.
“I thought it was a mud pie, not a cake,” said Susie.
“Well, take your choice of dessert.”
“I always made mud cakes,” said OLeif. “First a layer of mud, then leaves, then sticks, then more mud. But I only made them because of Winnie the Pooh. Oh, and I don’t have a VCR at home to watch these Westminster Confession tapes. So if we’re not using this one… I’m taking it. Hey, doesn’t Magnus still have our N64?”
“Pi?”
“Yeah. Next time you’re over there, take it from him.”
“Okay; I was over there yesterday.”
“Hey, we could make Westminster N64 games,” said Rose.
“What?” Asked Augustus.
“Never mind.”
Augustus hit her with a pillow. Rose hit him back.
OLeif continued reading from the book:
“‘An high’… An? Why would they put ‘an’ in front of ‘high’? Wouldn’t it be ‘a high’?”
“Well, like we say ‘an hour’ instead of ‘a hour’,” said Susie.
“Yeah, but this is a soft ‘h’. Of course, this is Old English, so…”
“They had accents!” Augustus said loudly.
“Yeah, we all do.”
“But they might have said it like, ‘an i’. They just took a bunch of East Londoners out of the gutter and said, ‘Here – write a book about Jesus.'”
During most of these ridiculous rabbit trails, Nacchianti tried to stifle laughter.
About this time, Puck fell asleep on Collette’s shoulder, and it was time to begin the service. They filed out the back door quietly, but not too quiet for Augustus and Rose to forget the typical:
“Do you want me to hit you?”
“Do you want me to punch you?”
The service wrapped up with a huge storm come racing in across the sky. The rain hit hard shortly later in gushing waves. Sinai was so drowned out by the calamitous roar, that Collette actually felt sorry for him, because he was trying so very hard to preach an important point. Puck didn’t mind the noise, however. He was just happy for the opportunity to chew on Joe’s cellphone and Rose’s pocket mirror during the service.
Lunch: baked potatoes back at the house. Frances had a friend over for airsofting all day. And everyone else gathered for conversations throughout the house in various places, as usual.
Rose was in the living room throwing miniature candy canes at people across the room:
“Merry Christmas!”
“You guys should kiss!” Joe exclaimed to OLeif and Collette out of the blue. “I haven’t seen you do that in a long time.”
“Eeew!” was the only response he received from both Collette and OLeif.
“See, that’s the problem with you guys,” Joe laughed. “When I’m married, we’ll be kissing 24-7.”
Groans.
“I’m growing mistletoe all over my ceiling,” he continued.
“When I have a boyfriend,” Rose paused dramatically, and laughed, “we’ll go to the movies.”
Linnea wasn’t amused with this conversation.
“Entertain me, Collette,” she said. “I have to have technology to be entertained.”
She grinned. Then Amelia called and they spent an hour on the phone talking about Webkinz.
The big news of the evening came later when Mom called to say that Mizzou was indeed going to the Cotton Bowl. This was cause for celebration. OLeif made nachos.