July 2005
Harry Potter and the Asheville Wolf Pack!
(continued)
While everyone was disappearing into the house,
Allan gave me a tour of the chick graveyard in the corner of their
backyard. It was three bricks and rocks, with epitaphs magic
markered onto them (our favorite being "Hear lies Spekle, a great
chick"), and a fourth overall rock stating, "Have a nice journey."
Then the guests left and it was pancake time!
"Ginger, did you get pancake mix when you went to
the store last night?" Allan called from the kitchen.
Or not.
Then breakfast debate -- to go to the store to get
pancake mix (disruptive to drive there and back and come home to find
half the household all ready ate), get everyone together and go to the
bakery for breakfast (not as relaxing when you're set for pancakes at
home), or eat what we have here (not pancakes). I'd said hey, we
know we got milk (from the store) and eggs (from the store) and a TON
OF BREAD (from the neighbor), so how about French toast? But
Ginger pointed out the bread was too fresh and we'd have French squish
if we tried that route. "What do you want?" Ginger asked
Allan, attempting to get him to focus. "I want to have pancake
mix in my hands right now," Allan
said, extremely focused on pancakes.
So Allan and Marilyn went to the store for pancake
mix ("And bananas!" Ginger threw in on our way out -- but no catfood,
because that's not where they get the catfood). And we went to
Earth Fare, a cool organic food store I'd recognized from Athens, and
got the pancake mix. "What else was I supposed to get?
Mayonnaise?" "Bananas. But that sounds like mayonnaise." So we
went to the fruit section, where they not only had many bunches of
bananas, they had mini bunches of bananas! They looked like hands
with lots of banana fingers on them. Allan said that was too
tempting, and we got some (along with real sized bananas, so we
wouldn't be out of bananas before breakfast).
Back at the house, it was pancake-making time!
(The mini bananas were gobbled up immediately, Simon not pleased with
the taste and Jameson happily taking the rest of his.) Allan and
Simon worked away on the pancakes (Allan mixing in fresh blueberries
the family had picked, while Simon was trying to master flipping the
pancakes that were on the griddle), and Jameson and I worked on yet
another puzzle in the living room. Before long, we were all
seated around the table (Simon still redheaded, Ethan still
blue/greenheaded -- and both still sporting face painting from the
night before, Simon with a black widow on his cheek and Ethan with the
remnants of, I believe, a lion), digging into delicious blueberry
pancakes -- except Jameson, who did NOT want blueberries in her
pancakes (Allan and Simon didn't hear that request prior to making the
pancakes), so she opted out, and Ginger promised to make her something
else when we'd finished. (She happily enjoyed the tasty rice dish left
over from the day before.)
The kids dispersed into different adventures, the
grownups stayed at the table and did some last bit of chatting before I
took off. Allan said this morning around 6:30, he'd found Simon
asleep in the beanbag chair with the book open, and he woke him up to
get him to go to the bathroom. Instead, Simon opened his eyes and
started reading again. This really blew my mind, as I was having
enough trouble rereading the sentences I'd just read this morning from
being so sleepy -- I couldn't imagine pushing through until I was
better rested. (Despite the occasional innocent question and
attempted answer around the house -- "Are you liking it so far,
Simon?" "NAH NAH NAH NAH NAH!!!" "Oh, sorry, Marilyn. Nevermind, Simon,
my bad." -- he was very good about keeping a poker face.) Allan
also signed a copy of his New Found
Land for me, apologizing that it wasn't a first edition -- he
looked around the office, but couldn't find one. I said that was
okay, that I didn't care about that sort of thing, and -- "Hang
on! You have more than -- you have a second edition of a book?" I
asked, impressed. He smiled shyly and said he had a third edition
of a
book -- VERY COOL!
After breakfast, as I was starting to gather up my
things to leave, Jameson climbed up into my arms and asked sweetly,
"Will you play with me?" Ginger laughed like how I could I say no
to THAT, and I knew I'd have to surrender. Then Simon showed me
his book of Weslandia that
Allan was telling me all about on the way back from the store. So
I started to look through it, and before I knew it, Jameson was
crawling up into my lap, and I wound up reading it outloud to Jameson
and Ethan, and thoroughly enjoying it.
Then, after a bathroom break (when Ethan called to
me through the bathroom door that I needed to be sorted, and I stepped
out into the hallway and he put a witch's hat on my head, stepped into
his bedroom and shut the door and yelled "SLYTHERIN!" despite my desire
to be sorted into Ravenclaw), it was time to leave. Hugs all
around (Jameson turned away with a frown at first, but then happily
hugged me at the car), Simon informing me he was up to page 200, and
Ethan reminding me to keep an eye out for another invisibility cloak
and sending it to him, which I will definitely do.
Mischief managed.
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