Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 91461 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91461 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
“I’m sorry, what?” Aja needed clarification and looked to me.
“I told you about that. I know I did. I’ll remind you later.”
“Fine,” she said, watching with me as Harper looped the middle of a second strand of lights over the hook and lifted that up to Hannah. Of course to reach her, he had to climb up on the first set of ladders as well.
“Explain your vision to me,” I asked my daughter, wanting to keep her focused so she didn’t get distracted and start explaining something else to me with her hands and fall.
“Well, you know how much I hate big lights,” she reminded me, taking the second strand from the hook that Harper had raised to her. “I prefer soft amber lights, many, that are never harsh or assaulting, instead gentle and easy.”
“That tracks, yes,” I agreed.
“But they still need to be useful, which, again, is why the roots wouldn’t work out here, so my vision is like the inside of a caravan tent or a fortune teller’s tent, just very relaxing and soothing. Not a circus tent, that’s too much, much more fairy lights with a Zen vibe.”
“Okay.”
“Because I swear to God, if Wick turned on the big light even one more time, I was going to totally lose my mind. I screamed the last time.”
“She did,” Wick chimed in. “It was loud.”
“You’re doing so good, honey,” Harper praised him.
“I don’t want to hear it. I just want the tacos you promised me.”
“Already ordered,” Harper rushed out. “We’re all feasting tonight.”
“As you can see, I found these tiny Edison-style light bulbs on strands, and they’re perfect,” Hannah continued explaining to me, “and they have a dimmer, but right now, this is as bright as they go.”
“I’m so bored,” Jake chimed in.
“Shhhh,” she hushed him. “We’re almost done.”
“Dude, same,” Wick grumbled from under Jake.
“Just think how good this will look when it’s done,” Harper reminded his boyfriend.
“The fixture was not horrible,” he argued.
“It was vile,” Hannah assured him.
“Says you.”
Hannah huffed out a breath and looked down at Wick. “I asked you, in fact I asked all of you, if you cared if I changed out the light fixture for something else, and the consensus was no. But now you’re all giving me lip, and I––”
“No, no,” Jake ordered. “Do not lift up your foot to stomp it. Think about where you are first. You can yell at him when you’re back on solid ground.”
She growled at him but stopped doing anything else but taking each strand that Harper lifted up to her. My concern was that she seemed to be fussing with how the cords were lying instead of simply placing them in the bends of the octopus tentacles.
“Why is this taking so long?” Jake asked her.
“Just be quiet.”
“You’re getting heavy,” he told her.
“Think about what you’re saying right now,” she warned him.
Long-suffering sigh from him in response.
“Honey,” I said gently, “I think you’ve got it.”
“No, it’s not—if I don’t do it right, it’s going to bother me and I’ll have to do it again.”
“Yes, but there’s no way to do it wrong,” Sam offered.
“Yeah, there is.”
“My legs are starting to hurt,” Jake told her.
“Same,” Wick complained.
“Hannah,” Sam said gently. “You need to––”
“Just one more second,” she replied, but I heard her grunt in frustration. Whatever she was doing, it wasn’t working for her.
At which point the front door opened and Kola and Finn walked in. Kola looked like he was ready to pass out, and Finn was steering him.
“Do I even want to know?” Kola asked, walking over beside his father and putting his arms out. “Get down.”
“I will,” Hannah snapped at him. “I just want to make sure all these lights are––”
“If they’re carefully layered side by side and not bunched up, it’ll look weird on the top, like you’ll be able to see between the strands instead of it being a starburst like you want.”
She stopped what she was doing and stared down at him. Because of course, without her even telling him, he knew what she wanted everything to look like.
“Plus on the bottom, where you’re gonna attach it to the walls, they won’t be even. Some will be farther apart than others.”
Tipping her head up, she looked at what she was trying to fix.
“It’s pretty right now, but if you keep futzing with it, you’re going to inadvertently jack it up, and then you’ll have to start over.”
“You think it’s pretty now?”
“Yeah, I do. You have the one light at the top, which is perfect. Someone, I’m betting Harper, was careful and passed you up strands with alternating spacing so none of the bulbs will touch, and the way Jake made the arms on the octopus, with some bends in tight and some of the hooks farther out, like I said, it looks like a starburst from here. So it’ll be bright in the middle there, but softer toward the bottom. It’s good.”