Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 71843 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 359(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71843 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 359(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
“Oh yeah, no. That’s horrible.”
“He never cooked for himself, his refrigerator had nothing in it, and don’t even get me started on the stupid layout of his kitchen.”
Kola was laughing as I described how his father had pots near his fridge instead of Tupperware and that his utensil drawer was across the kitchen from the stove.
“Lucy.”
She glanced over to the stairs.
“Are you going to help me sew the rest of these masks?”
I looked up from the screen then as well, to see Hannah standing there, looking a bit annoyed, holding a fabric facemask in her hand. She and Lucy had been sewing them for people on our street, connecting with them through Nextdoor and delivering them in Ziploc bags in their mailboxes. Everyone had been very appreciative and tagging Hannah and Lucy on Twitter and Instagram and gushing over the workmanship and the patterns. My daughter had procured her supplies from her grandmother, putting her vast hoard of fabric to good use. People told the girls who in their household needed one, and they made two pleats or three in kid and adult sizes. Thus far, everyone on our street had ordered several for their households, and she and Lucy were now expanding further. Hannah had also made some for everyone in her father’s office, and Miro’s, because he worked with kids, had a sun-and-moon pattern. He had sent her a picture on Snapchat of him wearing it. If I hadn’t liked him before, that would have sealed the deal. She made one with a DaVinci motif for her uncle Dane, which he wore when he was on Skype with clients for no good reason at all. I told him I was going to drive across town and hug him, but he forbade me and said I could maul him when the crisis had concluded.
Aaron wore his, which had skyscrapers all over it, to a press conference for Sutter when he ordered everyone to work from home. Duncan wore his when he left work, and his, of course, had plants on it, since Hannah had discovered that he had a green thumb. It was a wonderful trait of hers that she was an excellent listener.
“Pa,” Kola called over to me.
I looked up at him again, this time taking off my reading glasses, and found him grinning like a crazy person as he shook a giant box of Frosted Flakes. “Oh no,” I groaned.
“It’s been years since we’ve had these.”
“For good reason,” I assured him.
He waggled his eyebrows at me.
“Apparently, your father has different ideas than I do about nutrition.”
“There are Pop-Tarts in here too.”
“No,” I lamented.
“Yes.” He all but cackled. “Strawberry frosted.”
“Put those on the end of the counter so he can take them into work tomorrow,” I directed Kola. “I won’t have years of good eating habits destroyed because your father doesn’t know how to self-monitor when he’s hungry.”
“Who can’t do what now?” Sam asked as he came down the stairs in sweats and a T-shirt and socks.
“You,” I accused him, “with the frat-boy shopping you just did.”
“What?” His voice went up two or three octaves.
“Pop-Tarts,” I said, my voice heavy with judgment as I shook my head.
“They’re yummy,” he said defensively. “And Dane loves those too.”
It was true, which had always been odd. “Well, they’re going with you to work tomorrow,” I mandated, and then went back to looking at what Lucy was doing.
When he came around the table, instead of going into the kitchen with his son, his hand going to the back of my neck and squeezing gently, I turned to look at him. I was surprised that he looked so serious.
“What’s wrong?”
“I didn’t get any praise for coming home with that ginormous pack of toilet paper.”
“You got toilet paper?” I asked him excitedly. We had enough to last a while, but there were also five people in our house, and the linen closet upstairs was not as full of paper products as I normally liked it to be. It was one of my weird glitches, but having grown up poor, I liked to see an overstock of things like plastic bags, Clorox wipes, paper towels, Dawn, and Tide. I couldn’t explain other than to say, when you grew up not knowing what you would have on a day-to-day basis, it made you a bit of a hoarder when you grew up. After years of being used to having things that not many people would have thought twice about, I was much better. The whole pandemic situation had brought back certain memories. Not that I was complaining. There were millions of people in peril who found themselves in untenable situations, and my lizard brain being twitchy was nothing in comparison. I was very lucky to be able to work from home and provide for my family, and have everyone in my extended circle, family and friends, be able to do the same. We were blessed, and I knew that, but I liked things just so. It was like when my car needed to be serviced. Just driving it would put me in a bad mood.