Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 88290 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88290 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
She was pleased to hear it, I could tell from the smile, but watching her brother and Harper pour beeswax made her giddy. As usual, Jake wasn’t allowed near the filling of the jars; he was only allowed to put what I called the garnish on the top. The cinnamon sticks and lavender sprigs, the strawflowers, seeds, and various other ingredients. Jake was an amazing engineer and a huge klutz at the same time. But as I pointed out often, if he had his brain and complete control of his body, he could take over the world. This was for the best.
On Litha, the longest day of the year, Hannah woke up before dawn and started baking. She had raspberry scones ready for Sam, Kola, and Jake when they woke up, she and I already having cheated and gone to Starbucks before anyone else was up. She had delivered all the candles the day before and set several all over the house that she lit immediately so they could burn all day and night. She then put tea out to brew in the sun and started on her flower crowns. Sam had agreed to barbecue even though it was the middle of the week, just for her. She was making him his favorite cookie, which was peanut butter with the Hershey’s Kiss in the middle. But Sam was also an aficionado of macaroons, oatmeal with chocolate chips, no raisins—he adamantly felt that raisins were good for absolutely nothing—and of course Scottish shortbread and stroopwafels that he only ate at Christmas. I liked normal shortbread, but the Scottish ones he got from a small bakery near the loop were soft and thick, and I was not a fan. All I tasted was butter, which he said was the point. But Hannah’s peanut butter cookies with the Kiss in the middle were good. He liked hers best because there was really nothing else in there. A lot of other cookies were too sweet or too dense. Sam didn’t enjoy that. He was picky about cookies.
But it was a lovely day, and she went outside in the backyard and thanked the sun, and Kola went with her and lifted a beer, which was apparently good to drink on Litha, to the daystar. It was nice, and I loved that everyone was there just to enjoy a Wednesday.
The apartment hunt is an ongoing horror.
Hannah and Kola went to one that she said she needed to have a hazmat suit on before she was going in. When I asked my son if it was that bad, he grimaced like perhaps.
“There were roaches,” she said haughtily. “Too many for an exterminator. You’d need a flamethrower. It was a no for me.”
Apparently, it was a no for Kola as well.
Jake, Harper, and Kola went out and came home with Harper shaking his head.
“What was wrong with the three you went to look at?”
Harper crossed his arms. “The first one, I’m thinking the neighbors were moving some serious product out of that apartment. There was a line.”
I turned to Kola and Jake.
“Yeah,” my son conceded. “There was.”
“Not a long one,” Jake countered.
Harper groaned. “Second, I’m sorry, but I do not want to see my electrical wiring or my insulation as I walk around my apartment.”
“It did seem a bit…unfinished?” Kola offered kindly.
“Try not up to code,” Jake declared.
“Like you’d know,” Harper groaned. “I’m the electrical guy, you’re the builder.”
“Fine. It had crumbling plaster as well.”
“It did,” Harper agreed.
“What about the last one in Hyde Park near the college?”
“I have never seen so many rat traps in my life,” Kola told me. “And you know me, I don’t really mind rats. I think they’re cute. But I don’t want them crawling all over me in the middle of the night or eating my food.”
Harper shuddered.
“Agreed,” I said with a sigh.
Ian had said to Sam that he would check with his old landlord, and it turned out that his building had been sold and turned into high-end condos.
The boys were grouchy and snapping at one another, and it didn’t help that between the heat wave and the haze and smoke from the Canadian wildfires, that it was a slog just to be outside. There was a lot of kvetching.
“It was nice in California,” Jake complained.
“We hated it there,” Harper reminded him. “All of us. Even you.”
“I did,” Jake agreed, going over to lie down with Dobby and Chilly on the cool tile of the kitchen. There were lots of AC vents in there, plus the aforementioned tile. I’d lain on it more than once myself.
“What if we never find a place?” Kola lamented.
“Cough, cough, Uncle Aaron, cough, cough,” Hannah said, walking into the room to pour herself a glass of water from the Brita pitcher in the fridge.
“No,” I told her. “What do you want him to do, buy a condo for them?”