Odd and Ends

More KoKo

Poor thing sprained her ankle at softball practice yesterday. She could hardly walk on it. Now KoKo doesn’t have the highest pain threshold, but a sprained ankle is not a minor injury either. So she kept it elevated and put ice on it.

This morning her coach called to see how she was doing. So far, so good. But, then again, she had yet to actually put any weight on it by the time I left for school. She might not be able to play in her first game this Thursday.

****

When KoKo heard about her grandmother’s lumps, she said that she was going to add Gail to her prayers. Then she told us that she always says one selfish prayer (her words) and one prayer for others.

Kristie and I both found this fascinating, and incredibly sweet and honest, so we asked her about it.

“Well, for example. Last night, I said a prayer that Tanner wouldn’t think we were going out. Then I said a prayer asking God help Allen be nicer to Grandma Gail.”

What a sweetie.

*****

We also found out that Casey has been pulling a prank on Kristie for quite some time now.

On Monday evening, KoKo, Kristie, Casey, and I were all sitting in the living room. Kristie was folding laundry and organizing our socks into piles.

She pulled one of Casey’s newer T-shirts from the pile of whites.

“Kurt, you better not have shrunk my new shirt,” Casey said.

I tend to do that to our clothes for some reason.

“I had to put it in with the whites because it was on the bottom of the clothes hamper and it had a stain on it,” I explained.

“Yeah,” Kristie chimed in, “I wish you guys wouldn’t throw your wet towels down the shoot. They end up with all the other clothes and then mold grows.”

Of course, we all denied doing such a thing.

“Hey,” Casey said, “I use the same towel over and over.”

“Me too,” said KoKo.

“Yeah, so do I,” I said.

“Hmmmm. Well, I wonder how you all could use the same towel over and over, yet we never seem to have enough towels!” Kristie commented.

Of course, the culprit (not me) was lying. My money is on KoKo.

“I’m not lying,” I said. “It’s got to be Casey or KoKo. I mean who are the ones who are sometimes too lazy to put their clothes away, so we end up seeing items that we just washed back in the dirty clothes? Like that infamous red T-shirt that supposedly belong to DJ (one of Casey’s friends).”

Then Casey began to giggled so hard his face turned red. While he doesn’t laugh that often, when Casey does, it is absolutely priceless.

“That was me,” he admitted.

“What?” Kristie asked, as she halted folding the laundry.

“That was me. I kept seeing that shirt, so after awhile instead of putting it away, I thought ‘oh screw it’ and I threw it back in the dirty clothes each time.”

“You mean to tell me that my threats about making you do your own laundry if I saw that shirt in the dirty clothes one more time didn’t stop you?”

“No. I asked DJ. He said it wasn’t his shirt. So I just kept tossing it in the dirty clothes. It was just one little red shirt.”

By now Kristie was laughing as hard as Casey.

Casey was quite pleased with himself.

****

I never realized how quiet winter is.

Now that spring is here, the world is absolutely full of sound.

Each morning when I let the dogs out, there is an absolute racket sounding in our back yard. We have a tree that bears these small red berries. They sat all fall and winter, but now the robins and blackbird are drawn to them in hordes. I counted a dozen birds in the tree yesterday.
When I walk out with Kosey and Joker, I interrupt the birds’ breakfast and they scatter from the tree, squawking ever louder.

That doesn’t take into account the sparrows chirping away from the lilacs.

I missed the birds. The only time I noticed them in the winter was when I pulled into Pennington Main, where I get my coffee every morning, and heard them squawking from the pine tree that bordered the parking lot.

But spring has amplified that by a hundred. How nice it is to wake up to the sounds of life instead of snow, wind, and sub zero temps.

****