Rth puts her feet up, savors (another) cup of coffee from her very own, very special Keurig brew maker, winces from the pain of the afternoon's earlier unpleasantries, and contemplates the dinner she forgot to defrost that morning in the rush to get out the door. It doesn't help that she decided to run 5 miles on the treadmill at midnight in order to watch back episodes of the Sarah Jane Adventures and then slept very badly.
She ignores the ever increasing volume of shouts outside. The school bus arrived, delivering said children and they are all out in the yard. They have collected a Cold War arsenal of Nerf weaponry and are proceeding to instigate World War 3 in a complex game involving snowballs, darts, swords, and super powers.
As the noise gets ever louder, she opens a weary eye and sees with alarm that a man and a woman have joined the assault and battery in the front yard. She lunges to her feet, grabs a snow shovel, trips over the Labrador and the Labrador's stuffed bone that is larger than the dog, and hurtles outside to protect the children from the menace of these interloping adults who are obviously child molesters. The dog barrels out after Rth, choosing to make her ferocious defense of home and hearth with a tattered, squeaky striped plush snake in her mouth.
The very tall blonde man and quick, light blonde woman are twirling Nerf longswords with what appears to be a fair amount of skill. Rth wouldn't know as she abhors all violence (the Star Wars water pistol blaster notwithstanding because it's a great Hasbro replica of Han Solo's Blas-tech D). The not so ferocious dog sees the interlopers, launches off the steps, and collapses at the man's feet instantly demanding belly rubs.
It is while limping out with the snow shovel and sliding down the steps that Rth unfortunately recognizes the Nerf sword wielding man and Nerf mace wielding woman as figments of her imagination who have, nevertheless consumed copious amounts of her free time since she made the mistake of watching Becket, The Lion in Winter, and Lawrence of Arabia in DVD marathon in November 2008 and thinking that no one would ever find her in Narnia fandom and she could toil away in quiet obscurity.
With a weary sigh, Rth limps back inside, fetches the toolbox from the basement, the dog leash from the hall closet, and comes back outside where the children are now aligned with Queen Lucy and fashioning arrows out of tree branches that dropped during the latest snowstorm and power outage and are littered all over the yard.
The man steps forward, idly twirling his sword. Rth thinks that Obi-Wan Kenobi did a better job of it in The Phantom Menace. "I'm Peter...."
"Yes, I can see that." She pushes the toolbox at him. "Something died under the back deck and the pond needs dredging. Also, the gutter fell off the back of the house."
To Lucy, Rth says, "I'll give you $10 if you can get the kids to pick up all the tree branches that fell and shoot them into that rubbish bin."
She turns back around and to head inside and remembers her manners. Over her shoulder she asks, "Do you want pepperoni on the pizza?"
When Peter and Lucy come to visit and Rth is underwhelmed
She ignores the ever increasing volume of shouts outside. The school bus arrived, delivering said children and they are all out in the yard. They have collected a Cold War arsenal of Nerf weaponry and are proceeding to instigate World War 3 in a complex game involving snowballs, darts, swords, and super powers.
As the noise gets ever louder, she opens a weary eye and sees with alarm that a man and a woman have joined the assault and battery in the front yard. She lunges to her feet, grabs a snow shovel, trips over the Labrador and the Labrador's stuffed bone that is larger than the dog, and hurtles outside to protect the children from the menace of these interloping adults who are obviously child molesters. The dog barrels out after Rth, choosing to make her ferocious defense of home and hearth with a tattered, squeaky striped plush snake in her mouth.
The very tall blonde man and quick, light blonde woman are twirling Nerf longswords with what appears to be a fair amount of skill. Rth wouldn't know as she abhors all violence (the Star Wars water pistol blaster notwithstanding because it's a great Hasbro replica of Han Solo's Blas-tech D). The not so ferocious dog sees the interlopers, launches off the steps, and collapses at the man's feet instantly demanding belly rubs.
It is while limping out with the snow shovel and sliding down the steps that Rth unfortunately recognizes the Nerf sword wielding man and Nerf mace wielding woman as figments of her imagination who have, nevertheless consumed copious amounts of her free time since she made the mistake of watching Becket, The Lion in Winter, and Lawrence of Arabia in DVD marathon in November 2008 and thinking that no one would ever find her in Narnia fandom and she could toil away in quiet obscurity.
With a weary sigh, Rth limps back inside, fetches the toolbox from the basement, the dog leash from the hall closet, and comes back outside where the children are now aligned with Queen Lucy and fashioning arrows out of tree branches that dropped during the latest snowstorm and power outage and are littered all over the yard.
The man steps forward, idly twirling his sword. Rth thinks that Obi-Wan Kenobi did a better job of it in The Phantom Menace. "I'm Peter...."
"Yes, I can see that." She pushes the toolbox at him. "Something died under the back deck and the pond needs dredging. Also, the gutter fell off the back of the house."
To Lucy, Rth says, "I'll give you $10 if you can get the kids to pick up all the tree branches that fell and shoot them into that rubbish bin."
She turns back around and to head inside and remembers her manners. Over her shoulder she asks, "Do you want pepperoni on the pizza?"