After dropping Everett off at the Baptist Church, where he had his piano lesson on Wednesday, I carried on toward the highway into town, where I would make a right turn and head back to Main Street to buy flowers for Karen's birthday and then ... blah blah blah, ten thousand errands. About a block before reaching the highway I saw Scott's half-ton go by and wouldn't you know it (that boy misses absolutely nothing), by the time I got to the end of the street he'd turned around and met me at the corner. We pulled our vehicles alongside each other at the stop sign on the side street and rolled down our windows. After asking me where I was going, he eyed the van and said "You should go wash that thing."

"Not today," said I. "I have a cold and don't want to get damp." Usually when he makes this suggestion, I have no excuse; I just don't listen. It's only going to get dirty again right away, after all.

"If you drive over there right now," he offered, "I'll do it."

That, I took him up on. It was cold enough that the two doors to the car wash were shut tight, but Scott lifted one up so I could drive the van in, then went back to his truck and put his rubber boots on (always prepared for anything, the lad) while I dug in my change purse for loonies and toonies. After coming up with five bucks worth, I handed them over and then sat in the van in warmth and comfort while he sprayed the dried mud off the vehicle.

***

This week Everett completed four Grade 10 correspondence courses he started in September. The final exams were to be written in December, but we had to request two extensions in order to finish. He'll write exams for these at the end of May.

In January he began three more courses through correspondence, as well as two through the school in Wadena. Those two are a snap for him — cooking and computers; he's well on schedule with them both. But the other three have till now had to be set aside so he could get the old ones done by the end of this week. Now he's tackling the new ones.

The kid's got a pretty heavy schedule: he uses my computer weekday mornings between 8:30 and 10, when I sit down to my half-day's work, and again from 7 to 9 every school night he's doing homework. From 10 to 4 o'clock, except for an hour he takes off for lunch, he sits at the kitchen table and works on his science assignments. The kid deserves a medal. He's been putting in this much time all along (not counting another six or eight hours over each weekend) and, even so, failed to complete the courses on schedule. The reading material is extensive and the assignments are long, and he does not do anything quickly. Not one thing, that boy. He does them very well, mind you; his marks are pretty much all in the 90s.

In the bare-branched trees several feet from the kitchen window are two small birdfeeders he keeps filled with sunflower seeds. They are popular attractions for chickadees, sparrows, junkos, redpolls, purple finches, and woodpeckers. It's a regular feeding frenzy out there. The other day Everett called out, "Mom! There's a green bird!" I yanked Birds of Saskatchewan off the bookshelf and he flipped through it to identify the one he'd seen: a ruby-crowned kinglet. Today we went through the same exercise, only the new (to him) birds were magnolia warblers, which have patches of bright yellow feathers mixed with black. They kept flying up to the window to look in at Everett as he worked at the table. Finally he suggested I go sit with him so I could see what they were doing. I did, but they stayed away as long as I sat there. Not that I sat for long; five minutes, maybe, before I came back to my desk without catching them at their antics. Birds have always liked that kid.

***

Who says I'm persnickety?
I do: if I'm eating a salmon sandwich or a homemade chicken soup and get even a tiny piece of bone in my mouth, I can't eat another bite. This is also the reason I no longer order a sausage-and-egg burger when I breakfast via a fast-food drive-thru: once I bit into a piece of bone in the sausage patty. That was the last time. At least bacon doesn't have bones in it, so I won't lose my appetite.