My New Daddy

CH 21: Relaxed

Chapter 21

I ran through the field of dandelions. My mother always called them weeds, but I loved them. I slowed down and gazed around me. The bright yellow flowers covered every inch of the ground up until the woods. Hearing the laughter of my fellow classmates I turned around to see if anyone noticed me. My peers played on the swings and the slides while enjoying the first recess of the day. Teachers watched the eight and nine years olds play, but no one noticed me just beyond the playground.

I looked back to the flowers surrounding me and felt a sort of peace. Not wanting to get to close to the woods, I sat down on the ground. My brother has gotten ticks from playing in trees at home and I definitely did not want one of those. I plucked a perfect dandelion. It was big and fully opened to the blue sky. not a cloud was in sight. Slowly I started pulling the dandelion apart. First pull back the green, spilt the stem down the middle, pull the yellow apart. I studied every part of it, trying to figure out what made it a weed. Of course, I was only eight, I had no clue what I was looking for.

Eventually I gave up. To me they were flowers, and always would be. After studying the ground behind me to make sure there were no bugs I slowly layed back and sprawled out in the beautiful field. I listened to the sounds of my class playing together whiled I stared up to the beautiful sky. I wished I could lay there forever and not have to ever go home.

I awoke to the sunlight streaming in my room. Feeling more at peace after the memories my dream brought me I slowly sat up, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. My mom and Frank would be back the next day so I knew I needed to start cleaning if I didn't want to rush it later that night.

I wanted to start the kitchen first so the floor had time to dry after I mopped while I finished the rest of the house. First, I needed music. No one could clean without some music. My mother had a bunch of CD's in the cabinet to the entertainment center so I decided to pick from there. When I finally found some good cleaning music I went to the kitchen to do the dishes. The music started just as I was beginning to unload the dishwasher and I san along with Abba's "Dancing Queen".

The kitchen was spotless by the time the CD was half done. Everything was dusted, wiped down, and mopped. I went from room to room picking things up and then dusting. By one in the afternoon everything was done except the vacuuming, my favorite part. My stomach growled but I knew I needed to ignore it. If I stopped now I would lose all ambition to finish cleaning. The vacuum was in the closet closest to my parent's bedroom so I decided to start there. I put their laundry basket on the bed so I wouldn't have to stop to move it and got to work. The space was fairly small so it didn't take long before I was on my way to my brother's room and then the living room.

After I finished in my bedroom I was finally done. Finally able to eat I raced towards the kitchen to rummage through the food. A great part to Mom and Frank being gone was that I could eat whatever I wanted. Being a very picky eater I was often sent to my room without food for not eating what was put out in front of me. I tried to eat most things but I just couldn't stomach it. Things like steak and cauliflower simply made me gag. There were leftover tacos from a couple days ago and I settled for it almost immediately.

The rest of the day I just lounged around. painting my fingernails, coloring in a Tom and Jerry coloring book, watching cartoons, or playing with my brothers Legos.

I didn't really have a problem with hiding the beer can that I drank from considering there were always a ton in the recyclables and bags upon bags outside the shed.  I was a little disappointed when it didn't work, but today was so relaxing I didn't really care any more. Sure, I wasn't looking forward to my parents coming home, but for all I knew they wouldn't come home until later in the day Sunday.

What I didn't know was that Frank would be coming home alone.