Back inside the\ncabin, Danielle popped in another pizza. Two pizza in one afternoon!\nWhy not? The family was starving after their beach excursion and fort\nfrenzy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The oldest boy\nasked his mom if he could try and get the fire going in the wood\nstove. He said it while holding the directions provided by the owner.\nDanielle balked. He said please <\/em>and she agreed. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Five minutes later\na blaze crackled in the wood stove and the boy fed the fire just like\nthe directions read. A few minutes later a different kind of heat\nsuffused the cabin, a richer warmth. Danielle turned off the\nbaseboard heater and patted her son on the back. She dubbed him the\n\u201cFire Master\u201d and he loved the title. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n The girl set up\nanother card table and found a new puzzle. Mt Hood was history. She\nhad chosen one that depicted an ancient log truck that held a single\ngigantic log, an old growth god from eons ago when timber-related\nindustries were Oregon’s number one employer, not high tech. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the girl dumped\nout the puzzle, the youngest boy emerged from the bedroom carrying a\ndart board and a fistful of feathered darts. He said he found it in a\ncloset. He didn’t know what it was, maybe a game, but it looked cool<\/em>.\nWould mom explain it to him, maybe want to play, whatever it was? \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Danielle laughed.\nShe’d played darts in a bar. Once or twice, drunken darts, but it was\nthe plastic version, with the automatic plastic scoreboard. This dart\nboard was cork and the darts were metal. Players had to tally their\nscores. That meant math on the fly. How many points did it take to\nwin a dart game? How many darts does each player throw per round? How\nmuch is a goddamn bulls-eye? \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n The hell with it? Let’s make up our\nown dart game!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n She told her son to\nscrounge up some paper and a pen to keep score while she found a spot\nto hang the board. It took her only a matter of seconds to see where\nit was supposed to hang and she noticed the mark on the floor where\nto stand and throw. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pizza was cooking.\nThe fire glowed in the wood stove. Danielle took turns playing darts\nwith her children while the other two worked on the puzzle, Each one\nmade up a goofy new dart game that lasted a couple minutes. The darts\nrarely landed on the board, but who cared? \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n As they played\ndarts, Danielle considered broaching sensitive subjects with her\nchildren, such as school and screen time, but decided that could wait\nuntil after the holidays. This day was a start. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n But she knew she\nhad to follow up. Could she do that back in Tigard? That’s always the\ntrue test of Christmas. Can you take the best of it back to the\neveryday real world? \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Danielle winged a\ndart and almost hit a bulls-eye. Her oldest son clapped and exclaimed\u201cNice shot mom!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then the kids at\nthe table gasped, \u201cMOM! The window!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Danielle turned\naround. She saw about a dozen elk, all with antlers, crowded outside\nthe window, exhaling white puffs of breath, fogging up the glass. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMom,\u201d the girl\nwhispered, \u201cIt’s reindeers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Danielle smiled and\nsuppressed a laugh. She didn’t have the cold heart to correct her\ndaughter and also inform her that reindeer wasn’t a plural noun. Oh\nsweet bad grammar!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n More elk appeared\nat the window. It was the whole damn herd! Danielle and her son took\na quiet seat around the table. The family worked the puzzle in\nsilence and took sneaky peeks at the elk. This went on for half an\nhour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And then the elk\ndisappeared into the dusk. Danielle stood up from the table and\nwalked over to the shelf displaying the board games. She perused them\nquickly and pulled one out. She’d played it with her dad and brothers\ndecades ago and always lost. She wondered if she remembered how to\nplay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOkay, puzzle\ntime is over,\u201d she said. Danielle slammed down Risk<\/em> on the\ntable and the kids ripped off the top of the box. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSo who wants to\nrule the world?\u201d she said. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n The kids all raised\ntheir hands. The Christmas Day Risk<\/em> marathon was on and\nDanielle was going to kick some ass. \n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Back inside the cabin, Danielle popped in another pizza. Two pizza in one afternoon! Why not? The family was starving after their beach excursion and fort frenzy. The oldest boy asked his mom if he could try and get the fire going in the wood stove. He said it while holding the directions provided by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5796,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","category-meditations","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5795"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5795\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5798,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5795\/revisions\/5798"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}