Meg Sefton's Blog, page 42

Memories

[image error] Boxy Brown’s Bling, Shakey’s, flickr

We have had some losses in my extended family this fall and winter. It makes me think of every memory I have had with everyone I am related to, memories we take for granted until other people who also have shared them pass away or become unable to access shared histories. Lately I have been thinking about traditions in my family, traditions having to do with food for example, and travel. These things were important in my family as a girl growing up, but they were also important in my married life, and later, my single motherhood years.

Recently, for some reason, I have been thinking of the Chef Boyardee Cheese Pizza Maker Kit. Ok, so it’s not necessarily the most sophisticated way to make a pizza at home, but growing up, it was very fun to make this together and share it as a family. Mom and Dad made it fun because it was shared. To me, it was the best pizza on earth, even better than the Shakey’s my family used to go to in Dallas, a pizza joint with seriously stringy cheese! The best part about Chef Boyardee kit was that everyone had role to play: there was the stretching of the dough on the pan, the browning of the beef, the spreading of the sauce, and of course the sprinkling of beef and cheese on top. And someone always handled the salad. Every Friday night, that was our tradition. Out of curiosity, I googled it and it’s still being produced and sold while Shakey’s is mostly shut down, a shadow of its former glory.

My son and I have been sharing stories of a relative who has recently passed. She was the “picture taker” in the family and left hundreds of photos behind. Our memories are also pictures. Do you have a blog or journal? Do you put down your memory pictures to share with others or just relive when you are alone or going through a loss?

One of the best ways I’ve found to relive memories is to pass along recipes and food traditions, the recipes and food traditions that were passed along to me. Many are simple, but in a way, that makes these recipes and food traditions all the more beloved. I pass them along, but also make sure to add my own that I’ve developed over time. I really didn’t know how to cook thirty years ago as a newly married woman but over time and through my travels and experiences, I have picked up a few things to add to my repertoire.

Other food memories and traditions I have as a girl: Dad’s Saturday morning habit of making beignets for our breakfast, the smell of his smoker in our backyard on the weekends, the kids’ Sunday morning tradition of helping Mom make a good breakfast for Dad who was a preacher and on his way to work, and all of Mom’s delicious dinners which were ready every single day, on the money, by 6:00 p.m. How did she do it? I really don’t know.

Sometimes I want to go back to those seemingly simpler times. Why do we have that longing ingrained in us? I am not sure, but on my better days, I think of what we’ve gained rather than what we’ve lost from memories shared and food passed around a table of those we have loved.

Somnus

[image error] The famous photo – fountain “Children dance” on the station square of Stalingrad after the Nazi air raid…Antonio Marín Segovia, flickr Fuente: “Niños bailando” en Stalingrado

I fell asleep to a youtube Harvard lecture on the radicalization of a fascist. I had spent the early evening applying for a barely above minimum wage job when the site timed out because I took too much time downloading an app to help with a cover letter. Back to square one in a pandemic in which, as a cancer survivor and diabetic, I shouldn’t be working among untested individuals. Yet bills come, living expenses rise even with a tidal wave of death.

During youtube lectures of the American Historical Association, I sleep and dream of a fight I am having with a Greek restaurant owner, apparently trying to convince him to allow me to sell my barbeque at a Mediterranean food festival. “Barbeque, barbeque, barbeque! Always with your barbeque!” he says. Apparently I knew him well. Apparently, we had had many conversations about this strange topic and it seems, other things too. I think he likes me, for he tries to apologize. In his way. In the only way possible allowed by his culture for men. Though no one would taste the barbeque I had made.

In another dream, at a family gathering in a modern house I didn’t recognize – we always had traditional houses such as English Tudor, Farmhouse, ranch style, craftsman, tract homes which looked like such houses – a German guest of mine was visiting. When the arguing among us became intense, our guest engaged his jetpack with a manual pump that rendered his exit almost silent, and he floated out of the large open skylight. Before I fell asleep, I had learned the European fascist had a difficult time with long term relationships but occasionally sought connectivity with families of his choosing. Only for brief periods of time.

Previously that week, in my waking life, I had had a fight with my college age son. We never fought these days, almost never. In my once more lonely nest after Thanksgiving, I killed the regret with wine, over the counter meds, cbd oil, lazy indulgence, early bed, a failed job application. I woke feeling less alone, somehow, my sleep populated by people who seemed vaguely similar to people I knew in real life, pre-pandemic. Dreams had been illusive up until last night. “Insomnia” I learned from a “doctor” in a horror movie, actually means “without dreams.” I don’t really think this Hollywood-produced doctor is giving me the precise skinny since the Latin is literally “not sleep,” but maybe I am using a fine tooth comb, so opposite the dream state, and Hollywood creative license.

I can’t say for sure I want to find out what characters may pop up tonight but maybe the Harvard European Studies department and the American Historical Society lie in wait for just such occasions, to bring us to ourselves, to bring us to closer acquaintance to the dictators within, the evil we project, the friends among us who simply want to be understood, feel they have a place. Do you think we might have greater peace if we make room for our enemies? Even if that enemy is we ourselves?

Literary Holiday Traditions

[image error] Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash

Do you have a favorite holiday literary tradition? Maybe there is a story or book you like to read each year, or maybe you like to purchase or borrow a new book or collection for the season. Maybe you like to indulge with children, grandchildren, nieces or nephews with all of the stories they enjoy. In Iceland, there is a tradition in the fall called Jolabokaflod or the “Christmas Book Flood” in which books are bought for the holidays. Books are given as gifts on Christmas Eve and the night is spent reading. In Victorian England, people sat around their fires and told ghost stories, a tradition reflected in the format of Henry James’ novella Turn of the Screw.

When I first became serious about reading short stories about thirty years ago, I turned to the writer I had fallen in love with as a college English major: John Cheever. Every year for quite a few years at Christmas I read his entire collection. Then I chanced upon the marvelous collection Christmas at the New Yorker: Stories, Poems, Humor, and Art. It also includes John Cheever, as well as John Updike, Alice Munro, Vladimir Nabokov, Richard Ford, William Maxwell, J.F. Powers, and other literary lights. I started reading from this collection every year. Over time, I have also become interested in slightly more old school ghost stories, such as those penned by M.R. James and feel the reading, and listening to them on Audible, is very much in step with English Victorians.

This year, I’ve found a new collection through my new kindle called Chill Tidings: Dark Tales of the Christmas Season, edited by Tanya Kirk, collected from the British Library, written mid 19th to mid 20th century. Some are more or less “chilly” to me, but all I find very interesting given the Victorian tradition of Holiday ghost stories. The forward provides some clues as to why and how this tradition evolved.

I am also attempting to revisit a powerful story I read by Heinrich Boll years ago set at Christmas, having to do with a misunderstanding between a husband and wife. There is a sense of yearning for forgiveness on a snowy night in a train station. I lost the collection in my move, or misplaced it, or may have inadvertently donated it, and so I have ordered another, the selfsame 18 Stories by Heinrich Boll, a wonderfully used copy, and hopefully loved. I look forward to receiving it soon.

This year I also ordered another copy of Henry James’ Turn of the Screw after believing my copy lost. But alas, I found it today, the Norton Critical Edition, an edition I loved pouring over. However, the inexpensive used copy I ordered last night and which is waiting for me at the bookstore contains other Henry James stories as well as his classic so likely I will be picking it up. If you have seen the series The Haunting of Bly Manor or the movie The Turning as well as other filmic adaptations, these offerings might give you some sense of Henry James, but the written word such as the Norton Edition is the way to go to really develop a full appreciation of his technique and skill.

I also hope I will have some down time for some of my collections of fairy tales from around the world, an illustrated Robert Frost poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” the absurdist writings of Daniil Kharms in some of my paper copy books as well as an ebook I found via kindle called “7 Best Short Stories: Absurdist” edited by August Nemo.

Whatever your traditions, I hope you will find a story you enjoy this holiday. Our religious traditions are about telling stories and so maybe this craving to come to story at this time of year is related to this, whether the story be of darkness or light, realism or fantasy.

Happy Holidays and happy story hunting.

Meg

Krampus of the Glades

[image error] Krampus b & w by media.digest, flickr

It was said the Burmese python of the Everglades was the local embodiment of Krampus set loose on Florida, and like Krampus had a taste for child flesh. In the legend of European countries, Krampus, a half goat half man, licks naughty children with his forked snake tongue and drags them to his underground lair where Christmas trees are black and reindeer are dead.

Florida people were smarter than the state gave them credit for. They knew it was simply a campaign to inspire them to rise up and kill the Burmese python invader let loose when Hurricane Andrew destroyed a breeding facility. And yet the idea slipped into the conscious of witnesses to snakes who could swallow local gators, much less strangle a man to death and easily feed on smaller animals.

It was the women who began demanding the taste of python meat for dishes. No one’s baby would be lost to Satan. They would defeat him handily with Everglade cuisine. The first Everglades’ Krampus celebration began Christmas of 2017: Papa Christmas in swim trunks and a white beard set down to the ladies’ Poached Burmese Python Curry. He took the first bite at a large outdoor feast. Everyone cheered, drank beer, and passed platters.

It was said that night a baby was taken in the night to even the ledger. Satan’s henchmen worked in darkness. No one minded the cicadas chirping their insistent alarm. Many creatures were murdered in the dead of night. No matter, men learned to hunt with ferocity, women to adapt their recipes, and the state generously paid trappers to capture and kill.

Bahamas “Lost in the Light”

I came across this little gem when I played through Spotify’s playlist “Calm Down.” I highly recommend the list and I love this song. So addictive and memorable. Spotify introduces me to new groups and gets me out of old listening ruts. I’m working on a big CD donation to Goodwill. Just trying to get rid of things that collect dust. I hope you will have a good Thursday. — Meg

Green Flash & Other Wonders

[image error] Road lined with palm trees, Boca Grande, FL, State Library and Archives of Florida, flickr

It is unknown what happened to the leader of the free world after losing the election but there are rumors. It is said his father came to him in a vision and embraced him. It was kind of like Moses and the burning bush. The father was a bit warm actually, but not scalding, not enough to char flesh. He embraced his son with all the warmth missing from his son’s cold upbringing. He said “Son, I’m proud of you, I love you.”

They also said he had a vision in the wake of his dawning awareness of how far things had gone. It was like Paul on the road to Damascus. The scales fell from his eyes. He knelt down and cried. He begged for forgiveness and mercy. A vision of righteous martyrs for the cause of his pride paraded past, one by one, sick no more, glorified. It was unknown what transpired during the vision but he survived it. He survived the vision of misplaced children crying for their missing parents but it at last broke his heart. He thought of how as a young boy he had cried in private for want of the love of his father.

They say an angel descended to wrestle with him for the suggestions of his advisor to behead public servants, for violence against protest in a free country, for the tearing down of the electoral process, for the evisceration of confidence, for the sowing of paranoia and mental illness. The angel left a mark on his thigh. It had to be a deep mark. The leader did not give up easily. They wrestled through the night.

After these visions and spiritual nights of the soul, the man who emerged began to notice with acute sensitivity the hopping of birds along the pavement, the chirping of squirrels from trees. He sat by the ocean, simply sat, and made no plans. He let people come to him but merely smiled and said “hmmm,” when they asked him anything, when they had suggestions for him, when they laid hands on him for prayer.

He didn’t want to miss the sunset. He didn’t want to watch television. He didn’t want to play golf. Long walks along the beach with his toes in the sand was more unbelievable than rooms of gold.

When his wife came outside to join him, he noticed she was letting a little gray slip into her long tresses. He liked it. She would stay with him, he thought. She would sit silently and watch the ocean along with him. They would sit before the hush of the waves. Homeless people now inhabited his Florida mansion.

He and his live in an oceanfront motel. He makes his wife laugh now. She would not leave him. She doesn’t seem to miss all the things he thought she demanded he provide.

“I love you,” she said.

“I love you too,” he responded.

The sun goes down during the transition between the gold and the blue. The clouds are red and purple and gold. There is a green flash in the sky. Then the sun is gone.

“Kindred Spirits” Hulu & Amazon

[image error] holm by Craig Barry, flickr

The movie Kindred Spirits (2019), directed by Lucky McKee and written by Chris Siverston, is a fine treatment of hidden evil. The evil hides behind nostalgia, a legendary tale of the past, the desire to want to believe in what masquerades as good and loving. It is a deeply disturbing unveiling of a reality hidden in the blindspot of family loyalty. You can watch it livestreaming on Amazon and Hulu.

“The Killing” on Hulu

[image error] Seattle, WA by Marc Biarnès, flickr

For fans of crime thriller series, Hulu is offering all seasons of The Killing. I watched this a couple of times the past few years when it was streaming via Netflix. Now you can pay for each season on Prime or you can watch it with ads. Yeah no. Hulu is a much better deal and makes for a better binge. I’m a really big Amazon Prime Video fan but have to shop around for deals as with everything.

Bingeing is not so bad, right? We need a break from political and pandemic realities. Plus, it never hurts to have something to do in quarantine, especially over the weekend or whenever one is breaking from life.

I became a big fan of Mireille Enos, Joel Kinnaman, Billy Campbell, Michelle Forbes, Brent Sexton, Kristin Lehman, Eric Ladin, Jamie Anne Allman, and Annie Corley among other featured actors. The series is based on the Danish television series Forbrydelsen. The American version was developed by Veena Sud and produced by Fox Television and Fuse Entertainment. It is set in Seattle.

A Florida Halloween note

[image error] Nathan Dumlao, unsplash

I’m sorry for all my typos in my attempt at a longer story this morning: “Sleepy Hollow.” I think I have ironed them out though the story itself will likely get revisited more than a few times. I don’t know if the time line and point of view are too confusing. The time line doubles back on itself and the perspective changes from omniscient to a rotating third so hmmmm…… Plus a lot of this takes place in the character’s heads while they are in bed which I now find kinda funny. Who knows, maybe it’s just notes for another story or maybe it basically works as it is. I try to wait to make that determination, sometimes for quite a while. I’ve been writing for six hours since 6 am pretty much nonstop so it may be time to do a contemplative chillax. lol (In bed?)

I was trying to get something out before the Halloween holiday began in earnest. My washer and dryer are located close to my front door and my clean laundry is piled up on my dining room table willy nilly! Along with cardboard boxes from my move since right before the pandemic. lol. So, hmmm. Not organized! I am counting on the holidays to motivate me. I am counting on the trick or treaters staring into my home to at least motivate me to tidy up what they can see. Haha.

Be safe today. Be well.

This is one of my favorite photos on unsplash. It could easily be the east coast of Florida but it is Manhattan Beach. Don’t you love it? Kind of makes me think of a Florida Halloween.

Sincerely,

Meg

Sleepy Hollow

[image error] Photo by Olivia Kulbida on Unsplash

In school, the kids had called Joe Wallace Ichabod for Ichabod Crane, the cartoon of a skinny guy with big ears and nose and a pronounced Adam’s apple who was chased through Sleepy Hollow by a headless horseman. The nickname had been somewhat apt, actually. As an adult, he had retained most of these characteristics and when some of the old school alums stopped by the library in downtown Orlando, there was old Ichabod, a librarian now, working in the city government and law department among the outdated microfiche, plat maps, the dry reference tomes which over the next few years would be digitized and therefore rendered obsolete. Yet there was something comforting in seeing Ichabod, much like the comfort of placing one’s children in front of the old VHS cassette player and popping in the old Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad video. Some things never changed, it seemed, or never seemed to at least, though we all know time renders almost all things obsolete, aka “dead.”

Joe liked to play up his old nickname in the fall as he planned for the trick or treaters, accompanied by their parents, many of whom knew by now they were invited to stay for a while. He didn’t have children or a family of his own so he enjoyed this time of year. He played the popular Disney Ichabod Crane film on his porch on a small screen and placed a padded fleece blanket down on the floor boards so the children could watch and the adults drink spiced hot cider – spiked if preferred – while relaxing in rockers on the porch or chairs in the yard. The headless horseman himself would on Mr. Wallace’s great grandmama’s old cane chair harking back from her Florida cracker days. The headless man was a stuffed black suit, gloves, boots, and a cape. He held an electric jack o lantern on his lap. There was also the Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow in the front yard created from woodshed plans and peppered on its “church” grounds were aged looking tombstones. The children were given paper marigold flowers to grace the tombstones upon which were inscribed the names of residents of Sleepy Hollow of the 18th century, including one for Washington Irving himself.

Jayla’s most vivid memory of Disney’s “Legend of Sleepy Hollow” was Ichabod looking down the headless horseman’s neck and screaming in fright. It made something shift inside her watching this. What had Ichabod seen when he looked down the headless man’s neck? What did the neck of a headless man look like? Was it like the cross section of the bone treats she gave Trixie their German Shepherd, pink on the outside and white in the middle where the bone was? Or was it all dark like a cavern like the kind she had descended on the tour with Grandma in Tennessee? Dark that is until they turned the colored lights on and there were stalactites and stalagmites dripping like the sand castles she made at the beach with her hands dipped into wet sand? Whatever it was he saw, he must have changed for before that he seemed just goofy yet after he seemed genuinely terrified. Jayla was a mermaid this year and she seemed happy enough to rest with the other children on the blanket in front of the movie, drinking cider from a Dixie cup and eating the tiny candy bones Mr. Wallace handed out for their treats. She waited for the dreaded moment when Ichabod would look into the headless man’s neck.

Jayla’s mother, Heather Deighton, had her own horrors to contemplate. A few nights before, she had tucked Jayla and Sammy in bed early and tucked in early with her new “husband,” her laptop. She kind of numbed herself and lulled herself with a stream of shows and documentaries that played continuously through the night or until she sleepily awoke to take Trixie out before returning to bed. A few mornings ago, she had arisen to the sounds of a woman crying in a documentary. The cries were those of extreme distress and mental anguish. The woman was recalling having gone home with a stranger, against her instincts, and waking later in the night in his home, finding a headless body in a spare room down the hall. She survived only by pretending to the man she hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary and then managing to get free of him. Heather, disoriented by the distress of the woman relaying her pain, watched on as the interviewer asked how the experience with a serial killer had changed her. The woman could not answer for a while. And then all she said was: The only thing I know is, death could come at any moment and we can’t know when, we just can’t know.

When all the children and parents had gone that Halloween night, Joe Wallace turned off the lights to his Sleepy Hollow attraction, pulled in his television from the porch, and propped the headless horseman in the bay window where he could look out over the little suburban enclave of Orlando. In a few days he would dismantle and organize the church and graveyard for storage. Tomorrow at work there would be reference questions to address and resources to borrow through Interlibrary loan. He had promised a new county court reporter a quick tutorial on the statutes and other law resources. He sat on his bed which he managed to find through an antique dealer in town, someone who sold American antique replicas. His house was a New England style though most popular in Orlando were Spanish style homes or mini McMansions or bungalows.

He thought of the children who had come, and of their parents. He slipped off his shoes and clothes and pulled on a long nightshirt. A couple of months before, after work one night, after a night shift, he had seen Heather’s husband, Dale, at the bar where he liked to go for Guinness. He and Dale and Heather had gone to high school together though Joe was very unpopular and awkward and quiet. Heather and Dale, an item even then, never spoke to him, never seemed to even look at him. At the bar, he had observed Dale leaning into a woman, a woman who was not Heather. Dale had been leaning into her with that proprietary way men seemed to have with women that marks them as theirs or at least signals “this is my prey for the night.” Joe had been sad for Heather. He had seen her with Sammy and Jayla a few times over the summer as he was leaving for lunch. Heather brought them to the library’s story times. Seeing Dale at the bar with someone else, Joe had that feeling like when he felt himself to be a hollow, lonely man, lonely for children he would never have, and a family, a wife. He felt sorry for Heather. He knew what it was like to be lonely. He doubted even if he expressed remorse to Heather or showed her just some sort of compassion, she would respond to him. Who was to say she still didn’t see him as the stone cold loser his classmates always thought he was? And yet, here he was with a job, a nice house: Yes Joe, the butt of jokes, the object of disdain. Joe aka Ichabod. And that’s when he decided he would reach out to her when the time seemed right.

A few months later, he decided to ask her and the children over for Halloween. It was October. He knew they would be coming into the library. Story time had been extended into the fall as more and more schools shuttered for the rest of the year out of abundance of caution during the pandemic. He waved Heather and the children down in front of the library. He was a little breathless for he had been waiting and nervous and now that they were here, he was a little overwhelmed.

“Heather, it’s me, Joe Wallace, you know Ichabod from Eastridge!” He was aware of his gangliness as he approached, though he had been careful to wear the pants that broke at the ankle, not the high waters that for whatever reason he still wore at times. Heather was petite, though a bit more rounded than she had been in high school, which was nice, he thought, and her children were quiet and well behaved. He noticed too the little bit of gray streaking her normally dark long locks she wore pulled up and away from her face and neck, as well as the tiny lines between her brows. He noticed this with affection.

“I know you, Joe.” she said.

With relief he said to himself She didn’t call me Ichabod. And she seems so mellow, relieved, even, like we were old friends, or at least maybe she is grateful to run into someone familiar.

“Hey I was wanting to know if you guys would like to stop by my house on Halloween night. I put on a little celebration of Disney’s Sleepy Hollow. And I have candy and spiced cider.”

Joe could see she was smiling under her pandemic mask because of the way the corners of her eyes crinkled together on either side of her sunglasses.

“Oh that would be lovely, Joe!” She bent down to her kids who were wearing their masks too. “Kids would you like to see a Sleepy Hollow yard for Halloween? This is Mr. Wallace. He’s inviting us over.” They nodded. Heather sent her number to Joe’s phone. “We’ll see you then!” she said and then she spirited Jayla and Sammy away to story hour.

Joe thought of this as he sat on his bed. He had seen her that night. At his house, his very own house. She had sat in his adirondack chair. In his yard. Drinking wine. It was wine he had picked out just for her, though he was pretty sure she wouldn’t know he had gone through the trouble since he offered it to all the adults as an alternative to the cider. She wore glasses now rather than her daytime shades so now he could see her eyes. She hadn’t worn glasses in high school. He could see her lovely gray eyes and enjoy fully the tiny crows feet, the hair she let fall on her neck since it was a cool night, the streaks of gray in it making her a bit more vulnerable since the days when they were younger and seemingly invincible.

Heather, later that night in her own house, having finally settled the children after their sugar induced wildness, sat on her bed and thought of Joe. She wished she could tell him of the terrible thing she saw on her laptop just a few days ago when she awoke alone in the dark, the third night being without a man for twenty years. Their dog Trixie had sensed her panic and moved closer to her on the bed. Why did she think Joe would understand? There was something about him that felt dependable. Why hadn’t he married? Maybe they really had brutalized him in school she realized now with guilt. Maybe he had never really gotten over that. Maybe it filled him with self-doubt and reticence. He seemed to have grown into his role as Ichabod rather than out of it: He was goofy and lanky still and didn’t always know how to dress or comb his hair. And yet, she wondered about him. There was something about him which seemed fine.

A girlfriend, a single friend of hers had seen Dale creeping around the bar one night when Dale had told Heather he was at the law office late, working. Her girlfriend told her he was with a woman. That was before their separation but it led her to believe they were close to the end. How would she know what to do next? How could she ever start over dating? Obviously Dale had started to blaze a new trail without coming clean with her. Weren’t single, vulnerable women just easy prey?

That night she had a crazy dream of Disney’s headless horseman chasing her. He carried a jack-o-lantern in his arms. When she stopped and held her hand out for him to stop, he reigned in his horse. Why are you chasing me? she demanded. She was angry and she had screamed at him, her blood thrumming through her neck and ears. His pumpkin glowed with the flickering light of the candle inside the carved face. The headless rider pointed to the full moon with a black gloved hand. Somehow she knew he had meant the chase was demanded by the pull of the moon just as the moon demanded the pull of the tides. It was nature though surely at times seemingly unnatural nature or at least mysterious nature.

It was barely light out when she woke to take Trixie outside and get the coffee started. She thought of her dream: We are all creatures here. Some are apex predators. She thought of that last interviewee in the documentary. The woman had ignored her instinct to turn down the stranger’s invitation, to walk quickly in the other direction. What the woman faced later at the man’s house was darkness in his eyes, the lack of light, pure evil unveiled, revealed.

“I will follow the light,” Heather said out loud as the coffee machine burbled and spewed out a plume of her favorite seasonal coffee, seemingly a universal favorite: Pumpkin spice. She scrawled this on the blackboard she kept by the fridge to post reminders of things she didn’t want to forget: “Follow the light.” There was something in Joe. It felt like light.

When the children awakened, she dressed them for the day. She explained: “We are going to go by Mr. Wallace’s house to see Sleepy Hollow again. Then we are going to ask him out to an early breakfast before he goes to work. Would you like pancakes?”

“Yay!” they screamed and danced around.

And off they went for another day of light-filled chaos.