Purging towards the weekend

What began as a fine muted morning ... sitting on the Beloved Back deck under Fran's thousand shades of green, listening to the choir of Cicada sing, on a warm summer morning ... is completely wrecked by Laurel, the 10 year old.

Stumbling out with blond hair askew in every direction, eyes glued to her cell phone as she watches "Netflix" she plops in the chair beside me.

"Hey," she says without looking at me.

"Morning," I reply staring straight at her.

Several moments pass as the sun covers itself with a blanket of clouds, the choir of Cicada take a break, the ocean breeze ceases and a hundred flies show up.

"What?" she asks finally looking at me.

"Two words," I say holding up two fingers, "Head phones."

"I don't want to listen to your suck ass music," she says.

"It's The Monkees on Pandora" I fire back horrified at her complete lack of appreciation of quality Pop tunes!

"Fine," she concludes wandering into the kitchen only to wander back out holding a cup.

"Do you know that some people put milk in their coffee?" she asks sitting back down.

"I do," I sigh.

"I put chocolate milk in mine. You want a sip?"

"Ewww," I reply. "Gross ... No thank you."

Shrugging her shoulders she drinks while renewing the stare on her phone.

"Have you heard about 'The Purge'?" she immediately asks without looking at me.

"Yeah I knew a guy that died one time and nobody would claim the body. He was homeless so they called me complaining his body was purging and I should come get him."

Her beautiful blue eyes stare straight at mine.

"No," she explains. "I mean 'THE PURGE' where people are killing people. Through it could be a rumor. Let me read it to you."

The next 15 minutes are a monotone rendering of every reference to 'The Purge' she can find on Google.

I turn up The Monkees.

"You need to get a gun," she concludes.

"I'm not getting a gun."

"My Daddy's got a gun."

"I'm not your Daddy."

"Well," she pauses, "then I'm going to sleep with a hammer and knife to protect our family."

"Knock yourself out," I say.

The sun throws off the blanket as the choir of Cicada resume their Hymns so Fran's leaves break into dance and a salty ocean breeze blows away the flies.

"I missed you Laurel," I tell her.

"I missed you too Micheal," she says without looking at me. "Can we go to the beach today?"

"Hell yeah!"

She turns up her phone to listen to whatever she's watching on Netflix.

I turn up The Monkees on Pandora.

I love the weekends.