skittles

A job that includes eating Skittles, playing checkers, and crawling in through the window is a great job. I tutor Alison four days a week, and this is what we do in between quizzing for Latin (tell me the SID SPACE ablatives) and scientific water cycles (constipation! consolation! conversation! condemnation! condensation!). She has trouble with the water cycle. She loves Smoothies Skittles, and we share them while she studies and I sit cross-legged on the big desk and journal. We trade sometimes because she prefers the yellow ones and I prefer the purple ones. And late every afternoon, we watch for the highlighter sky, which is our term for the particularly bright blue moment over the eastern hill just before the sun sets in the west. She tells me that in the morning, the highlighter sky is also yellow and pink and green. Every day we watch until the sky is bright enough to write with, and then we dream of all the things we could color with that much vivid blue.