A Birth day

"That's fine," Angus said. If Jessie wanted to pick up the boys, Angus had no objection. "I think they have a bit of a taste of what it's like in the couple of skirmishes they've either seen or been involved in, but they have a lot of skills they need to learn. With Tom Gelding being, basically, a stepfather to them, I don't want them to not be prepared. Even if they change their minds and do something else with their lives, I want them to be able to protect themselves."

"I think that's very wise," Robert said. The girls listened to Ruby's concerns about water temperature, and they nodded and dashed off.

"Anise is missing the fun," Angus said.

"I think she's actually probably enjoying every moment she can get with Edward and Jessie and Sergio and Ana," Robert said. "It isn't the same fun that the girls are having here, but I think she's soaking up every little thing they can teach her."

"Ana will be a good role model for her. It isn't all that common, I don't think, to find a woman who truly understands the differences between male and female biology and how those differences can be used to a woman's advantage in a fight. Ana embraces all of that, and that makes her an absolutely lethal force if she needs to be. Anise could learn a lot from Ana."

"And as hungry as Anise is to learn, she may come home with a new move or two," Robert smiled. "If I send all the kids to Colorado at the same time, your house is going to be very empty again."

"That's okay. It's for a good cause," Angus replied.

"Well, okay, I think if you behave your incision may hold for a bit. I think Nigel and I can leave you on your own for a bit. If you run into any trouble, send straight away for me or for Nigel. More pain, more bleeding, any fever, any change from what you're feeling now, and you send for me. I'll be back in plenty of time to make sure you have more pain medication. I do not want you on your feet yet, so read, or rest or something, but no horseplay."

"Ok," Angus agreed.

"We'll be back later," Robert said, and he and Nigel left.

"I can't think of a thing I need," Angus told her, "but thank you anyway. What you could do is to take a look in our overpacked fridge and see what we need to use up first. We can do some menu planning so that we are using the fresh foods wisely. Simone said that they've pack both our fridges as full as they could get them. That means we need to put a real emphasis on using our fresh things first. I don't what's in there or whether what's in ours is the same as what's in Edward's, so I can't do any menu planning. If you could do that, I can give you a good menu of what to fix for the next few days to feed everyone. It's nice that Zoe and Nicky cooked for us, but we really don't want to waste food either.

"And in the meantime, I'll work on a sketch for the addition of a bathroom in the basement. I'd like to add a storage room down there for things we're not using, and maybe some sort of a recreation room to keep the kids busy. They're at the age where hanging out with us is neither fun or cool either one."

He accio'd his sketch book and his sketching pencils so that if he got any ideas, he could try to draw them out.

"When the girls come back from swimming, I'll have them round up those little rascals and take them back," Angus said. "I forgot they were here. Yes, do please get a list of what's in Edward's fridge. If Evan wasn't here, it would just be the two of them over there, and they'd never eat all that before it would go bad. This list is a start but lets see what they have too.

"I see there are two nice big pork rib roasts in our fridge. If there is perhaps one more over at Edward's we could do something similar to a pot roast but we could use pork instead of beef. Done right, it's absolutely delicious. Looks like we have a good variety of root vegetables that we could put into the roaster. I'd probably do it in two big roasters to do enough to feed everyone. That would take care of supper.

"And it also looks like you've got a lot of different sorts of lettuces and vegetables. I would do a large salad with mixed greens, tomatoes, carrots, radishes, that sort of thing, and add some diced chicken, some hard boiled egg and cheese, some croutons, and make one big lunch salad. Those are called Chef Salads in America because they're designed to be a whole meal in one salad. Now they're adding fruit to them too, like peach slices, or mandarin orange slices, or berries. I would do that with perhaps some savory biscuits alongside. Or, you could take some of the bagels they put in our fridge and lay them down on the counter, slice them thinly and horizontally and then bake them in the oven and make bagel crisps out of them. They're good with a really sharp cheddar cheese spread. But that's just off the top of my head."

"Now, remember, pot roast has to braise for several hours. It won't be ready at noon for lunch. That will work for supper, but people may want something for lunch at noon too. I suppose you could do something simple like toasted cheese sandwiches or something. We could ask Simone and Tara to put their heads together for some sort of dessert to serve with tonight's supper," he told her.

He didn't mind watching the baby but no baby was going to have much of an attention span. They couldn't focus on things for more than a minute or two at best. He clearly wasn't a good choice as a sitter in his current situation, and he knew it. It only took him ten or fifteen minutes to run through every peek a boo game and other distraction he could think of. He accio'd the mat for her, and was trying stand to put her on the mat when Marcus returned.

Marcus hurried and put one strong arm under Angus's good shoulder to keep him from falling.

"Sit," Marcus said. "I'll get it. How about we put her down for a nap? Don't you have a lounging pillow for her?"

"I don't know," Angus sighed, frustrated that he couldn't do more with her like he wanted. "When I ordered all that stuff to freak out Suzanne, I wasn't even paying attention to half the stuff I ordered." Marcus laughed.

"Alright. I'll go look upstairs. Can you hold her for just another moment? I'll be back," Marcus said. He went upstairs, rooted around in the baby things for a moment and came back carrying a flowered rectangular pillow.

"Paydirt," Marcus grinned. "You have all kinds of stuff I'm sure you didn't know you had."

"What's that thing?"

"Watch. See how the center looks like it has a sinkhole in it? That's the whole thing right there. We want that." Marcus laid the pillow on the floor, and then he laid the baby down in the center of it. The pillow came up around the baby so she wasn't going to roll out of it and get hurt. "See? She's safe, and you aren't going to blow your stitches trying to rescue her. Give her a minute to fuss, and she'll be out like a light. Fussy baby problem solved."

"Saves having to go all the way upstairs to put her in the crib," Marcus said. "She's right here, and you know, most of the time they don't sleep all that long anyway."

"Sorry," Angus said. "I shouldn't let it frustrate me either." He and Marcus plucked the tea mugs out of the air. "Thank you."

"I don't think it really was Caprice that you were frustrated with. You're annoyed because you can't do all the things you want to do."

"I am very annoyed with that," Angus admitted.

"So, enjoy your tea and work on your sketches and then on your menu plans," Marcus told him.

"Well,' I think I know what I would like to see in that basement bathroom. A room without windows can be a real dungeon, and Ginger has already seen too much of that. I want her to be able to focus on ow relaxing the space is, and not that there are no windows," Angus said. "He knew what that sort of torture could do, and he wanted to get as far away from her past trauma as he could make the room.

He worked on the sketch until he had it done the way he wanted it. The room would be painted periwinkle so it would be able to carry accents in blue and purple. He wanted it to look luxurious and spacious and light, and he knew the shades of blue and purple would be relaxing and calming.

For the rec room, he went entirely the other way. He did a big comfortable space that was loaded with bright colors, chunky deep furniture, a mini fridge. shelves for snack and games, fun accent lighting and lots of things to do. it was a rough sketch, but he wanted not only for it to be a place for Anise and Ginger but also for Sam and Vincent.

When he had the sketches done, he sent them over to Ruby to look at.

"What do you think?" he asked. "Do you have different ideas?"