Saturday, November 5, 9:30 PM. Claire.

Dear Diary,

Pudding is lying with me in my bed. She likes to snuggle up and keep warm. Sometimes she sleeps all night with me, but sometimes she gets up in the middle of the night and meows to go outside. Then it’s really annoying. The cats can’t be outside at night anymore because there are bad animals that might kill them. Mom rescued Pudding from raccoons a couple of days ago. My mom is pretty tough.

The wind is blowing hard outside and it’s getting cold. It was a nice day though. The air was cool but the sunlight was golden and warm. We played baseball. We made a diamond in our front yard. We have a tree for first base but we use doormats for the others. Mom and Garrett and Trevor were on a team against Daddy and me. The dogs like watching us play. Sometimes they try to chase the ball and we have to tell them no. We take turns pitching and batting and everything. I am a pretty good pitcher. I struck out Mom and Trevor, and Garrett only got a bunt. Dad throws it too easy though and then they get lots of hits. I am not such a good hitter because I swing at it even when I don’t mean to and then when I hit I can’t run that fast. We lost 3 to 4 this time, but we won 6 to 3 last time so we didn’t feel so bad.

After baseball Dad said we should have a campfire and make smores and eat hamburgers. We can have hamburgers again because Garrett killed a deer. They don’t really taste the same though but they’re okay. With ketchup and mustard you don’t really notice. I helped Mom make the fries. Fries are made out of potatoes but you have to cut them just right and put them in lots of oil. Someday we’ll kill one of the cows and have real hamburgers again. I’m kind of sad about that, but not really because I like hamburgers. I wouldn’t care if we killed the bull because he’s kind of mean.

The campfire was wonderful. Garrett played his guitar and we sang a whole bunch of songs, like “Sweet Home Alabama,” that made everybody laugh and dance, and “As the Deer,” where we all sat quiet and still. I like the loud ones best, but the quiet ones were nice with the fire. It got dark and we sat under blankets and had our smores. Mom and Dad sat under a blanket together and she shivered and looked at him and I could tell she was thinking about that she loved him.

We looked at the stars and Daddy taught us all the constellations. Cassiopeia, the W that is a lady lying down. Leo that is a teapot but also a lion somehow. My favorite is Orion but he was gone tonight, out hunting. We saw Jupiter and Saturn, and Daddy said he would find a telescope so we could see them up close with their rings and moons.

While we were looking, Trevor said, “What is that star moving real fast?” Daddy stood up and said, “Where? Where?” Trevor showed us. It was a tiny little dot moving across the other stars. I heard Daddy suddenly breathe out, like he’d been holding his breath. Then he sat down again and got the blanket back around him and Mom. “That’s a satellite,“ he said, and he sounded kind of disappointed. “There are thousands of them up there. You can tell them because they’re just that small and they glide fast and steady like that. I don’t suppose they’re good for anything now.” Then he said, “I thought you might have seen an airplane.” Then he and Mom looked at each other, and he looked kind of nervous, and I thought there was something else he was thinking about that he didn’t want to say.