"Containing Some Talk of Pools, Cars, and Other Frivolous Matters"

The grand total of two comments which have greeted our last three posts has given cause for some rumination. To the question of "Why does our blog receive no comments?" the most ready answer appears to be "Because you have no readers." However several persons have lately identified themselves as perusers of this blog, all of whom provide various explanations for their universal recusatio where comments are concerned: "I never know what to say," they protest; "I am too lazy to create a blogger account," the confess; "I make my comments but never commit them to writing," they aver. Setting such excuses aside, we must declare that while we are pleased to learn of the existence of these voiceless readers, we are doubly pleased by their unanimous embrace of the ageless moral imperative, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all." Even so, we might commend to these readers, in the place of such booming silence, David Suttner's more Machiavellian approach: "If you don't have anything nice to say, be vague." Leaving such animadversions behind us, we now proceed with the latest installment in our weekly review, having no higher aim than to leave our readers, now as heretofore, utterly speechless.
Before relating the history of this week (and we warn all but our most ardent admirers to skip this paragraph), we must address a request from one of our fans that we adapt our style to the patterns of our favorite authors--Hemingway one week, it was suggested, Joyce the next, etc. We note first that any affection we once had for the writings of the former must now be renounced as an unfortunate youthful vice, an aberration purged during the period of repentance that preceded Justin's mission; and any affection we may have had for the latter was mere affectation--a long and honored tradition among academics and intellectuals of pretending to have read, apprehended, and appreciated (most have done none of the three) the most calculatedly inscrutable and nonsensical writings in the history of the West. This being said, we resort to the incontrovertible dogma that there is no great work of English fiction that postdates the publications of Middlemarch and Great Expectations; furthermore, Dickens and Eliot aside, there is hardly an author this side of the Eighteenth Century whose writings we can safely hold up as worthy of imitation (exceptions must be made for historians in the tradition of Strachey, Churchill, and Durant). In any case, the imitation of the masters inevitably exposes the inferiority of the imitator. We shall not, therefore, imitate our favorite writers. The careful reader will, however, peruse this blog having in mind the following principle, which we paraphrase from that most British of American poets, Mr. T.S. Eliot: Immature bloggers imitate; mature bloggers steal.
Monday (15 May 2006)
Rumor with her thousand tongues having carried notice, from dear Provo to the distant realm of Orem, that she was entertaining rivals to his affections, Julia's erstwhile beau, James Chilton, came southward apace, trailing clouds of toddler romance, to renew his solicitations. He brought his mother along. An enchanting time was had by all, and the morning's events included a dip in Julia's deluxe swimming pool. Ever the gentleman as well as the gallant, James modestly resisted his mother's suggestion that he remove his shirt before plunging headlong into the swimming pool water of three inches' depth. Julia, however, warmly encouraged the little man to cast off such inhibitions and, with them, his shirt. But James, an assiduous student of the "Dress and Grooming" section of the pamphlet For the Strength of Toddlers, at length resisted, and Julia's disappointment was readily assuaged.
Tuesday (16 May 2006)
After spending the morning shopping with Kinsi, and to celebrate Canadian Census Day, the three ladies of the house took a pilgrimage to the county health department in order to secure a copy of Eli's birth certificate, and the powers that be--for a mere fifteen dollars--readily consented to certifying that Eli was indeed born. The pilgrimage entailed a long and sultry walk under the merciless desert sun, but Lia was consoled by her learning of the presence of so many "so-cute-shops," previously unknown to her, that line University Avenue. Julia's unruly behavior put an early end to her bedtime ritual, and we were forced to leave Pip in the clutches of the nefarious "Old Worlick" and, therefore, in mortal peril. Lia's anxiety kept her awake, after retiring for the night, for almost four minutes. Justin's side of the bed was rudely usurped by Eli and he was, as a result, kept up well past midnight before resuming his rightful place. The upshot for Justin was that such enforced insomnia allowed him to finish We the People: Transformations by Yale's renowned constitutionalist and political scientist, Bruce Ackerman.
Wednesday (17 May 2006)
Lia went in for her six week postpartum appointment, was pronounced healthy as the proverbial horse, and the proscription from physical exercise that attended her period of confinement was graciously lifted. Her joy at the reunion with her beloved Billy Blanks (one of the most unsonorously alliterative names of which we are aware) has been previously recorded on this blog.
In the evening we had our downstairs neighbors--Cory, Megan, and Brendan Roberson--over (up?) for dinner. Earlier in the day, Julia had generously dumped half-a-box worth of dishwasher detergent onto the carpet of her bedroom floor. After scooping up all we could, with Julia's invaluable help, Justin tried to vacuum up the rest. The process was more than our poor vacuum cleaner could bear; the vacuum cleaner belt was severed, and the breaker conveying electricity to half our house (including the air conditioner) was switched off. Not knowing the breaker's location, we were forced to receive our guests in a fiery furnace brooded over by the spirit of Ardeth Kapp--the sins of the fathers (in this case Lia's father) were thus visited upon the heads of the children. At length, we found the breaker, banished the flames, and enjoyed the duration of the evening.
Thursday (18 May 2006)
After spending much of the day trying in vain to entice Julia and Eli to allow her to exercise for the first time since Eli made her appearance on this telestial orb, Lia finally succeeded in the evening, but only with Justin's participation. Her satisfaction was boundless.
Friday (19 May 2006)
In the morning, Julia rejoiced in the visit of her aunt Jeni and her cousins, Jacob and Emi. Julia and Jacob exulted in a plenitude of swimming and popsicles (Jacob, in the presence of a mere cousin, had none of James's reticence about removing his shirt). In the afternoon, in an overflow of feminine exuberance, Lia, Julia, Eli, and Aunt Jini all engaged in a marathon of consumerism that had them shopping for several hours. *We didn't buy anything, we'd like everyone to know.* Jini made the time fly, however, with the narration of a near-death experience that, like most near-death experience, was the byproduct of a dating misadventure. In the evening Justin and Julia went to Grandma and Grandpa's to watch Game 6 of the Pistons-Cavs series (a residual manifestation of the sins of Justin's youth) while Lia and Eli went to Wal-Mart. Upon returning home Eli erupted in the now customary fulminations against capitalist abuses while Julia voiced a powerful lamentation over the defeat of Lebron James and her beloved Cavs at the hands of those wretched Detroit mafiosi.
Saturday (20 May 2006)
After Justin mowed the lawn in the morning, Lia persuaded him to give full reign to his burgeoning machismo by piling the entire family into the Big Blue Bull for a trip to Thanksgiving Point and the annual Classic Auto Expo. Seeing himself as the last bastion of civilization against creeping barbarism, Justin donned a Yale T-shirt to indicate to the concourses of gleeful motorheads that he was not there by choice. Lia romped through the exposition in a fit of Elysian ebullience. Julia was mostly bored--that is until we encountered a blazing blue beast of machine with a Cookie Monster motif; several hours later we successfully dragged her away from the Cookie-mobile amid screams of violent dissent. When we returned home, Justin tried desperately to scrub his hands clean of the influence of the unwashed masses (though he did warm up to some of the cars--particularly the very old Roadsters) while Eli, quite taken with the event, exploded in booming intonations of "Born to be Wild!" In the evening we were visited by Jordan and Alison Johnsen, who brought an offering of the raw materials for rootbeer floats, which we assembled and consumed with relish. At day's end we all slipped peacefully into the oblivion of a happy slumber where, dear Reader, we trust we shall now leave you.