Cause Just and Quarrel Honourable

The precious Sabbath hours we would customarily have devoted to the composition of a new installment of our illustrious blog were largely wasted napping, snacking, and video-conferencing with family in Utah (this last, though awkward, tedious, and technologically perplexing, did feature a live chicken, much to Julia’s delight). We are creatures of habit; our muse is not wont to sing at this late hour. But we are also unwilling to disappoint our expectant interstellar audience; and so, gentle Reader, we present you with these tardy ruminations—the latest incarnation of our inestimable Review.

We first take you back nine days to the fifth of January, a Saturday, when we piled one and all into the Bull for a trip down highway-95 to the nearest outpost of the Sears-Roebuck empire where we intended to pick up a vacuum cleaner that Lia’s mother had kindly ordered for us for Christmas. Only Mom Suttner sent the order to a different outpost of the Sears-Roebuck empire, and it was only after a great deal of haggling—including a series of frantic phone calls to imperial agents outsourced in India and Burkina Faso—that the good folks of Sears were willing to part with the vacuum cleaner in question. Julia and Justin didn’t mind the delay a bit, for Julia got to sit leisurely in her stroller watching Aladdin on a mega-super-gargantuan-only-at-Sears-screen TV and Justin got surreptitiously to watch the Colts and the Chiefs on a strategically placed 8” monitor nearby. Meanwhile Eli’s wily charms and Lia’s fiery fulminations respectively melted the clerk’s heart and filled his miserable soul with the fear of God; anon he sent us on our way, vacuum cleaner in hand, which brings us to

Monday (January 8) when we, as a special Family Home Evening treat, took the vacuum cleaner out of the trunk, anxiously opened it, and impatiently took turns examining its features and testing its gadgets. We were all enraptured—Lia most of all (Justin tried to put on a sour face, but could hardly contain his inward glee)—at what may very well be the best thing to grace our humble home since the advent of the proverbial sliced bread (which we have been deprived of ever since frugal Lia began making her own bread from scratch). Other highlights of the day included Julia’s pilfering a pair of Eli’s pajamas and tenderly zipping into them her stuffed pink monkey; a trip to the doctor (accompanied of course by rain showers) for both of the girls, which meant Curious George stickers for Julia and a chance to steal a stethoscope for Eli; and Eli’s showing promise in standing with the support of one of the multitude of noise-makers masquerading as toys that Justin’s mother has generously donated to the cause of inducing her son’s early madness.

Tuesday (January 9): This morning seemed like a fine time finally to head down to campus to get Lia her Yale spouse-ID, a priceless boon which will allow her to check out books for herself from the Yale libraries, ride the buses without feeling clandestine (which she’s never done), and bag student fares at local museums. Things started off well enough at the law school registrar’s office where Lia secured a temporary ID after flashing our wedding certificate, performing a series of pagan rites, and swearing an oath on her ancestors’ collective grave never to talk about Fight Club. But then we headed down the street—quite a ways down the street with two children in tow and no strollers—to the Yale ID center where we encountered that ubiquitous northeastern personality: the jerk. Not wanting to disturb the tranquility of our readers with gratuitous ranting, and wanting always to follow Dad Suttner’s injunction that one should always be vague when one cannot be nice, we shall say nothing further concerning said jerk save that he was indeed an unhelpful jerk, and that if Lia does now have a Yale ID (and she does) it is with no thanks to the above-named jerk. He even spelled her last name wrong (“Collins”). Lia made it a point to look irritated in her picture in protest, though in retrospect this may not have been the best means of giving voice to her displeasure.

But on the positive side, Sister Joyce Thomas made us dinner—a celestial banquet of potatoes, vegetables, and baby back ribs, all of which were simply to die for, which Justin nearly did after eating himself nigh unto oblivion. Also very much on the positive side, Julia remembered that she is indeed potty-trained; Eli began to show signs of a robust industry, initiative, and vivacity—diving after Lia’s cookbooks at great personal risk and adamantly refusing to take her apple-sauce from any hand but her own—that have heretofore lain dormant; we watched most of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in the evening, with Julia entertaining us all with impish imitations of Lucy’s misbegotten laugh and smile; and Lia devoted many happy hours to working on the curtains which, after the girls but well before Justin, have become the delight and joy of her life.

Wednesday (January 10): We finished the movie in the morning (Julia cried with sadness when it ended); Julia did the laundry; and we had the double joy of receiving Christmas presents from Grandma Patti again—this time coming all together in a postal package. The tenderest scene of the day featured Julia repeatedly thwacking her dear mother’s head with an oversized stuffed fish while Eli nearly capsized with hysterical laughter. Infants, like most economists, are suckers for slap-stick humor.

Thursday (January 11): Justin had his first final this morning, a three-hour waltz through the world of torts complete with an overwrought hypothetical involving myriad incarnations of negligence, malpractice, death, devastation, and amputations from which the students were to identify and assess something in the neighborhood of eighty-six potential lawsuits. It was grand fun indeed; the most memorable sentence in Justin’s answer was: “Ed can sue Thucydides if he wishes, but he is unlikely to recover from anyone.” In yet another declaration of independence, Eli tried to pull the pancake griddle on top of herself. Julia, permanently moved by the Christmas spirit, has taken to wrapping her own books in kitchen towels and happily presenting them to other members of the family: “Daddy, I got you a present! Cinderella!!!”

Friday (January 12): Eli didn’t eat at all today, and we were quite worried indeed—though she allayed our fears on Saturday with an inexorable voracity that lasted from dawn till dusk and beyond. In the evening, we invited Justin’s friend and classmate, Sander Daniels, over for dinner (with his wife, Bianca, out of town for the week, Sander was in a sad culinary plight—and after 18 meals in a row of Tony’s pizza Lia decided to bring an end to the chain of abuse). Julia and Eli decided to inspire Sander toward continued childlessness—Julia by banishing herself to an adjacent room and bewailing her fate, Eli by discontentedly grunting in protest against her self-imposed hunger. But at least Julia warmed during the course of the evening and by the end took to inundating Sander’s unsuspecting ears with a torrential commentary on all that was going on before his eyes. Lia even made a pumpkin pie for the occasion, and Sander won his welcome in gold by bringing two cartons of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream—finer stuff than any of us have tasted for a good long time; a far cry above our usual icy fare: “Poormanz Powder Surprise,” the ice cream corollary of powdered milk.

Saturday: In the morning Lia went to a Relief Society “Board Meeting” (the world’s greatest titular invitation to tedious punning), while Justin stayed home with the girls. Eli (who like Julia and the rest of us has been sick since our return from Utah) hadn’t eaten all day on Friday and slept in until well past 9 o’clock. We were all quite worried. Justin and Julia had a special prayer for her at about 9:25; she woke up at 9:30 and began eating almost immediately and hardly stopped through the course of the day. We’ve never been so grateful to behold our darling omnivore. In the evening we played a Farm Animal game with Julia—she won, but was most content when she drew the card that directed her to “Stand up, spin around, then touch the ground and cry, ‘Dizzy Ducks!’” We even stacked the deck for her so she could draw this one.

And so, dear Reader, from the shadow of the everlasting overcast we bid you once more farewell. We have wretched coughs and colds and would rather have gone to bed than have written this post. Certainly you should rather have gone to bed than have read it. But what Dante wrote in 1311 is as true today as it was then: “They who would blog must sacrifice” (Chi vorrà blogar, dovrà sacrificar). And so we struggle. We blog on—undaunted and inexorable. And like the great Churchill we offer our readers nothing but blood, tears, toil, and sweat—nasty things, to be sure, but captured, we dare hope, in lucid, supple, periodic prose.