3.18.07

One of our editors spent last Sunday prostrated in bed, the victim of an unidentified strain of an unidentified genus of an unidentified mutation of the flu virus. As he (or she, to be quite PC, but it was almost certainly a he) spent the entire day alternately sleeping profoundly, solemnly dictating his last will and testament, and indiscreetly outlining the plots of the several novels he or she would now never write, said editor had neither world enough nor time to post on this illustrious blog. We now make amends.

Monday (March 12): We all (except Lia who surreptitiously crept to the Payne Whitney gym) celebrated daylight savings time by sleeping until 8:30. Lia, who in her zeal to invite both friend and foe (though we doubt a creature so genial and so fair could really have foes) to this Thursday’s RS book club meeting had promised to loan the same copy of Walk Two Moons to eleven different people (well, at least three), piled the girls into the azure bull for a trip to the New Haven Free Public Library, whose website promised a dozen copies in the stacks. Arrived at said library, our heroines found to their chagrin that said stacks housed none of the promised copies. A beleaguered librarian shrugged that the books in question must be lost. We begin to wonder whether the adjective “Free” in the library’s title hasn’t led the upright citizenry of New Haven to conclude that the library’s contents are to be had for the taking. Not wishing to waste a trip downtown, the ladies had a picnic on The Green, where they overheard one of New Haven’s upright citizens bragging to two others that he had so much crack in his coat pocket. Overhearing this, Julia—a grand devotee of asking us to leave her door open a “crack” when we put her to bed for the night—thought she had found a friend and headed toward the upright trio. “Where are you going?” asked Lia sharply. “To talk to the people,” answered Julia innocently. Lia then scarred Julia for life, condemning her to an existence of endless snobbery, by telling her that there are some people we don’t talk to [Lia didn’t really say this—Ed.]. In the afternoon, the ladies drove out to Fair Haven (they are all havens in this felicitous area) to try that city’s library but arrived, alas, two minutes after closing time. “Please sir,” Eli pled with the security guard, “we seek only a half dozen copies of Walk Two Moons.” Said guard expectorated a capacious wad of tobacco into a spittoon, then answered, “I’m sorry little lady. Three moons, maybe; or perhaps thirty-seven. But never two,” he concluded thoughtfully. “Never two.” Happily, when the ladies returned home Justin had returned from school, and his presence would happify the most downtrodden. Lia made a chicken-based dinner. While the chicken sizzled, Lia stole the moment to check her email. “What is it Suetonius writes?” called out a family wag, “That Nero surfed while dinner burned?” Only Eli laughed. After an FHE lesson on commandments, the girls were put to bed, an event that involved the completion of The Voyage of the Dawntreader. Two volumes to go.

Tuesday (March 13): Justin’s flu struck back with a vengeance and he spent another day in bed. The girls went to the ward play group at Chuck E. Cheese in Milford where Julia rode the horse trolley over and over and over. After repeated complaints from Julia that she was dying of hunger, Lia pulled a muffin bar out of the diaper bag and split it with the persistent youth. Lia then returned to her conversation with Anna Bennett, only to notice a few moments later that Julia was nowhere to be seen. They soon spotted her, though, seated alone in a booth with her partially consumed muffin bar carefully placed in an overturned dish as Julia daintily padded her already clean cheeks with a napkin. In the late afternoon, Justin felt we could all use some fresh air so we took a short family walk. Julia and Eli both giggled with delight as they rode in strollers side by side. In the evening Lia organized a gathering of the BYU alumni in our ward at the request of a representative of the BYU alumni association who happened to be passing through town. We were compensated for our attendance with so much junk food, and as the company dispersed Julia politely saluted one and all: “Thank you guys for coming! Thank you guys for the cookies!”

Wednesday (March 14): “Eli is crawling!” screamed this week’s Birth-to-Three progress report. And it’s true; Eli is now a bona fide, first-rate (in our unbiased opinion) crawler. From this hour no toy, no important document, no lock of hair, no priceless book shall know a moment’s safety. In addition to today’s being Π day (“3.14” for the confused among you), it was also the fourth anniversary of the end of Justin’s mission. He celebrated by sitting woozily through his criminal law class, choking down some greasy cheese pizza as a recruiter extolled the wonders of working for the Department of Justice, and came home around 2 in the afternoon when the real celebration began. Meanwhile, Lia and the girls went visiting teaching at the Turner’s where Julia and Isaac, each an eldest child fond of issuing executive orders, engaged in a power struggle whose détente was enforced from without when Julia and her entourage went home. In the evening, Lia baked a special pumpkin pie for Π day and Justin sang the girls to sleep with the heroic mantra of the Provo High School mathemophiles: “Tangent, secant, cosine, sine—three-point-one-four-one-five-nine!”

Thursday (March 15): Beware the Ides of March! This day marked the one year anniversary of Justin’s admission to the Yale Law School and the first day of the NCAA basketball tournament. In the latter connection, Justin immediately plummeted to the bottom of the YLS bracket wars when the flurry of upsets he predicted failed to transpire. Lia, her zeal for the spirit of Π day overflowing, spent the afternoon making a coconut cream pie and took it with her to book club in the evening (Justin’s relationship with coconut is one of mutually disdainful indifference, so Lia here cashed in on the opportunity to create a coconut-based delicacy that would be appreciated by its devourers). Book club started at 8 p.m., and we decided it would be wisest to try to put Eli to bed before Lia departed. We convinced Julia to play along with the bedtime ritual with the promise that she wouldn’t, in the end, have to go to bed just yet. Alas, Julia fell for her own ruse and both girls were asleep by a quarter to eight. Or so it seemed, until Julia reemerged a few minutes later to stay up late and play with Daddy, heeding the siren call of bed and sleep only at a quarter to ten. Book Club reportedly went well, though Lia’s heart sank when her socks caught the attention of Gretchen Cheney, the gathering’s hostess. “Lia, are you—are you wearing Sponge Bob Square Pants socks?” Lia tried to look at the ceiling and pretend she hadn’t heard, but the damage was done. When Gretchen repeated the question Lia owned up to her infamy with an air of stately defiance. “Yeah, I’m wearing Sponge Bob socks,” said she. “They’re the proverbial bomb.”

Friday (March 16): “Happy birthday Uncle Gabe!” cried Julia and Eli in chorus the second they awoke. But Gabe, miles away, heard them not. Joy School was at our place this morning and all Whitehall was alive with the sound of children’s music, of children’s voices—o how sweet. The lesson called for a trip to the library, but an unseasonable blizzard enveloped New Haven today, so Lia and her aide-de-camp transformed the Whitehall community room into a library instead. Justin missed the fun of Joy School in order to embrace a higher order of fun by rifling through ancient land records at City Hall with a triumvirate of cohorts from his property class. The eighteenth century titles were things of beauty, each beginning with the hearty salutation, “To all Christian persons to whom these presents shall come: Greeting!” In the evening we invited over for dinner a fellow from BYU who was out this way for Harvard’s admitted student weekend and who stopped by to visit Yale (who hasn’t yet responded to his application) while in the area. Justin gave the unfortunate traveler directions to our place with an invitation to stop by around 6:30. After unearthing his rental vehicle from mounds of snow with his bare hands (the car had a scraper but no brush), this anima disgraziata made an abortive attempt to drive up the hill that lay between himself and Prospect St. He called and told Justin he didn’t think he could make it (this at about 7:15). Justin asked where he was and the fellow responded, “Division St.” “Oh,” said Justin merrily, “that’s about a block away from here.” “You mean I could have walked?” asked the incredulous wretch. Not only could have but did, though only after another adventure trying to return the vehicle to its original position. Justin’s cup of commiseration now ran over and he blundered his own way out into the Winter Nightmareland to rescue the poor wayfarer on his way. The two finally returned at about 7:40—our guest having denounced Yale and all therewith associated with such torrential eloquence that Justin’s tender ears fairly shone white—and the now tepid repast was consumed with a hearty good will. Justin repaid the man for his troubles by reciting every favorable report his memory could recall or his imagination invent about the Harvard Law School and inviting Lia to recite the lengthy bill of particulars against the city we now have the misfortune to call our home. Our guest seemed convinced. At a quarter to nine he left our home in wondrous good spirits, vowing for the morrow an heroic trek to “Narnia and the North!” We bid him safe journey and sent him on his way.

Saturday (March 17): Lia, generally accounted a fine chef even by disinterested observers, presented the rest of the family this morning with a breakfast that can only be described as a disaster. The pancakes upon which she had evidently bestowed much labor were an aesthetic calamity, bearing a distinct hue of green (poor, color blind Lia, who confounds green with grey and vice versa, never knew!). Even the milk and the yogurt were green. And she had worked so hard! But while Justin and Eli looked askance at this emerald collation, Julia was delighted, ascribing the colorful curiosities aforementioned to powers of witchcraft she never knew her mother possessed. Julia spent much of the day begging Lia magically to make her milk green again. After the fiasco that was breakfast we looked out the window and were blinded by the reflection of powerful sunlight on mountains of snow. After nursing our sore eyes for a time, Julia and Justin went outside to build a snowman. This effort proved abortive—the top level of snow was an icy sheet; beneath that was a sandpapery powder. So Justin trotted around through the snow with Julia on his shoulders for a minute, found a stray sled in the courtyard and put an unwilling Julia inside, and dragged said sled around a bit until Julia called out dryly that she was cold and wished to go home. So much for fun in the snow. Lia and Eli meanwhile engaged in a spirited parley in which the former sought to persuade the latter that a morning nap was just the thing for her and the latter resisted with a wild intransigence. Predictably, Eli came off conqueror. The rest of the day was, in the always charming lexicon of the vox populi, boring. As boring people ourselves we don’t say this to complain, but rather to advert to the reader that no further entertaining episodes are forthcoming. [Justin forgets that I altered a so-cute shirt Jini had snagged me from the DI bin last year to make it stunningly-so. Just a few well-placed button-holes and some ribbon and lace, for any interested in revamping an old fave.-Ed.]Lia did surprise Justin this afternoon with a warmly phrased declaration that he is more than welcome, warmly encouraged even, to forego all thoughts of an early or even a timely retirement and to go on working well into his eighties or nineties should he burden the planet by living to such an unseemly age. This outburst may or may not be related to the fact of Justin’s having, through a combination of illness and the onset of spring break, spent much of the week at home, doing his best to remain firmly “under foot” as Lia put it in frequent admonitions that he cease and desist, admonitions to which Justin responded by hilariously standing on Lia’s toes and asking, “Under feet or on them, which would you have me?” Once more, only Eli laughed. Julia and Eli took a bath together in the evening—not a noteworthy occurrence per se, but an enterprising photographer captured the event on film (or what can be analogized to film in the digital age) and the product was right charming. Reader goodnight.