[Ed. Note: Sorry, folks. Blogger was not handling pictures tonight.]
Dear Reader,
You, or someone you know next door or in a neighboring galaxy cluster, may very likely be one of the seventeen souls who commented on our most recent post. In light of an historical record which indicates that on only a pair of previous occasions have more than two or three of our readers maintained consciousness from the beginning of a post to the end, this figure is utterly astonishing. What can account for this avalanche of observations? Was it the unwonted brevity of that installment? Was it the majesty of our prose? The trenchant vigor of our defiant introduction? Concern that the first photo captured an episode of battery perpetrated by our first child upon our second? Or was it merely that our unseemly screed against the cellular phone constituted the first intelligible paragraph we’ve written since at least last leap year? No one—not even the inestimable Dr. Johnson (he being dead these many years)—can say for certain. But we say to all our readers everywhere—from beneath Connecticut’s autumnal skies, across the plains of corn-subsidized Iowa, into the heartland of India where the Irish lie vanquished at 0-5, throughout the hills and vales of Deseret and down into the deserts of Dixie and Arizona; from the Ozarks to the Amazon; from the Sierras to the Sahara; from Venice to Venus and Juno to Jupiter—let the comments keep coming. Like the mighty Mississippi, let them just keep rolling along. Let them roll. Let them roll on full flood, inexorable, irresistible, benignant, to broader lands and better days in the epic history of this illustrious blog. And so, with apologies to Mr. Churchill and his shameless courting of American public opinion, we proceed.
Monday (September 24): Justin began the lengthy process, which parades under the menacing sobriquet of the Fall Interview Program (FIP—also used as a verb, as in, “How is your fipping coming along?”) of seeking in the early autumn a job for the next summer. The venture was ill-fated from the start. Donning a black suit whose color was preemptively denounced by the Career Development Office (CDO) as dispiritingly funereal and constitutionally incapable of touting his own achievements, Justin plodded on Monday through the first two of four interviews this week, with seven more the following week. Only one of the four firms interviewed with has called back with an invitation for a further interview in Washington D.C. in the weeks ahead. The others were at least kind enough not to laugh at him during the interview. Even so Justin doggedly—recklessly, some might say—hopes against hope to one day enter the lofty ranks of America’s employed citizenry. But no more of these odious matters.
Tuesday (September 25): Lia, Julia, and Eli had a lunch date hosted by Lauren, Madeleine, and Savannah Bayly and attended by the full cadre of Julia’s cohorts (the usual suspects—Elias, Mayah, and the rest). The kids were in heaven, so much so that the declared end of the outing was met with fierce and vocal resistance. As Julia later explained to Justin, “Todd and I were so sad because we didn’t want to go home. And Todd whined and whined and whined.” “I see,” said Justin. “Yes,” added Eli, “like Laman and Lemuel.” For Lia the luncheon was notable for the quality of the soup there served and the company congregated. For the rest of the day she was rhapsodic, bursting periodically into fervent declamations of “Beautiful soup, so rich, so green / Waiting in a hot tureen,” etc. The purpose of the gathering was less to allow the children to run wild than to allow their mothers to socialize. And indeed, for one fleeting moment all the mothers present actually succeeded in seating themselves at the same table at the same time. Time stood still as they shared a restful bite of pie, before one was called to rescue a child calling murder and another to reprimand the accused.
Wednesday (September 26): In the evening we went to the law school as a family for “Community Gelato Night” in the YLS dining hall. What parades in America under the exalted name of “gelato” bears no familial resemblance whatever to the ambrosial substance sold at any gelateria in the bel paese itself. This evening’s fare was no exception. Justin surprised Lia by ordering coconut (which she ordered as well), which Justin generally describes as “the un-flavor.” But the other options were champagne, espresso, cappuccino, lemon, mango, and apple—the first three of which hardly pass muster with the eighty-ninth section of the Doctrine and Covenants, the third and fourth of which can by no lexical carelessness be called gelato, and the last of which was described by its server as tasting “like applesauce” (Julia ordered apple, which in truth tasted like a melted applesauce popsicle, but this is by the by). By our great good fortune, Sander and Bianca Daniels were there cashing in on free ice cream as well, so Lia had a lovely chat with them while Justin fought a losing battle in the war to keep Eli within 100 yards of our watchful parental gaze. Julia took advantage of Eli’s diversionary tactics to pilfer something on the order of a half dozen pistachio cookies. Needless to say our children were pleased with the evening’s windfall.
Thursday (September 27): Travis and Lindsay Sevy, under the transparent pretext of wanting to hear Justin teach, very kindly offered to help watch the girls down in the nursery room during Justin’s Institute class so that Lia could attend the whole of it. The modus operandi was to have Lindsay supervise the fearsome foursome of Julia, Mayah, Asher, and Eli for the first half of the class, then yield the guard to Travis for the second half. The only glitch was that they thought the lesson would end at 8:30 (so, it must be confessed, did Justin), but so great was the interest of the material and the verbosity of the instructor that things pressed on until 9 (which, in fairness, is when the lessons are actually scheduled to end). So Travis did extra duty. This would not ordinarily have been a great burden, except that Travis had the ingenious idea of turning the nursery room table on its side, thus creating a “fortress” within which he and the yahoos could conceal themselves, only to catch Lia and Lindsay unawares in a surprise ambush when they came down from class. The trap was duly laid a couple minutes before 8:30—and there it continued to lay for what was certainly an uncomfortable thirty minutes or so. To make matters worse, Asher entirely blew the surprise by quitting the fortress in a burst of alacrity as soon as Lia opened the door and letting forth an ebullient, if misdirected, cry of “Mama!!!” Mayah still hasn’t forgiven her younger brother for scuttling the assault. On a happier note, the lesson was the unqualified best of the three so far this semester (perhaps not saying much, but there it is), and it becomes increasingly clear that Justin enjoys teaching Institute almost as much as anything else, and certainly more than anything related to the faux-gothic cathedral on 127 Wall Street and the venerable institution it houses.
In the morning, Lia and the girls went raspberry-picking. Julia loved it
because filling her basket helped her feel efficient, productive, and grown-up. Eli loved it because filling her belly with illicitly gotten raspberries pleasantly stimulated her senses; and smearing them across her face was sheer good fun. As the ladies stood in line to pay for their crop Lia noticed a sign appended above an empty bucket, labeled “Sin Bin.” The sign read, “We know, that you know, that we know that your bellies are fuller now than when you entered our orchard. Indulgence may be secured by dropping an offering into these coffers, the proceeds of which will be donated to a charity of our choice.” Eli saw Lia reading the sign and commented that “A few hundred dollars ought to do the trick, Mommy.” Lia gave something less than this, but she did give.
Friday (September 28): We had a special mid-day date today. Lia left the girls with the Wallaces (friends, neighbors, and ward members) in a stunt that more than cosmetically resembled the notorious zucchini ditch and raced down to the law school where she and Justin marched hand in hand into the auditorium to listen to what was billed as a “conversation” between Justices Stephen Breyer and Anthony Kennedy of the United States Supreme Court. The Justices were entertaining and occasionally wise, Breyer being the manifestly keener mind and Kennedy the clearly kinder human. The questions posed by Justin’s classmates left something to be desired, but student questions always do. Lia thoroughly enjoyed listening to 22 percent of America’s highest tribunal. Justin struggled to concentrate for joy at holding Lia’s hand.
The tenderest moment of the day came earlier on, when Julia left for Joy School. Justin, backsliding into the absent-mindedness of days gone by, accidentally left the house with Lia’s keys—which is to say, with the car keys—instead of his own, so Julia had to get a ride to Joy School with Kaylee Peacock. As she watched her big sister climb into the Peacockmobile to drive to the Thompson’s, Eli was inconsolable. “No!” she cried, evidently fearing her hero was gone for good. “Ju-yah! Ju-yah!” she wept. At length she took a nap, but dreamed dreams of loneliness and sorrow.
Saturday (September 29): Justin spent much of the day at the library writing his moot court brief. And what a fun Saturday he had. Lia and the girls meanwhile decided to have as much fun as could be got while their puritanical patriarch was out of the home.
They went to White Sands beach where they waded in the ocean and fed, chased, serenaded, and otherwise harassed unsuspecting sea gulls (or “California gulls,” as one of our high school science teachers insisted they be called). Returned from the beach, Lia did the laundry, Julia made granola, and Eli made raspberry jam. But when Justin came home Lia had the temerity to claim credit for all three. [Ed. Note: Actually, being firmly of the “work first, play afterward” school, we did those chores before going to the beach.] Between dinner and the General Relief Society broadcast, Lia discovered Price-Right and has spent the intervening hours bombarding her beleaguered husband with an interminable recitation of the fabulous deals to be found there. The refrain of this commercial litany is that some product or other costs “just what it would cost at Macey’s in Provo!” So absorbed was our heroine in this newfound world of wonders that she came home later than planned. This would have been fine, except that, by a fickle accident of history, the lot fell to Justin to set up the equipment at the church so the sisters could watch the broadcast (he was the only bishopric member in town). This he had never done before—nor indeed seen done. Unsurprisingly (given his less than stellar track record), the process was marked by what may euphemistically be termed “technical difficulties.” So for the first ten minutes of the meeting the sisters in Zion had sound, but no sight. The problem was at length discovered, though of course not by Justin, and the satellite broadcast moved forward in amazing Technicolor. Justin meanwhile drove home with the girls, who were moderately displeased at being thus separated from their mother (euphemism for: They screamed like the echoes of a thousand banshees and called upon the Reaper to spare them from such sorrows as only they could know). Though Lia certainly reciprocated such feelings of separation anxiety, she managed to enjoy the meeting anyway.
Sunday (September 30): Every child in the New Haven First Ward (and there are hordes of them), our own included, went absolutely bonkers for every second of the 180 minutes of our Sunday meetings. “What’s with the kids today?” asked a brother in our ward, not yet a father. Perceptively, Lia responded that “[t]he moms were all at the Relief Society meeting last night, and the dads were responsible for watching the kids last night and putting them to bed.” So much explained in so few words. The county of New Haven is still reeling from the effects.
Post-mortem. Justin’s cell phone has proved the most resoundingly worthless item ever purchased by the hard-earned assets of humankind. Only one firm has called him at all, and they called our landline in any case. Una piaga sul cellulare e chi lo inventò!
You, or someone you know next door or in a neighboring galaxy cluster, may very likely be one of the seventeen souls who commented on our most recent post. In light of an historical record which indicates that on only a pair of previous occasions have more than two or three of our readers maintained consciousness from the beginning of a post to the end, this figure is utterly astonishing. What can account for this avalanche of observations? Was it the unwonted brevity of that installment? Was it the majesty of our prose? The trenchant vigor of our defiant introduction? Concern that the first photo captured an episode of battery perpetrated by our first child upon our second? Or was it merely that our unseemly screed against the cellular phone constituted the first intelligible paragraph we’ve written since at least last leap year? No one—not even the inestimable Dr. Johnson (he being dead these many years)—can say for certain. But we say to all our readers everywhere—from beneath Connecticut’s autumnal skies, across the plains of corn-subsidized Iowa, into the heartland of India where the Irish lie vanquished at 0-5, throughout the hills and vales of Deseret and down into the deserts of Dixie and Arizona; from the Ozarks to the Amazon; from the Sierras to the Sahara; from Venice to Venus and Juno to Jupiter—let the comments keep coming. Like the mighty Mississippi, let them just keep rolling along. Let them roll. Let them roll on full flood, inexorable, irresistible, benignant, to broader lands and better days in the epic history of this illustrious blog. And so, with apologies to Mr. Churchill and his shameless courting of American public opinion, we proceed.
Monday (September 24): Justin began the lengthy process, which parades under the menacing sobriquet of the Fall Interview Program (FIP—also used as a verb, as in, “How is your fipping coming along?”) of seeking in the early autumn a job for the next summer. The venture was ill-fated from the start. Donning a black suit whose color was preemptively denounced by the Career Development Office (CDO) as dispiritingly funereal and constitutionally incapable of touting his own achievements, Justin plodded on Monday through the first two of four interviews this week, with seven more the following week. Only one of the four firms interviewed with has called back with an invitation for a further interview in Washington D.C. in the weeks ahead. The others were at least kind enough not to laugh at him during the interview. Even so Justin doggedly—recklessly, some might say—hopes against hope to one day enter the lofty ranks of America’s employed citizenry. But no more of these odious matters.
Tuesday (September 25): Lia, Julia, and Eli had a lunch date hosted by Lauren, Madeleine, and Savannah Bayly and attended by the full cadre of Julia’s cohorts (the usual suspects—Elias, Mayah, and the rest). The kids were in heaven, so much so that the declared end of the outing was met with fierce and vocal resistance. As Julia later explained to Justin, “Todd and I were so sad because we didn’t want to go home. And Todd whined and whined and whined.” “I see,” said Justin. “Yes,” added Eli, “like Laman and Lemuel.” For Lia the luncheon was notable for the quality of the soup there served and the company congregated. For the rest of the day she was rhapsodic, bursting periodically into fervent declamations of “Beautiful soup, so rich, so green / Waiting in a hot tureen,” etc. The purpose of the gathering was less to allow the children to run wild than to allow their mothers to socialize. And indeed, for one fleeting moment all the mothers present actually succeeded in seating themselves at the same table at the same time. Time stood still as they shared a restful bite of pie, before one was called to rescue a child calling murder and another to reprimand the accused.
Wednesday (September 26): In the evening we went to the law school as a family for “Community Gelato Night” in the YLS dining hall. What parades in America under the exalted name of “gelato” bears no familial resemblance whatever to the ambrosial substance sold at any gelateria in the bel paese itself. This evening’s fare was no exception. Justin surprised Lia by ordering coconut (which she ordered as well), which Justin generally describes as “the un-flavor.” But the other options were champagne, espresso, cappuccino, lemon, mango, and apple—the first three of which hardly pass muster with the eighty-ninth section of the Doctrine and Covenants, the third and fourth of which can by no lexical carelessness be called gelato, and the last of which was described by its server as tasting “like applesauce” (Julia ordered apple, which in truth tasted like a melted applesauce popsicle, but this is by the by). By our great good fortune, Sander and Bianca Daniels were there cashing in on free ice cream as well, so Lia had a lovely chat with them while Justin fought a losing battle in the war to keep Eli within 100 yards of our watchful parental gaze. Julia took advantage of Eli’s diversionary tactics to pilfer something on the order of a half dozen pistachio cookies. Needless to say our children were pleased with the evening’s windfall.
Thursday (September 27): Travis and Lindsay Sevy, under the transparent pretext of wanting to hear Justin teach, very kindly offered to help watch the girls down in the nursery room during Justin’s Institute class so that Lia could attend the whole of it. The modus operandi was to have Lindsay supervise the fearsome foursome of Julia, Mayah, Asher, and Eli for the first half of the class, then yield the guard to Travis for the second half. The only glitch was that they thought the lesson would end at 8:30 (so, it must be confessed, did Justin), but so great was the interest of the material and the verbosity of the instructor that things pressed on until 9 (which, in fairness, is when the lessons are actually scheduled to end). So Travis did extra duty. This would not ordinarily have been a great burden, except that Travis had the ingenious idea of turning the nursery room table on its side, thus creating a “fortress” within which he and the yahoos could conceal themselves, only to catch Lia and Lindsay unawares in a surprise ambush when they came down from class. The trap was duly laid a couple minutes before 8:30—and there it continued to lay for what was certainly an uncomfortable thirty minutes or so. To make matters worse, Asher entirely blew the surprise by quitting the fortress in a burst of alacrity as soon as Lia opened the door and letting forth an ebullient, if misdirected, cry of “Mama!!!” Mayah still hasn’t forgiven her younger brother for scuttling the assault. On a happier note, the lesson was the unqualified best of the three so far this semester (perhaps not saying much, but there it is), and it becomes increasingly clear that Justin enjoys teaching Institute almost as much as anything else, and certainly more than anything related to the faux-gothic cathedral on 127 Wall Street and the venerable institution it houses.
In the morning, Lia and the girls went raspberry-picking. Julia loved it
because filling her basket helped her feel efficient, productive, and grown-up. Eli loved it because filling her belly with illicitly gotten raspberries pleasantly stimulated her senses; and smearing them across her face was sheer good fun. As the ladies stood in line to pay for their crop Lia noticed a sign appended above an empty bucket, labeled “Sin Bin.” The sign read, “We know, that you know, that we know that your bellies are fuller now than when you entered our orchard. Indulgence may be secured by dropping an offering into these coffers, the proceeds of which will be donated to a charity of our choice.” Eli saw Lia reading the sign and commented that “A few hundred dollars ought to do the trick, Mommy.” Lia gave something less than this, but she did give.Friday (September 28): We had a special mid-day date today. Lia left the girls with the Wallaces (friends, neighbors, and ward members) in a stunt that more than cosmetically resembled the notorious zucchini ditch and raced down to the law school where she and Justin marched hand in hand into the auditorium to listen to what was billed as a “conversation” between Justices Stephen Breyer and Anthony Kennedy of the United States Supreme Court. The Justices were entertaining and occasionally wise, Breyer being the manifestly keener mind and Kennedy the clearly kinder human. The questions posed by Justin’s classmates left something to be desired, but student questions always do. Lia thoroughly enjoyed listening to 22 percent of America’s highest tribunal. Justin struggled to concentrate for joy at holding Lia’s hand.
The tenderest moment of the day came earlier on, when Julia left for Joy School. Justin, backsliding into the absent-mindedness of days gone by, accidentally left the house with Lia’s keys—which is to say, with the car keys—instead of his own, so Julia had to get a ride to Joy School with Kaylee Peacock. As she watched her big sister climb into the Peacockmobile to drive to the Thompson’s, Eli was inconsolable. “No!” she cried, evidently fearing her hero was gone for good. “Ju-yah! Ju-yah!” she wept. At length she took a nap, but dreamed dreams of loneliness and sorrow.
Saturday (September 29): Justin spent much of the day at the library writing his moot court brief. And what a fun Saturday he had. Lia and the girls meanwhile decided to have as much fun as could be got while their puritanical patriarch was out of the home.
They went to White Sands beach where they waded in the ocean and fed, chased, serenaded, and otherwise harassed unsuspecting sea gulls (or “California gulls,” as one of our high school science teachers insisted they be called). Returned from the beach, Lia did the laundry, Julia made granola, and Eli made raspberry jam. But when Justin came home Lia had the temerity to claim credit for all three. [Ed. Note: Actually, being firmly of the “work first, play afterward” school, we did those chores before going to the beach.] Between dinner and the General Relief Society broadcast, Lia discovered Price-Right and has spent the intervening hours bombarding her beleaguered husband with an interminable recitation of the fabulous deals to be found there. The refrain of this commercial litany is that some product or other costs “just what it would cost at Macey’s in Provo!” So absorbed was our heroine in this newfound world of wonders that she came home later than planned. This would have been fine, except that, by a fickle accident of history, the lot fell to Justin to set up the equipment at the church so the sisters could watch the broadcast (he was the only bishopric member in town). This he had never done before—nor indeed seen done. Unsurprisingly (given his less than stellar track record), the process was marked by what may euphemistically be termed “technical difficulties.” So for the first ten minutes of the meeting the sisters in Zion had sound, but no sight. The problem was at length discovered, though of course not by Justin, and the satellite broadcast moved forward in amazing Technicolor. Justin meanwhile drove home with the girls, who were moderately displeased at being thus separated from their mother (euphemism for: They screamed like the echoes of a thousand banshees and called upon the Reaper to spare them from such sorrows as only they could know). Though Lia certainly reciprocated such feelings of separation anxiety, she managed to enjoy the meeting anyway.Sunday (September 30): Every child in the New Haven First Ward (and there are hordes of them), our own included, went absolutely bonkers for every second of the 180 minutes of our Sunday meetings. “What’s with the kids today?” asked a brother in our ward, not yet a father. Perceptively, Lia responded that “[t]he moms were all at the Relief Society meeting last night, and the dads were responsible for watching the kids last night and putting them to bed.” So much explained in so few words. The county of New Haven is still reeling from the effects.
Post-mortem. Justin’s cell phone has proved the most resoundingly worthless item ever purchased by the hard-earned assets of humankind. Only one firm has called him at all, and they called our landline in any case. Una piaga sul cellulare e chi lo inventò!
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5 comments:
Since the comment I *thought* I left last week apparently didn't show up among your voluminous chorus, let me be the first to comment this time! I'm sorry that your cell phone has been quiet so far, but I'm sure that with your stunning good looks, superior intellect, and general charm and charisma (you are, after all, related to me!), more offers should be forthcoming. At least, we hope they will!
I must say that Murphy is against you in your hopes to illicit many comments by openly encouraging readers to leave said comments. Apparently that hasn't stopped me though.
Our ward nicely planned our "Armor of God" presentation for this mornings first hour, which means that ALL adults were freed from other duties in order to attend a special presentation by the bishop. Apparently having the youth lead nursery (resulting in much more time with the toys) is just the ticket for having well behaved toddlers during the lesson.
Juno: An email program; a Roman goddess (Hera in Greek).
Juneau: Capital of Alaska.
And as a a reply to your coming reply... touche!
This particular typo was either Justin's belated punishment for inwardly laughing at a classmate who wrote "Juno" instead of "Juneau" on a state capitals exam in ninth grade geography or our test of the full measure of Trevor's devotion to our blog, which he apparently reads with a critical eye even in a post-Halo-III-release-date world. Our readers can decide.
Congratulations, Justin, on your newly-acquired techno-techniques. Doesn't matter that someone else finished the deal; you got it started. Raspberry jam is my number one favorite. Can't blame eli for a single one of those ill-gotten berries. I'm glad to see that your introducing the girls to the some of the finer things in life--berry pickin'.
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