Lots of Text

Since we prevaricated in last week's title, we will this week as well. Our text editor wiled away the evening looking at the profiles of any number of Yale European History PhD candidates, gauging whether he indeed has a chance of admission to the program. Convinced that the admissions department would be knocking on our door this very second if only they knew he had an interest, he went to bed happy but blog-less. So, our photo editor, as atonement for utter neglect last week, will take over this week.

Reviewing backwards, Lia's New York grandparents stopped by Sunday on their return from their annual tree-hugging tour. Here they are.

Friday we will mention--and turn to our text editor for the task--because it was such an enjoyable evening. Like so many enjoyable evenings, this was an evening conceived in fear and dedicated to the proposition of preemptive remedy. The driving fear was an anxiety, sustained by sad experience, on the part of Lia and the inestimable Bianca Daniels that their husbands would make disastrous fools of themselves--and thereby endanger their prospects for future employment--during the mealtime examinations of their upcoming interviews with large D.C. law firms. In short, Lia and Bianca worried that Justin and Sander, however otherwise admirable, might in a day not distant be weighed in the balance of social graces and be found wanting. The remedy these ladies ingeniously designed was to resurrect that old bugaboo of the nightmares of young boys: the etiquette dinner. Although, unlike most etiquette dinners, this one imbibed deeply of the agonistic spirit Lia inherited both from the Hellenic half of her classical education and from her hyper-competitive father, who reportedly, while in the neonatal ward, challenged the adjacent infant to see whether of the two could look the purplest.

The rules of our etiquette game were these: each participant started at zero and lost a point for each successive faux pas. The ladies had the distinct advantage of having spent the day devouring one Emily Post codex or another with the assiduity of an aspiring princess before junior prom. They also had the advantage of knowing the laws of etiquette, or of making them up as they went along without their husbands' ever knowing the difference. Still, the match was a close one. Justin impardonably laid his knife on the table rather than his plate, in response to which Sander pointed the finger of scorn and hooted with all the haughty enthusiasm of a triumphant Orangutang. By Bianca's fiat Justin lost one point; Sander fourteen. This was a hard hole for the erstwhile exultant Mr. Daniels to climb out of, and he never quite did (though he managed to finish ahead of Julia, who lost a point for each of the twenty-seven times she left the table without appropriately laying her napkin on her chair or to the left of her plate; and Eli, who lost something on the order of four million points for various and sundry offenses, not the least of which was her systematic seeking to strew the Collings household with fetuccini). The race, as everyone knew in advance, was really between Lia and Bianca, neither of whom dared to note the faults of the other and both of whom reddened at their husband's manifest disinclination (more likely, inability) to do so on their behalf. Both ladies left the event certain in their heart of hearts of having won a great victory.

The meal ended, Sander and Justin could bear no longer the strain of gesturing toward that mysterious state commonly called one's "best behavior," and so each heaved a great sigh of relief and let down his proverbial guard. For Sander, this took the form of taking to the piano for a virtuoso performance of Pachelbel's Canon, of which he methodically played every note in the course of thirty-seven minutes' plodding. Fortunately, Sander did not overhear Bianca's comment from the kitchen that she felt, "as though I've just been shot by Pachelbel's cannon." From the pianoforte, Sander moved to the guitar, at which he fared somewhat better, though he was still outshined by Julia, who sang every word of "Hey there, Delilah" to Lia's accompaniment. Justin, who plays no instruments at all, had a hard time of not bursting forth in the rousing recitative of "La donna e' mobile," but he managed for once to yield the stage.

For the sake of not belying the title of this post, we cut short our account of Friday evening's festivities. Did they reassure the anxieties of the worried wives? Not at all. But those anxieties were forgotten amid the exuberance of a hearty meal and a perceived victory on the field of etiquette.

Thursday Lia and the girls piled in the bull, popped in the Bumblebee tape, and prepared themselves to scoff at "Mr. Stand-on-One-Leg" and "Peek at a Peacock". They most unfortunately chose as a lunch spot benches next to the American Bison exhibit. The smell was less than appetizing and one of their party suffered a puncture to the head (from a fall on a rock, not from an escaped bison). Luckily, another of their party had been to the State Preparedness Fair the previous weekend and had her first-aid kit with her, so the victim was bandaged in record time. Even more luckily, another of their party had made brownies to share, so he was soothed as well.

In other news, tired of our child looking like a shaggy canine, Lia trimmed Eli's bangs. Justin opines she now looks like a medeival warrior. The constancy of her war-shrieks would lead any auditor to fear her Crusades are far from a termination.

Grandma sent a package of winter clothes, including matching, homemade princess pajamas. Here are the girls sporting the Cinderella line.

And, finally, medeival warrior though she be, Eli continues to be our resident fashion diva.