Last week catch up

I doubt (and hope) that anyone checks for new posts this late in the week, but now that we're making hard-copies of our blog in order to preserve our family history (Blurb.com, check it out!), for the sake of continuity, Lia will do a brief update of the week ending February 10th.

Monday, Feb. 7th, Julia and Eli played with Itamar and Lia collected payment from Itamar's mother for the privilege. Whether from his burgeoning acquisition of the English language or from his inherent easy-going nature, Itamar is fair game for any little charade Julia can conjure. Julia loves having a "prince" literally at her beck and call and spends most of her time with Itamar accepting invitations (from herself) to take a magic carpet ride, to ride away on gallant steeds, or to dance under so many stars. Poor Itamar. Monday night of course means Family Home Evening; this week's being fairly non-descript, we will take the opportunity to record some traditions that have sprung up. As soon as Justin announces, "It's Monday night, guys, guess what that means?" Julia excitedly shouts, "Family Home Evening!" as she races to position her and Eli's chairs. After waiting with bated breath for the heads of household to assume their positions, she cordially offers, "Welcome to Family Home Evening, everybody. Mommy, any announcements?" After Lia lists the activities for the upcoming week, Julia continues. "Okay, first we'll have an opening song. Mommy, what should we sing?" and regardless of the suggestion, she answers, "And then how about my song of 'Joy to the World?'" (Admittedly, this was a change that occurred at Christmas; for all eleven months before December, we usually sang "Angels We Have Heard on High.") Before we can sing, though, there is a desperate call, "Wait! Where's my stick?" Because somewhere, sometime, Julia noticed that at some Mormon Tabernacle Choir performance, the conductor used a stick. The stick is usually lost, and so we have to spend a good ten minutes hunting for it before we can continue on with our devotions. Such inanities of course put everyone into the worst of spirits and so we have determined that sticks are, undoubtedly, the spawn of Satan. Just kidding. Here are the sticks in all their musical glory. Julia's is a broken antenna from an old radio; Eli's a piece of a cloth hamper. Eli has not only picked up with a relish on the stick tradition, but also with the whole welcoming ceremony. She many times a week will climb atop some high perch (usually our kitchen trash can, a forbidden playground for obvious reasons) and sputter out something along the lines of "Welcome, vuhbody Famveevning. Mommy, nnnnnnnnouncements?"

Returning to singular weekly events, Super Tuesday brought great fun indeed. We, with the Sevys, raided our friends the Thompsons home to watch election returns. The Sevys brought pizza to make themselves more welcome; the Collings only their dazzling smiles and the promise of witty slams on political rivals. The mothers of the respective families skipped out early to attend a Women in the Scriptures Institute class, from which enamoring discussion Lia pulled herself to do some yoga with the Yale Law Wives. By 8 pm the Sevys, noticing their pizza and thus, probably, welcome was at an end, graciously bid their hosts adieu; Justin figured he had at least another half hour's worth of wit to make himself wanted company. By 8:30 the dazzle from those smiles had certainly dulled, almost to a level commensurate with said wit, and there was still no sign of Lia. Justin did what anyone would do in such circumstances: sat morosely on the couch, asking every five minutes of the hostess (because along with no car, he had no watch) what time it was. Until finally, at 9:30, he decided they had better just take matters into their own hands and ask for a ride. En route to the door, they ran into a wholly-at-one-with-the-universe Mommy, who was quickly brought into a not-so-at-one-with-the-universe state when she discovered the Sevys had left over an hour ago and there were seven people who really would have liked to see her about the same time.

Wednesday, Feb. 6th, Lia determined--what with our loan having coming in and a huge tax rebate coming her way, courtesy of the United States Congress--to end a five year hiatus from the dentist and get every cavity filled and a cleaning to boot. Imagine her pleasant, make that ebullient, surprise to discover she could go ahead and make it TEN years the next time she visited a dentist: she had not a cavity in her whole head. In truth, upon discovering that routine visits to tooth doctors actually DON'T "cost a whole lot more than a broken dishwasher"--as her mother has avowed for years--Lia has decided to number herself among the hygienic members of civilization and go in for a cleaning every six months. Or so.

Friday, Feb. 8th, Joy School convened at the Collings' home to plumb the mysteries of the letter "J". One of the highlights was teaching the children to do Jumping Jacks. If any of our readers have three year olds at home or in the neighborhood, we highly recommend this lesson. It's hilarious. The really humorous part came, though, when, in the middle of eight pairs of arms and legs flailing arythmically round our living room, Elias Thompson of Super Tuesday fame yelled menacingly with one arm outstretched "Stop!", and threw himself down into the yoga position Child's Pose, straining to find some peace in the midst of all this confusion (the jack-jumpers hadn't found his appeal menacing enough to arrest their bouncings). He was down there for quite a while, and it does lead one to wonder what precise sort of yoga his mother teaches him at home, that so closely resembles a gaggle of three year olds doing jumping jacks.

That evening Sander and Bianca Santos-Daniels obliged us for a night of games. We had heard Bianca was competitive. This is indeed the case. Justin and Lia silently consulted whether they ought not purposely to throw the game just to preserve their warm friendship with this good couple. To this end, Lia, when faced with the dilemma of inducing Justin to guess the name "Sheherezade" offered that she thought it was a "composer," though it could be a "Russian diplomat of the Bolshevik era", but that it was also quite possibly "a horse". Later, she began describing an individual labeled as historical: "Okay, oh boy, last name is the same as the general in WWII, I think he was in the Pacific..." "Macarthur." "Right! Okay, first name....oh boy, I don't know anyone else...." "Douglas Macarthur?" "Yes!" *Beep* "Lia, that IS the general in WWII." Obviously Justin had deduced the wrong answer to whether we ought to throw the game or not.

Saturday morning, Lia went across town for an hour or so to help the woman mentioned in a previous post arrange her things after her move. It was a lofty goal. A move that requires 18 men and two full truckloads necessarily will require a lot of arranging, so Lia was in working mode. "What can I do, Dolores?" She asked, poised to pounce on whatever task was set before her. "I need them dishes moved. They're too heavy for where them other girls put them, we have to move 'em into the China closet." [Note: It has been surmised by some that Dolores may have a mild case of Turrets Syndrome which causes her to swear whenever she begins, ends, or pauses her speech. We will not recreate that.] Lia set to work with alacrity. "My goodness, Dolores! Why do you have all these dishes?" Lia exclaimed, eying the four complete sets of 8-setting dinnerware this single woman had. "Some of 'em is MINE, and some of 'em was my MOTHUH'S! And I am not about to give away my mothuh's dishes. She sent 'em to me, she sent 'em to me from Mississippi...she had the preachuh over fuh dinnuh EVry Sundy, and them is NICE dishes. My mothuh ALWAYS said to buy, she said to me 'Dolores, you gotta buy nice,' and that's what I do. That's what she did, and I am NOT about to give my mothuh's dishes away...." about at this point, Lia, in her zeal to be helpful, hurriedly reached to a top shelf to take down a teacup of this blessed mother's dish set. Too hurriedly, as it happened, because said teacup fell, like so many anvils, onto a ceramic kitchen container shaped like a mushroom--one of a nine-piece set--sitting below, shattering them both. Lia froze in horror, not daring to turn around. Dolores stood just behind her, neither breathing nor speaking. Finally, "Dolores, I am so sorry. Is there any way I can replace it?" Still, stony silence. "My cousin made them mushrooms. Ain't another set like 'em anywhere." Then, after another pause, "It's all right. Coulda happened to me. Coulda happened to me. Coulda happened to me..." Lia slowly reached for another dish, but Dolores shouted, putting out a hand to stop her, "No! Let's not do dishes. I'll do the dishes latuh. You can...you can....I need to wrap these wire hangers up. One of my girlfriends gonna be comin' by to git 'em. You wrap these hangers." It was a long hour.