Annual Postage, by Becca

It has been nearly a year since our last post and we feel the smart of our Internet absence (though perhaps no one else really does). We've long since finished our Final Fantasy forays and picked up house. That is, we've moved out of our rented shack and into a proper apartment. We like not sharing our bedroom with our kitchen and our living room, as well as keeping our clothes in a real closet instead of a glorified TV cabinet. Not to mention the absence of mold and rodentia.

[Our old haunt—notice also the absence of any space whatsoever]

We've also graduated with two semi-useless degrees (one English Master's degree each—I believe two huzzahs are in order) and had our first child, who has (since birth) learned to roll over, grasp, sit up, scoot, poop through a week's worth of diapers in a day, giggle, eat solid foods, and wear ridiculously cute outfits (which is what he is doing right now. Yes, I mean you, plaid overalls).

About two weeks after giving birth (with my stitches still healing) I began an MFA program in creative writing (that's a Master of the Freaking Arts for those unfamiliar with the degree). My MFA thesis has just recently started to look something like a novel, specifically, a comic middle grade novel about a hypochondriac with a death wish.

As I've worked on that, Jon has taken up a part-time teaching gig, wherein he helps the future dentists of the world perfect their resumes and flesh out their cover letters. We both wonder why those students so often write that dentistry (unlike other professions?) is utterly service-oriented. I'm not sure how performing expensive and largely cosmetic procedures is service-oriented, though my degree doesn't prepare me to answer those types of questions.

In that vein, we don't know what our future will look like in the coming months and years, though we do know it won't be in dentistry. Jon has applied to several PhD programs in poetry and we're waiting for those heavy or slim envelopes to return to us in the mail. I'm confident Jon will get accepted somewhere, though he is less optimistic. All our parents keep asking about it anyhow. Don't worry, we'll let you know the day hour minute second a rejection or acceptance letter arrives. Unless we forget, which is just as likely.

Speaking of parents, this week we enjoyed an all-too-short visit from my parents and homebound siblings (of which there are now only 2, which makes the Provo/Seattle split exactly even: 4 here, 4 there). The family did plenty of skiing, though Jon and I only went for one afternoon, and mostly stuck to the bunny hill. At least we intended to. Jon did some unintentional black diamond skiing, which was both impressive and powdery.

We also had a chance to get family photos from our friend Skoticus while they were in town. I'm excited to see how they turn out and will post the results when they're in.

I'm not sure how else to fill in the gaps between this year and last. I will probably resort to flashback posts now and again as I think of memories that need to be written, which seems to happen every five minutes. I wish I could write exactly what it means to be where we are, what we are, who we are. Maybe in a few years we'll be missing our one-bedroom apartment and our pre-career lives, though it seems hectic and unsteady now. Today I've divided my time between reading student rhetorical analysis papers, revising an essay for Segullah, and mopping up my baby, who not only pulled over a 32+oz cup of water on himself for the second time in his life, but who also has a cold that is even drippier than our leaky kitchen faucet.

But he's so dang cute I don't even mind.

I Love Daddy. from Becca Lee on Vimeo.

Happy blog, everyone. Welcome back.