Leo loves the library.

I know I should write more about everything. Everything. About the move, about Leo's first birthday, about Leo learning to walk, about me and my MFA program, and Jon and his new job in the city, but I just haven't had taken the time.

I do need to post these, however, for my mother.

So here they are. Grandbaby walking.






It was Leo's first walk. He made it about two blocks and then I carried him the rest of the way to the library where he took down two full shelves of books. Even the librarians were chasing him down.

I feel the boy is made for great things.

In which we vacate.

We have just built a barricade out of an old cardboard box. It comes up to my knees and wraps around the computer desk and the legs of my chair so that Leo can't stickify my legs and computer. He climbs up the side of the cardboard and pokes his head over the top so that only his eyes are visible. Then he giggles like a girl and pops out of sight again.

We've had a good summer so far. Most days we run in the mornings (I run. Leo rides in style), then hop in the pool for an hour or so. While Leo sleeps I try to finish things, like dishes and laundry and my epic middle grade novel.

I went to my conference, rubbed elbows with some excellent writers and editors and the literary agent of my dreams (Mary Kole of kidlit.com), and came home with many excellent ideas for rewrites. I've only taken that thing out once in the past month but I'm still a writer.

Earlier this summer we visited Jon's sister in Arizona, where it was too hot to breathe. We went to the zoo and swam and learned about Indians (the teepee kind, not the outsourcing kind). We watched Dr. Who and played games and saw cacti and went on an art walk. Lovely.

There were cousins and monkeys and plenty of dirt-eating.

Just kidding. That wasn't from Arizona. That was from Washington. I meant this one:

But yes, weeks later we went to the Jensen corner of the country, up to Orcas Island by car and by ferry and, for Jon, by little plane. We kayaked and combed the chilly beaches for crabs.

We hiked around waterfalls and walked through the shops on the island, we even treated ourselves to Bumbleberry pie at Passionate for Pies. Of course, we ate far too much, but that is just the way of the Jensens. Fat.

[fat].

Since then it's been Jon's season for work. He was offered a job today. There would be a long daily commute, which he'd probably take by bus, but it seems like a good fit so far. He may just take it.

As for me, I've done a lot of home-maker-ish type things lately. Mostly it's because Leo won't let me sit down at the computer (as soon as I do he's squawking and squealing such awful sounds). He prefers to sit at my feet in the kitchen and pull towels and rubbermaids out of the within-reach drawers while I do whatever it is I can do while he's distracted.

And so I've spent plenty of time in the kitchen. I do the dishes almost, nearly, close to every day (which is a thing I never thought I'd say). But I also have started to teach myself the art of canning (which is also a thing I never thought I'd say). I'm fascinated by the whole process. I think of that crate of apricots from the back of

the fridge now packed away in tight glass jars, stirred up with cardamom and poured through a funnel. I'll pull it out in winter months and try to remember when my feet burned on the sidewalk after jumping out of the pool.

And by then, by then we'll live in a house.

And so we're moving at the end of this month. To a house. A house with a fireplace and wood floors and a yard with rose bushes. It also has a crumbling sidewalk out front and a patch of weeds around the side that could rival a jurassic rainforest, which might be why it's within our price range. Still, I'll have room to stretch and stow my books. We'll finally have a room to use as a study. Right now the computer just hangs out wherever. I'll finally have workspace, a room of my own to tack over with book ideas and pictures of places I want to write.

I've already started packing, but July can't limp along fast enough.

We will, as always, keep you posted.

Eventually.

In which Leo hits his head and claps

But not in that order.

We're giving you a small update.

We got our wrecked car repaired. We were happy that we didn't have to replace it. Sad, of course, to be parted with our money like fools (for wrecking it in the first place). But happy that we had enough padding in our savings not to miss a meal.

We lately found out we're not going to any PhD programs, acceptance notwithstanding. The pickings are too slim to entice.

We also found out we're not going to Wisconsin, which was off the table almost as quickly as it was on. It's been stressful, but we've decided to stay so I can finish my MFA. Time will tell if we've been fools for yet another year. I'll try to win a few more contests to see if we can make our money back. Or maybe I'll land one of those seven-figure advances that seem to be floating around Utah Valley. I'll keep working on my rewrite (that's right). Try to turn it into cash.

Then again, my novel has neither mermaids nor love-struck werewolves, so probably not.

Leo is blissfully ignorant of all our Decision Making and has not only been crawling, but clapping, sitting, chewing, toothing (there's really just one in there, though we felt the start of another this morning) as well as pulling himself up to stand. It's nerve-wracking and bruise-inducing, but he's not managed anything more than minor brain damage so far.

Kidding, of course. He's fine.

And to prove it, we'll play you this video.

Leo Claps from Becca Lee on Vimeo.

Not a lot, but some.

Leo crawled.

The Post That Ends With a Smash

When I was younger, our family used to keep a big ole journal of things we talked about during family night that week.

I remember that part of this was complaints or Issues that the family had to Deal With that week. I suppose now that this was our parents' attempt at involving all the kids in a sort of democratic problem-solving real-worldy situation, but it tended to end in nothing but blood and tears. And some pretty brutal passive aggression.

If you flip through the journal, you'll find some inspiringly snottish entries that we came up with all by ourselves.

Sarah thinks that we should all take our dishes to the sink after we eat instead of leaving them on the table because it's polite and proper and it saves people time when it's their night for the dishes.

Mom thinks that we should make sure to flush twice if it doesn't go down the first time, or go get Dad as soon as there's a problem.

Rachel thinks that people should ask before taking other people's clothes especially since they always stretch them out anyway.

Becca thinks people shouldn't make implicit comments about other people's body types during Family Meeting.

and so on.

It got to be such an awful moment during family night that eventually we banned the practice altogether.

Instead, we started family night by filling in good things that we'd done that week. These are far more entertaining, and just about as uncomfortably revelatory as our Issues entries.

Sarah played a great game on Saturday [code for: she didn't win, but we all took the time to go and watch, so we better write it down].

Becca finished Little Women this week. [code for: Becca has no friends].

Heidi went poop in the big girl potty. [code for: well, you know].

A few years ago, before I married Jon, I was home for a few weeks in the summer. We had a family night and just happened to take out that ole journal again. Having wised up, we went straight for good things and skipped over The Issues.

We started with the youngest and worked our way up the sister list.

As it turns out, that was a very productive year for me. I'd won first place in the best paying fiction contest on campus, was awarded a scholarship for academic excellence, had a paper accepted at the Wordsworth Summer School in the UK, was granted two scholarships to attend and present at the conference, plus I received my BA in English.

And then it was Rachel's turn.

Rachel is The Oldest sibling and tends to suffer the most from my insatiable over-achiever mentality (again, read as: no friends). She is a sweet and charming person who has always been in high demand in our shared social worlds. But on top of that, she is perhaps the best person to have around when you need someone to take charge in a crisis (as you will see later on in this post).

But as it turns out, this year was not as kind to Rachel as it was to me.

Her entry was:

Rachel got a great base tan this year.

No I am not even joking.

So I confess that as I started jotting down our family achievements for the week I was worried that Jon would not even have a good base tan to record, but since then he's outdone me on several accounts, as you will also find out later in this post.

I was inspired to write down a few good things that have happened in the Ogden pod recently. Mostly because I've never really outgrown that desire to enter in, point by point, all the little things that tickle my chin with pride. But also because this was a week for firsts for us, and these are firsts worth recording.

For starters, I just found out that I won:

3rd place in the Elsie C. Carroll Essay Contest
2nd place in the Mayhew Specialty Short Story Contest
1st place in the Anne Doty fiction contest

I also presented a chunk of my thesis at the English Symposium on Friday, and I went to see Markus Zusak at the Provo Library on Saturday, which meant that I heard him speak at around 6:00pm and waited until about 12:15 am to get his signature on my dog-eared copy of The Book Thief.

For Leo this week, I have this to say:

He eats Cheerios like a maniac
Is fun to party with (we really can bring him anywhere, and he is a total delight, as we discovered at our lemon-flavored dinner party this week).
Scoots like a maniac
Didn't even cry as we painted him yellow and orange at this year's Holifest



And Jon:

Was accepted at University of Texas, Dallas
Has discovered that Leo laughs when you say "cat" to him
Didn't even cry when we painted him yellow at this year's Holifest



Nor did I, now that you mention it. In orange.


Though there, Leo looks less convinced.

Yes, we had a great time at Holifest. We smeared our family with colors and ate delicious vegetarian food and enjoyed the reactions of the crowds as we wandered the temple grounds. Most of them thought Leo looked cute, and a chorus of "awwwws" and "cuuuuutes" echoed after us where we went. A few crusty mothers shot dirty looks our way, but we figured that was because they must have forgotten their babies at home and so were jealous of our technicolor babe in arms.


Heidi came with us this year. It was such a spooky delight.


We had a lovely time, dusting each other with rainbowed corn starch and trying to remember not to lick our painted lips or scratch our powdered noses. After a few hours it was time to head back to Provo.

The walk from the temple back to our little white Nissan was a long one. At first, when we passed people Leo was lively and chirping. We amassed scores of compliments and awwws and cuuuutes, but as Leo began to calm and quiet and slip into sleep (looking a little more dead), the awwws were more often accompanied by "poor thing" and "who does that?" and "whoa, that's a real baby!" I am not sure who brings fake babies out and about, but several people made this comment so it must happen more often than I realize.

At the car, we stripped out of our most powdered layers and buckled up for the 20-minute ride, sheets and old towels spread beneath us to catch our shedding colors.


We were happy and bouncy and chalked up with rainbows and high spirits.

(Eminem Leo)

And we were not, could not, should not, have been expecting this:

We'd passed through a green light with a steady stream of traffic. Cars on the left passed us so fast. Then the car in front of us was stopped and Jon said "Oh no!" and slammed on the breaks and

crunch.

No one was hurt. We were safe, safe, safe. The car in front of us was dinged by us, and we think that driver hit the car in front of her before we hit her from behind. We pulled into a parking lot at a bank by the side of the road, and waited for the police to arrive.


After they finished their report, we got in our little dinged thing and tried to start our car.

It was silent.

We spent the next hour or so making phone calls, to Rachel first, then to Mom, then six or seven auto repair shops. None of them open. Finally, the last number we called picked up, the man said we could tow in our car and leave it there over the weekend. As we waited for Rachel, we saw three cars get into the same wreck we'd just gotten into. It was a treacherous intersection, and looking back, we're not sure how it could have been avoided.

Rachel ended up saving our hides and our money. After we called, she got in touch with her close friend Mike. His parents lent him their suburban and a few tow ropes. Rachel and Mike drove down to pick us up and tow us out, so we didn't need to afford a tow truck. Mike pulled us to the auto repair shop, a slow and knuckle-clenching ride, with Jon steering our dead beaten car from behind.


We've both thought through the accident time after time, neither of us knowing what Jon could have done differently. It was a dangerous intersection, and Jon is a safe driver. It was bitter consolation to see the accident repeated, but we felt good knowing we didn't misstep.

In all likelihood, the Nissan is totaled. Jon has fond memories of that car. It was his first and only car. It was the car that drove us to dates, that drove all our belongings from one place to another, and that drove us home from the hospital when Leo was born (and we drove as if over eggshells).

So this week, I will write two:

One for Rachel:

Did what she always does when someone, anyone besides herself doesn't know what to do: she took care of it.

And one for Jon:

Did just what he should have done, could have done, would have done and still the car was wrecked.

And that's one for the books.

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.

I've Practiced Laziness so Frequently I'm Fluent

It's been a while since we've posted, but not because we've been swamped with school work. The thing is, I recently found a version of the very first Final Fantasy and Becca likes to watch me play it. (I keep asking her, "you really like this? It's just a little red guy wandering around pixelly forests and then suddenly a few imps flash on the screen for a bit." But she says it's fun, and, yes, it's Disneyland without lines or sticky seats, so . . .)

In honor of Final Fantasy's twentieth anniversary we're clipping the time we spent blogging to slaughter imps.

Little red guy wandering:


Imps: