Resolves

I've been explaining these resolutions to myself in my head for several weeks now. I think I have them sort of worked out, even though my very first resolution was against resolve:

1) Be more aware and observant. Be present with people and don't let goals and what you think should be happening get in the way of what is. So all of the things on this list are subject to number one, and I have to be ready and willing to let them go if they interfere with number one. Number one is my guiding principle for 2011. Unless observation tells me to get rid of number one. Or something like that.

2) Go for a walk once a week. This seems modest and attainable, and perhaps shocking to you folks who love the outdoors. Christian has dubbed me the indoors-y type, and he couldn't be more right. I'm so happy in a small, cozy hole, like Mrs. Tittlemouse. But I think I'll be happier if I get more sunlight, look around more.

3) Formally express gratitude once a week.

4) Read the New Testament.

5) Finish the libretto begun in 2010.

6) Limit kids' screen time to weekends only, thereby giving us more time for:

7) Family novel reading. Ingrid jolted me into this one last week when I commented about how much she and Eva used to read and loved to be read to. "Yeah," she said. "No computers." I've become lazy with the kids and don't read to them as much. They get crabby, lazy, and unimaginative when they're online or watching TV too much. Eva and Ingrid didn't have a TV a lot of the time growing up, and I want the younger kids to have the benefit of limited screen time. If you're so inclined, list your favorite read alouds for an almost six and almost eight year-old. I read Harry Potter to E and I at that age. We read Stuart Little and Little House on the Prairie last year.

8) Go to Salt Lake once a month. Now that the kids are a bit older, I need to get out of my rut of a quick dinner or movie in Provo and get back to my earlier, more adventurous ways. We used to go to so many cool events, which was easy to do when we lived in NYC, San Francisco, and Seattle. It's a little harder to do here, but necessary to maintaining a connection with what's going on artistically in the world.

9) Work on duo with Christian. In the picture above, snapped by our friend Hailey Meyer Liechty, we are performing with master percussionist Greg Campbell at our December Salon. A link to our duo can be found on the side of the blog. I really enjoy this work, and want to do it more. It feels like a perfect meshing of our particular skills and relationship. The text, the improv (it's all improvised except for the text), Christian's genius with timbre and form, etc.

10) Work in small, daily practice, like I learned to do in yoga, but with my job/career/art or whatever it is called. I don't even know what it's called or what it is. Be comfortable with that. Let it be what it is and just do little, enjoyable things with little enjoyable challenges. But don't be in charge. Don't try to control. Just live and do. (Please don't mock my mish-mash of eastern philosophy influenced thinking here. It's working for me right now.)

There is almost nothing I love more than hearing other people's New Year's Resolutions. Feel free to post many of them in comments.

xo

Last Minute Christmas List

I just found Cecily's wish list in her back-pack.  Here it is, with first grade spellings maintained:

*iphon

*sel phon

*500 bux

*swimming pool

*yoyo boll

*bendaroos

*laptop

*kamra

and, best of all:

*servint

I'm running out to the store right now.

Merry Christmas!

introduction/conclusion

Even though I cringe when my kids bring home their fifth/sixth grade five paragraph essays with the thesis repeated in both the intro and conclusion, a practice I have to undo in every writing class I teach later on down the road, this particular example of thesis restatement transcends with it's incredible cuteness:

Dear Mom and Dad,

Doesn't everyone love a family bike ride? Or a beautiful peace of art?

or even just a great pair of shoes? Well those happen to be the 3 things I want for christmas and I'm about to tell you why I want those things.

The first reason I want a bike is because we live in Provo and if I had a bike I could ride so many places like school. It would also be better for the earth. And plus I've always wanted a bike.

The second thing I want for Christmas is a set of markers. The first reason is Grandma and Grandpa always ask me to draw pictures for them but all my markers are kind of dried out so I gave them to Moses and Cecily. And if I get a big set of markers I won't have to get markers for school.

The next thing I want for christmas is simply a couple of pairs of shoes. The first reason is, winter is coming and I'm going to need some good shoes, and also there are these shoes called Uggs that I really want.

Those are the reasons why I want shoes, a bike and a set of markers.

Sincerely,

Lula

Hercules Beetle

I saw one of these today, a real one, dead, pinned against moth-repellent in a drawer of beetles housed in the Bean Museum's insect collections.  The most interesting things in the exhibit, however, were the boy specimens--four seventh-grade boys I was chaperoning on a tour of the insect collection guided by a nerdly entomologist who somehow captivated their attention for an hour and patiently tried to find specimens that would satisfy their curiosity about:

*the biggest insect in the collection (do you want wingspan?  no, just massive.)

*the smallest insect in the collection (fleas on alcohol slides)

*the most deadly (the bee, fyi, who is the most dangerous animal by far in the U.S.)

*the weirdest (these huge walking-stick type insects from New Guinea)

*butterflies with clear wings and owl moths

Suddenly those boys were the cutest things I've ever seen, their baby faces, that in three or four years will be handsome, animated and looking engaged  with the material in a way  that I don't often see in the classroom.  Being that I teach English.  (In my limited experience with Jr. High and High School boys, many of them seem particularly resistant to writing in the classroom, or maybe they're just resistant to me.)  

I wish I could make this happen every day, but for now having a beautiful moment among 2,000,000 specimens  of insects was just really, really good.

momo post-it

Look who's making progress. . . . Moses did a fantastic job today with his gentle hands! Anytime he thought about forgetting, I'd remind him of his kudo, and he'd snap right back into gentle mode. He is such a great kid! Keep up the awesome work!

Love,

Miss Bryn

darling blog,

I missed you whilst in Seattle and whilst being too hot and covered in children to really write you. And I got a little freaked out about posting pictures because, you see, everyone else's blogs have beautiful pictures and mine is so text-heavy. Because the shape of letters is so beautiful and, though they take so much longer to decode than picture images, have so many more layers to them. The pictures readers make from the words they read in their own minds are so much more varied and mysterious. I guess that's what I'm after. Mystery. Like film noir--so much is off-screen.

So picture this, from Seattle:

*Eva's Curryish Rubbed Roast
*Alice's Roast Pork Braised in Cherry Juice
*Chard Frittatta made with Farm Box Produce
*Pizzettas topped with Wild Mushrooms or Baby Zucchinis or New Potatoes
*Alice and Jim's Salmon, maybe doused in Pernod? with Fresh Sage
*Dick's Deluxe Burger
*Alice's Chocolate Cake (from Chez Panisse Desserts?) featuring Ground Almonds
*Molly Moos' Strawberry Balsamic Ice Cream
*Lara's Mashed Potatoes, Made the Way Jim and Robin Like Them: 8 lbs. Potatoes to TWO sticks of butter, Hand Mashed (I don't think I left enough lumps in)
*Alice's Korean Pancakes with Dipping Sauce

Add the smell of brine from the sound, or the smell of misty Seattle and the layered beauty of that town--all hillocks and nooks and crannies and ocean, lake, mountain, concrete, neon, tree, and boat mashed and crashed together--

A Bit of Calm

We were fortunate enough to have both Christian's and my entire family in town for the last couple of weeks. As you can imagine, it was tough to divide the time. My family is resplendent with toddlers and babies, beautiful, funny, squeezable, sometimes crying, sometimes vomiting (they all got a stomach thing, efficiently passed from tot to tot) red, tow, and chocolate-headed wee ones. Christian's family now seems staid in comparison to mine (yes, I'm referring to the riotous, combative, hilariously fun Asplunds). Today I had breakfast with two of my four sisters before driving the last one to the airport. Christian's brother Mark is freshly in town from his new home in Delhi, and I'm looking forward to hanging out with him in the near future.

At the moment there's a rare lull in the summer fun: Lula invited in-town cousins "The Twins" to our house for a tea-party, over which she is presiding with aplomb. Christian, Eva and Ingrid are headed for Salt Lake to see Bon Iver perform, and I will soon take Lula, Cecy, and Momo to the Creamery for burgers and then to Kiwanis Park so Lula and Cecily can hit a few balls on the tennis courts.

I'm taking a quick blogging break from reading War and Peace--it's really funny and entertaining, did you know? Because the big girls and I are holding an impromtu W and P book club for the summer. Let me know if you wanna join. You'll need to read about 50 pages a day for the next five weeks to keep up. I'm surprised at how fast it's going. I'm not sure I chose the right translation (Constance Garnett, Modern Library Edition). We're discussing every Thursday. The thing I'm really happy about right now is that I have the entire rest of the evening, minus a time out for dinner and bedtime routine, to read a big, absorping novel. Nothing better than that.

No real cooking has occured here for at least a week, but some good eating happened: Green Corn Tamales at McCondo, Potato Rosemary Pizza from Pizzeria 712 (and Amano Chocolate Pudding), Shrimp Dumplings and Grilled Potatoes with lime mayo and srriacha from Rooster, a Veggie Scramble at Guru's and oh yeah, the one thing I did make: a decent, but not perfect, rice pudding. I'm still working on getting a consistency that is pleasing when the pudding is hot or cold, and on getting the right amount of sweetness. I have to confess that I also loved eating KFC at the park in South Fork, right by the river, with the really, really delicious watermelon that mom brought. If you have to eat fast food from a chain, it's hard to beat the Colonel.

Tell me more summer stories. I know there are some good ones out there. Especially from people who are in Trinidad right now, all hot and sweaty.

cooking lessons OR all in a panic

You know those lists of things you should have taught your kid by the time they're eighteen? Things like how to change oil, balance a check book, etc.? I'm in a panic realizing I only have one year left to get Ingrid's list checked off, and though Ingrid bakes a killer cake or batch of cookies, I haven't really taught her how to cook.

Where do I start? What are five dishes you need to know before you have to start feeding yourself like a big girl? I was thinking Marinara, as that was the first thing I really learned to do on my own (besides cookies, toast, and scrambled eggs.) But what else?

lula's birthday

Post blow-out


All ablaze, foreshadowing the unsupervised fireworks that took place in the cul-de-sac moments later.
Cake by Mom, prettiness by Eva

Last night I had twenty screaming 11 year-olds at the house for Lula's birthday party. Today I'm lying on the couch an exhausted quivering jelly. I'm all partied out, as you can see from the last few posts. We're hosting a Locust Salon at our house on Saturday night and then that's it. No more entertaining until fall, I swear.

father's day

Daddy's day brunch--flowers by Eva

Cherry turnovers

Not nearly as fancy as he deserves.

welcome home ingrid bash

Nathaniel in a tree.


Ingrid's darling foot getting henna'd
Beautiful cake (authentically German) made by beautiful Mirjam

German flag, sort of

in memoriam

Yesterday we made our annual Memorial Day trek to the Midway cemetery to visit my Grandpa Scott's grave, Scott Merrill Whitaker, as well as the graves of his parents and siblings.  On the way there, we read snippets from some family histories and the transcript of his funeral.  Christian and Emily told stories about their dad, Grandpa Tom, and grandparents, Joe and Marie Redd and Julia and Charles Asplund.  My Grandpa Scott was legendary in his day--he was an excellent singer, a Disney animator who purportedly worked on Dopey in Snow White, one of my all-time favorite moves, and a writer and director for BYU Motion Picture.  He wrote the script for Man's Search for Happiness, one of the masterpieces of LDS doctrinal films.  He was also proprietor, with his brothers, of the Homestead in Midway, for a number of years, hence the Midway connection.  I also need to mention that he was an all-around general ham and comedian, as well.

After the cemetery, we drove for about an hour looking for the perfect spot for our picnic, but it was nowhere to be found.  Finally, when we were all so hungry we were getting ready to gnaw off our own hands, we found it in an old pioneer homestead sitting on the banks of Snake Creek complete with plaques containing stories and poems written by and about the original homesteaders and their families, a creamery, an orchard, and a gigantic fir tree with a soft cushion of pine compost underneath and branches overhanging the creek.  Moses and Cecily were in heaven, and all of the adults were as well.  Even the lively squirrels were extra magical, and the birds were plentiful and visible.  Emily said it was like being inside a cross between Anne of Green Gables and Little House on the Prairie.  

For feasting, we had a number of delicious items:  I made bread in the morning (my Aunt Annie's French bread recipe with sesame seeds) and brought the leftover London Broil from Sunday dinner for roast beef sandwiches and an assortment of mustards, jams, and my favorite pickles.  We stacked our sandwiches on location, an for accompaniment ate crudite, fresh fruit, potato chips, Lula's fabulous chocolate chip cookies, and, last but not least, Red Vines in classic red and black.

It was a really, really perfect day, surrounded by the Wasatch mountains, a trickle of water, and a lot of inspiring memories.

wedding

In lieu of me posting pics and describing Katie's wedding, check out her photographer Maria Nissen's blog: www.marianissen.blogspot.com.  She did a good job of conveying the warm feelings/raucaous vibe of the event.

xo,

Mom

family vacay

When I was a kid, between the ages of 7-18, I always thought that other families' vacations were way better than ours.  As the oldest of seven children, and the daughter of frugal parents, we never bought treats at the gas station, souvenirs at gift shops, or any of the other frivolous little tchotchkes that back then seemed so cool and exotic to me.  Who were these mysterious children (the ones from back East always looked pale and overprotected, the Europeans wore snug little shorts and sandals with socks) whose parents bought them Mickey Mouse ears, or giant snow cones?  I used to wish I was an only child, or at least from a family with only two children, so I could ride in a small tidy car eating verboten foods like twinkies and snickers, instead of a station wagon with the back seat folded down, rolling around with sticky, wind-blown younger siblings, stopping at rest stops to make sandwiches and eat yogurt.

Last week in Arizona, Auntie Brook rented a cabana by the pool at the Hilton Pointe Tapatio resort, which you can do without being a guest there.  Each cabana has a fridge, table, lounge chairs, a pack of cards, cable tv, and heavy drapes you can pull for shade and privacy.  The three pools feature water slides, palm trees, hot tubs, and a zero-depth area for toddlers.  I don't think you're supposed to bring in 8 adults and 20 children per cabana, but that's what we did anyway.  Auntie Brook is from a family of 10, and they have lots of tricks for having fun on a budget.  In comes Lindsay and Whitney with smuggled bags of contraband:  uncrustables, granola bars, grapes, oreos, etc., etc.  I thought I saw the pool attendants looking askance at our cabana before I pulled the curtains to unload the snacks into the mini-fridge, and I made the kids pull the curtains while eating our contraband snacks as well.  I watched the only children or the two children eating 15 dollar salads, nachos and chicken strips and had that feeling again:  these are the real people, paying full price for everything, spending unimaginable loads of cash on meals and activities and shopping.  Easterners in cowboy hats and boots, golf regalia, pale and over protected, while our Mormon clan ran around under supervised, already tan in mid-March, swimming like olympians.  

My therapist has been helping me to discipline my thoughts away from negative thinking, and I checked my thoughts:  look how happy the kids are running around with all of their cousins!  Those nachos don't look good at all.  And those forty-year old women in bikinis sparkling mules with tummy tucks and boob jobs?  Their husbands probably cheat on them.  Okay.  I check my thoughts again.  Disciplining them doesn't include ranking on others.  I love my belly.  It gave me Eva, Ingrid, Lula, Cecily and Moses.  And, now that I'm older, my best memories are of the camping trips we took as a family (and I marvel at my parents, packing seven children, tents, camp stoves, and food for a whole week into and on top of our station wagon.)  My favorite thing was watching my dad, who is an excellent outdoorsman (well, he's excellent at almost everything) put up the tent and then getting his militaristic orders:  police the perimeter and make sure we haven't left any garbage behind, damp the fire, dig a three inch deep trench around the tent.  My brother and I loved this, and all of the facts about the flora and fauna of our camp area he would impart.  

And the thing that I missed out on the most during that narcissistic and depressed time of my life was a strong relationship with my siblings.  I was too absorbed in my own existential spiral to notice what was going on with them.  Now that we're grown, they are the people I treasure most in this world.  When we were fighting as kids, my Mom would always tell us, "Be careful what you say.  Your brothers and sisters are going to be your best friends when you grow up."  She was right.  I have four incredible sisters and two hilarious, cool brothers.  All brilliant, all kind and dependable, all excellent people.  

So, Scottsdale fashion be damned.  I love the matching short and tank top outfits sewn by my mother that we wore and then handed down throughout the late seventies and early eighties, our cool "woody" station wagon, our cooler full of granola and yogurt for the road.

gazela

I need to do a lot of posting of descriptions and pictures of our lovely week in Arizona, but for now I will abbreviate by saying that for me, the best part was bonding with brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, aunts and uncles, cousins, parents, in-laws, and our new family members, Tony, his daughter Alexa and son Jared, and his family.

Until I get the energy to post a more detailed account, I'll put up the poem I wrote for the wedding and read at the ceremony. It might be more sentimental than what I usually write, but sentiment was running high.

Or maybe I'm just not as good at hiding my sap as I think I am.

Wedding Ghazal

for Katherine Anne Candland and Marco Antonio Perez

21 march 2009

In the desert they thirsted: clouds high above the Arizona sky;
they found oasis: a tree, a well, love beneath the Arizona sky.

He strung a thousand lights for her, around saguaro, candles in jars,
a field of shimmer against black night sky--a dove of stars in the Arizona sky.

The house they built stands waiting: Jared, Alexa, Tony, Katie;
four hearts, one home, and four hands hold one brush: paint the Arizona sky.

The wrens build a nest inside cactus, peep out, is it safe?
Return with food for their chicks, babes of the Arizona sky.

After the tree comes desert, but Adam and Eve prepare;
clouds part: pink and gold, mountains rising past the infinity of the Arizona sky.

arizona slang

Moses and Cecily have come up with some new term whilst in Arizona:

*Chin Strawberries= Strawberries with dimpled chins

*Crabby Patties= McDonald's Hamburgers

Up Next:  Scottsdale resort wear

Sneeva

I've been thinking about her lately.

My first baby.  We named her Eva, but we called her Sneeva (and Diva or Bereava, as the occasion demanded), and Christian wrote a set of three jazz tunes for her called the Sneeva Suite during her first week of life.  Sneeva was for her little snuffling babyhood.  Diva was for her tiny legs walking at eight months, her little head bolt upright on my shoulder at one week, and her teeny fingers on the keyboard as an infant.  Bereava, well, all babies cry, but I didn't understand when she was a babe the weight she would carry on her shoulders of worry, anxiety and a certain kind of understanding way beyond her years.  So maybe that's what it means.  Or maybe it was just the hour between 10 and 11 pm, every night in our cute little Richmond District railroad flat in San Francisco when she would wail, wail, wail, and then finally droop into sleep.

So now my baby is a big girl off at college in the big city.  I'm awestruck by her.  She is one of the most fascinating people I know, and still wise beyond her years.  I love her sure touch with children, part stern and part tender, that makes them feel so safe.  She's always had that, always loved babies.  When Cecily was a sick newborn, Eva understood how her oxygen, oximeter, and nebulizer worked (she was 12) and was the person other then me or her father that I trusted the most with Cecily.  She seemed like, if Christian and I were suddenly struck dead, she could have easily stepped in and made everything work with aplomb.  

I love how attached she is to her two little nanny charges, and the concerned phone calls I got from her as she worried if they were on track developmentally.  

But that's not all.

This girl can cook up a storm, write a beautiful sonnet, short story, or essay, make these amazingly detailed paper cuts and drawings, play the bass, program "almost anything," teach herself physics and calculus, breeze through symbolic logic, write a stern letter to the sexist Columbia paper, and still retain a great sense of humor and a killer smile.

Sorry to brag, folks, but I just can't help it, so I'm giving in to the urge to splurge wholeheartedly. I'm so proud of my baby, one of my favorite companions, my first born, eva snow.

heaven--a dialogue

Cecily:  What does heaven look like?

Mom:  I don't know.

Cecily:  Yes you do.

Mom:  No, I don't.  Nobody does.

Cecily:  (laughing) Yes they do.

Mom:  What do you think it looks like?

Cecily:  It's all yellow and bright.

Mom:  And what else?

Cecily:  With little bumps.  I'm seeing it right now in my brain.

Mom:  What are the people wearing?

Cecily:  Ummm.  Just their dancing clothes.

Mom:  How old are they.

Cecily:  I don't know.  Teenager.

Mom:  What are they standing on?

Cecily:  Their feet.

Mom:  What are their feet standing on?

Cecily:  Air.

Mom:  Are there plants and buildings and animals and mountains?

Cecily:  No, but there's a sky.

Mom:  What are they doing?

Cecily:   Just laying around relaxing.

Mom:  Do they ever get bored of relaxing?

Cecily:  (laughing) No!

buttery eggs

When Lula was a toddler, all she wanted to eat for breakfast were "eggys," so I would soft scramble two eggs in a tablespoon of butter which she would consume in seconds.  What a baby she was!  Cornflower eyes, raspberry lips, apricot curls--all wide-eyed summery perfection--I couldn't walk through the store with her without being stopped by customers wanting to comment on her beauty.  

Not to brag or anything. 

She is now 10 and a half, and has recently been ravenous, and growing out of her clothes and shoes every six weeks, and once again wants her soft scrambled eggs "the way you make them" every morning for breakfast.  

Why is it so flattering when your kids request food the way only you can make it?  Perhaps it is the last hold out, the last bit of control one can wield over one's child.  Even with Ingrid and Eva happily settled far from home at the moment, I still love to hear that they can't wait to come home for family dinner.

happy day

One day, approximately four years and nine months ago, I was sitting in a corner booth of the Brick Oven with two of my sisters, Valorie and Katie, and my parents, Wendy and Noel, all visiting from Mesa, Arizona.  I took a bite of my salad and experienced a stunning and surprising revelation.  I took another bite, just to be sure.  Something had changed about my mouth, and not just my mouth, my whole body:  after four pregnancies, the taste test was as reliable as an ept.  I was definitely pregnant.  I think I looked at Val and said, "I might be pregnant,"  even though I knew  I was pregnant.  Later we went to Target and tried on clothes.  "I don't think I should buy anything," I said, "I might be pregnant."  I think Katie and Val thought I just didn't want to buy anything in that size, the one I'd been in denial about for at least a year, so I finally just bought a pregnancy test and went into the Target restroom to pee on it.  But I didn't really need the confirmation.  I was definitely pregnant, and very surprised at that, especially after loading all of my baby stuff into a friend's pick-up truck a few days earlier for a D.I. drop-off.

I was also not, at that time, overjoyed.  My advanced maternal age (37), my already full plate (a sick toddler, a new-born teenager, a kid with ADD and a kid with learning disabilities, our tiny house, my ph.d program, Christian's third year review) compounded with intense nausea and vomiting, depression, and trauma left over from the difficult pregnancy, birth, and first two years of Cecily's life nearly pushed me over the edge.  I remember when things got really bad:  we were in Seattle visiting the Campbells and the England-Asplunds, and I could barely move because the nausea was so overwhelming.  I would spend hours lying on the futon in the Campbell's basement crying, unless I was in their downstairs bathroom barfing (fyi, it's a good bathroom for that--cool, quiet, a really good toilet, sink and bathtub) or on the phone crying to my midwives ("At least you know you have a healthy pregnancy, honey").  The vitamin b-12 and unisom combo that they love to recommend did nothing.  The lavander wand that Jennifer-Georgia gave me worked better, as did therapy with Betsy, Zofran, the anti-nausea drug for chemo patients, and Celexa.  A few months later I was all better, except for the exhaustion, which never left, and which I attributed to "advanced maternal age."

Perhaps it was all of the happy drugs I was taking, or Betsy's insistence that the best thing for my baby would  be my happiness, so I needed to pull myself together emotionally, but when Moses came out, my last baby and my only boy, he was an easy, fantastic, funny, happy lad who brought new life to our home and family.  It is perhaps a weird by-product of my patriarchal up-bringing, but I also harbored the secret thought that now Cecily would have someone to take care of her, a brother to watch out for her.  Perhaps I was thinking of my own brother David, a considerate and watchful brother, not quite two years younger than me, just like Moses and Cecily.  And Cecily's physical vulnerability at the time, which she has pretty much outgrown.

Today, Moses is still sunshine.  Cheerful, chipper, talkative, humourous, curious--I never tire of our lengthy discussions about fire alarms (i.e. what will happen if we pull them and there's no fire?) every single day on the way home from school, or fire extinguishers (what will happen if kids spray the fire extinguisher?  will the fireman be mad?)  or the fire hydrants (can we touch them?)  I'm not sure how he manages to make a half-hour conversation out of that topic every day, but it's always an intriguing window into his adorable, brilliant little mind.  Add that to all the times every day he hugs and kisses me, tells me I'm his best friend, that my cheeks and hair and dress are beautiful, and you've got the perfect little boy.  I'm trying not to create a little prince out of him, but Eva and Ingrid tell me it's too late.

I know the lore says you're not supposed to tell a kid they were an accident lest they feel unwanted, but to me this is a testament to an extra special kid--one who could bring so much joy into the world at such a difficult time for our family.  It's true, he was an "accident,"  though perhaps a karmic one, and definitely an accident of the happy, happy variety.

Happy, Happy boy.

Happy, Happy birthday.