Ussins

My obtaining new pants is an event because under my non-self care regiment I haven’t for years. I’ve gotten a few new T-shirts and recently Tia found funny ones at SAVERS [one of which I copied to this design long after this entry]. And I’m going to buy this one (in red).

Hard to find any pants I loved (take that out of context); finally I liked a pair of NAUTICA brand [which have since shredded and I can no longer find the brand anywhere].

My ruminations in the searching, as reported to my helpless family April 12th:

Very few are simply light or dark basic blue, and everything “upscale” is manufacturer-ripped and worn. Why buy something “used” but not?

The real sell of manufacturer “used” pants is that wearing it says “I could buy something worn at the thrift store, but that’s low class used. These guys paid some sweat shop workers dirt money to shred these. Man, I wish I could be as awfully exotic and used as that. So I bought into the high-class users of the used. And I gotta admit, I let them use me too, ’cause I could buy the same thing at a thrift store for way less. I’m high-class and guilty. .. You wanna use me, too?

I also first falsely reported that I bought the pants at LANE BRYANT’S, an exclusively women’s store, and PLUS SIZES store. Very nice. You know, in case I get pregnant.

I got them at MEIER AND FRANK at the University Mall, Orem.

PANTS!

(This is blatantly and particularly churchy. Anyone disinterested may skip it without offending me.)

Yesterday I was thinking a lot about Joseph Smith’s “First Vision”, as it has come to be called, when God the Father and God the Son appeared to him. Actually, I was thinking that there may be many earthlings who have seen visions of God the Father - Lehi in THE BOOK OF MORMON apparently saw a vision of God:

.. he was carried away in a vision, even that he saw the heavens open, and he thought he saw God sitting upon his throne, surrounded with numberless concourses of angels.. - THE BOOK OF MORMON, 1st Nephi 1:8

In the late evening Tia related a comment she heard in Relief Society - which of course I didn’t hear, not going to the women’s meetings in my church and it’s a comment I hadn’t heard before anyway - it is that people have looked back through records of the weather in the year Joseph Smith had his vision, and correlated these reports with Joseph’s comment on the weather the day of his vision, to guess that his vision was probably on March 26th. Joseph’s weather comment is in this verse of his witness:

So, in accordance with this, my determination to ask of God, I retired to the woods to make the attempt. It was on the morning of a beautiful, clear day, early in the spring of eighteen hundred and twenty.. - JOSEPH SMITH—HISTORY, verse 14

Apparently the only clear day in early spring of that year was March 26th.

Blatantly, I see it as more than coincidence that I was thinking heavily on the First Vision on the apparent anniversary date of it, unaware. If it’s not the anniversary, the synchronicity of thought is striking. None of this is proof to me; only signs (I see a distinction between the two), if this hearsay is verifiable. Whatever the case, my faith rests on more certain things.

.. Another significant coincidence: about mid-two-years ago I woke up thinking I should get in the Christmas Spirit (as it were, and I never really did, and I often am abysmally not in that spirit), and that it was probably halfway to Christmas. I didn’t know it literally was until I looked at my calendar and calculated. I forget the date now as I don’t consciously track dates. I unconsciously track them. .. I could doubtless benefit from consciously tracking them, except that now I’m curious what other signs I’ll find unconscious, drunken and not with wine..

The day before yesterday, he shuffled alongside the bed from the foot to the head where I was reading, took my forefinger, and gently and affectionately bit it. Yesterday it was my forearm. This is an escalating problem. Today? Only Mago knows..

(Make no mistake: my tone is jest. I’m very charmed and flattered by his affections.)

The day after the 22nd (Wednesday, when he took five steps) he didn’t take any steps - he was more interested in crawling. He took 5 or 6 twice the next day (yesterday) with our coaching. We sat on the ground with him between us five baby steps away, stood him until he balanced, then let go and he took the steps by himself, beaming and laughing, then collapsing into either of us. Today he’s taken many, maybe 25 or so - mostly with our coaching. He’ll get eager and lean forward so that he loses his balance. Today at my mom’s I was turned away and didn’t notice until I turned back and he stopped walking, standing and looking up at me about six steps out from the chair he had been standing against before he ventured off.

His sixth tooth is in - we don’t see others yet.

Tia got two photograhs into the BYU Graduate Student Art Show yesterday.

My sister got three works in the show.

[Update; The three works Tia entered are entitled Faith, Hope, and Charity. Of the two that got in, my brother-in-law wisecracks: now she has no hope. Ha ha. Also I know there may be people out there who distantly sneer at such blatantly virtuous titles. Anyone may, of course, choose to be cynical about blatancy. I think her photographs (made to poloroids, lifted, and neatly wrinkled) combine a skillful and subtle crafsmanship, but I’m biased.]

He took yesterday; mostly balanced in place. He took another half step this morning and has been taking several of those a day with our coaching.

We photographed him signing light, bed, and bird this morning.

He frequently says bye-bye in the appropriate setting now. Tia came to pick him up from babysitting at grandpa’s the other day and as soon as she came in and picked him up he waved around to the others and said this.

At 12:03 AM one year ago, Mago was born on St. Patrick’s Day.

We had a little party with him and he got many toys, and enjoyed them all. We opened some from his cousins first. He enjoyed having plastic frogs, snakes, and lizards placed all over him, and he put a plastic lizard halfway in his mouth and kept it there (sometimes he does that with a rubber duck while crawling around), and he loves the green sunglasses we got him too. Picture pending (if it turned out). He’s also interested in the baby doll Tia got him - this challenges my projected minor sense of pseudo-manly un-dolliness, but who am I to deter his interests? He’s great. He watched, with great interest, mom putting the dolly in a little baby carrier.

It now occurs to me that “baby blue” maybe doesn’t quite work in a song including the Irish - but “baby green” would work less. Blue = boy in our culture’s color designations, so whatever.