Thirty-five years ago today (Part One)

Girls, thirty-five years ago today your father was baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, in California. That will mean more to some of you than to others, but please remember that if your father and I had not joined the church and been introduced two years later, three of you would have been born to other families or would still be waiting to get your bodies. And you would be at least subtly different from the women you are today. Your spirits are eternal, and they are the blueprint for your bodies, but DNA has its own role to play.

Yesterday was a physically miserable day, some of it due to poor choices on my part, but mostly due to the fact that it is Texas and August. [I do not want to know how hot it was, but it felt like eleventy-twelve degrees.] Both ankles blew up, and I could not get shoes on my feet to go to church. And what wasn't puffing up like a blowfish, was melting. I know that horses sweat and men perspire and ladies glow, but yesterday you could have called me Seabiscuit and not been far off the mark.

Thankfully, it is not my month to conduct. I went back to bed and slept for five hours with my feet propped higher than my head, which helped somewhat. Also thankfully, I remembered the church CDs I brought home a few weeks ago, so I spent several more hours sitting up in bed, listening and pondering as my hands knitted round and round on a pair of undies for Chutzpah. I felt the Spirit, and I learned stuff, and I gave thanks for the Atonement. All of which we are supposed to experience when we go to church, so the day was not a total loss.

Mid-evening, one of my alarms started chirping. I got up on my stepstool and took out the 9V battery. The chirping did not cease. It was a few hours later that I realized I had taken the battery out of the smoke detector, when I should have taken it out of the carbon monoxide detector. (They are about three feet apart, and in a direct line in relation to my left ear as I sit here at the computer, so the confusion is understandable.) One of my friends suggested putting it (the device, not my ear; I was not having a Van Gogh moment) in the fridge, which is relatively soundproof. Another friend suggested that it might disturb the fruits and vegetables. I decided I would risk that.

I plan to pick up a replacement battery when I go out to the gym in a bit, and take the whole mess into work and have one of the guys get the old battery out and put the new battery in.

The cankles (considerably more anklish today than yesterday) and I hope you all have a happy, safe, productive, and relatively comfortable day.

I am in Third Nephi, in my CD Book of Mormon. Probably my favorite part, because that is what I read during the evening hours of the day I took my first discussion, and that is what gave me my [immediate] testimony of the Book of Mormon, and therefore of Joseph Smith. Two weeks from today, *I* will have been a member of the Church for 35 years. What a blessing that has been, and continues to be.

So I am going to enjoy the drive into work today, because it is going to sound like the red-letter (KJV) edition of the Holy Bible, which is what I grew up with, come to life. If you want to know why, dust off your own copy of the Book of Mormon, or ask one of your weird LDS friends to get you one.