Happy Birthday! (still)

In order that Justin's vast reservoir of high English prosody remain untouched for the composition of the most important document in Davy's life, namely, his letter of recommendation for his Eagle Scout award, I have decided to do my part by taking over the blog this week. Yes, I can hear the bellowing now as our vast readership vents its frustration that the Collings blog has dropped from the likes of Fielding and Forster to James and Jewett, but we're all just going to have to take one for the team so that Master Davy can get his driver's license. So put your dictionaries back on the shelf, let that thesaurus gather some dust until next Sunday, and don't worry about short-circuiting your Googles trying to catch every allusion. Yes, gentle reader, this blog has reverted back to Spot, Dick, and Jane.

Monday (26 June):
Justin bounded out of bed, greeted the world with a barbaric yawp, and lilted off to campus whistling, "Heigh ho, Heigh ho, it's off to work I go!" It may be an understatement to say he is loving working with Richard Bushman, Terryl Givens, and the brightest young minds in Mormon Studies. I spent the day doing laundry while Julia tried out her new birthday presents.

Tuesday (27 June):
We decided to suppress our snobbish attitude that no group of children can be as pleasant playmates as those of Wymount and attend our ward's playgroup. A lovely time was had by all once Julia figured out that this friend Kayden was the same friend Kayden whom she knew and loved from nursery.

Returned from our adventure to the park, we were only too pleased to welcome Jini and Kinsi to our driveway so that Jini could repair the damage inflicted on her innocent little motorcycle by a delinquent white four-door. We are all at a loss as to Kinsi's part in this endeavor....perhaps Justin can divine it for us. Yes, gentle reader, we are reminded why I never write the blogs anymore by the screams of hunger from my infant child and the pangs of boredom by my toddler. Alas, pull back out those dictionaries and warm up that Google: Justin is back.

Thank you, Lia. The historical record does little to clear up the conundrum surrounding Kinsi's role in the day's marathon of motorcycle maintenance; for, according to our sources, Kinsi slept through the whole of the endeavor, leaving Lia to open doors and secure bottles and Jini to multi-task, at once fixing her beleaguered bike and baby-sitting her rumbustious niece. Lia finally relieved her by taking Julia along for Eli's three weeks late 2-month check-up. For a mere $100, Lia was assured that with a length of 24", a weight of 15 lbs. 8 oz., and a head circumference of 45.5 cm, Eli is indeed a large but healthy child. Animated by an insatiable appetite for the perpetual excitement of the Collings household, Jini and Kinsi returned in the evening, this time with Ashley Montague in tow, to join in that venerable pioneer pastime of quilting. Lia led her faithful cohorts to some otherworldly quilting haven; Jini proved an indefatigable quilter; Ashley provided valuable assistance; Kinsi took several dozen breaks during the course of the evening; Justin fled to the security of the Harold B. Lee Library. After Justin returned from the celestial realm, we mean, from the library, Ashley was prevailed upon to provide an impromptu violin concerto. Accustomed to the sensitivity of her personal Stradivarius, Ashley found Jini's old violin somewhat less than accommodating ("Little better than a tissue box with rubber bands," one bystander is said to have heard her mutter); still, she was a good sport and regaled us with a few minutes of lively entertainment.

Wednesday (28 June 2006):
In compliance with the Yale's pre-student health requirements, Justin drove recklessly to the County Health Department, hurling imprecations at the money-mongering venality of the medical community along the way, where he paid the preposterous sum of $93 for a single ripping meningitis vaccine. Our readers who are aware of the outbreaks of meningitis on university campuses will perhaps not be surprised that the world of medicine is taking advantage of newly-instituted requirements for the menongoccocal vaccine at many universities with an unholy instance of price-gouging.
Justin calmed sufficiently during the course of the day to be in merry spirits for the celebration this evening of Julia's birthday. Drawn like EFY campers to saccharine musical balderdash, Jini and Kinsi once more made a welcome appearance (it should be added that Jini's birthday present for Julia was provided last week in the form of an auntie-niece date to the BYU creamery where Julia reveled in the company of her beloved aunt and in the capacious quantities of pink ice cream by the said aunt provided). Dinner was a smashing success, though in its aftermath the three Suttner sisters present engaged in a battle royal of water-flinging combat, a battle which, it pains us to say, led Jini and Kinsi to descend to levels of conduct something less than lady-like. Julia loved her party and thoroughly relished being a princess for an evening.

Thursday (29 June):
Jealous of Justin's "fun with shots" episode of the previous day, the three ladies of the house retraced his wreckless tire tracks (on foot, as it happens, for Justin, like a fool, took the car keys with him on his walk to work) to the CHC where Eli received several immunization shots and Julia took one for good measure. After viewing the bill for this adventure with innoculation, Justin thundered some unprintable excoriations of the prehensile proclivities of modern medicine, proclaiming in all solemnity a short-lived resolve to shift from the study of constitutional law to a vindictive emphasis on medical malpractice--in any case he may be less zealous in the cause of tort reform.
Lia patiently picked her way through the aftermath of the previous evening's celebratory rumpus, making our abode presentable once more in at least a limited sense. During this process, Julia wormed her way into the cupboard beneath the kitchen sink, quickly selecting the most venomous bottle contained therein for eager experimentation. Lia, alarmed, cried out that Julia mustn't touch that bottle, that it was poison, and that if drunk by a little girl, the little girl in question could die. After a moment's reflection on these sober warnings Julia perked up and proudly announced, "I want to die." Having tried in vain and at some length to elucidate for Julia's benefit what dying constitutes and why such an eventuality would be undesirable, Lia surrendered and banished Julia from the offending cupboard and bottle with a peremptory proscription.

Friday (30 June 2006):
This morning Julia offered the family prayer for the first time in her short life. In the main, she faithfully followed Justin's whispered suggestions; she did, however, make one addition of her own: after prompting thanks "for Mommy and for Eli," Justin moved on only to be interrupted by Julia's quick interpostion, "And for me!"
With the seminar taking the day off, Justin was free in the afternoon to watch his beloved azzurri trounce the unfortunate squad from the Ukraine 3-0. Italy next faces Germany in an epic semifinal match; our readers are enjoined to watch and cheer the Italians wildly.
In the evening, moved upon by some strange spirits from the unseen realm, we decided to do something "fun." But what? Justin, as a thorough-going puritan is no fan of fun, and Lia, watchful protector of two tireless firebrands, has hardly time to think the name. We sat down and thought hard about the nature of fun, and compiled a short list of those persons known by us to engage in the fabled spectacle. After narrowing the list to Trevor and Caci and the loveable Geek maverick Alcibiades, we asked ourselves, "What do Trevor and Caci do for fun on Friday evenings?" The answer was easy, and we duly purchased a bean-bag chair capacious enough to fill the immensity of space, consumed the cheapest pizza within a 900-mile radius (to be found at a tiny shack somewhere between the bustling megalopoleis of Cody and Laramie, Wyoming), and took in a movie (Separate But Equal, a dramatization about the court battles to desegregate America's public schools). So stimulating was all this "fun," that we determined, some years from now, to try it again.

Saturday (1 July):
Early this morning, we made our way to the Fox Fields where we watched the take-off of several dozen hot air baloons (three of them--Julia's favorites--specially shaped as a pig, a house, and Smokey the Bear). Julia was rhapsodic in a world of wonders; Eli seemed indifferent and a bit chilly. Around noon we took the girls to the touted "Freedom Festival Days" in historic downtown Provo. The "Days" turned out to be a series of garrishly patriotic "shops," each in its turn affording one the chance to affirm his allegiance to our great republic by tossing money from the back of a train. We had only $3 to toss, and these we kept. Both girls fell asleep before we even made it to Center Street; both woke up before we made it back home. We tried in vain to get Julia to go back down for a nap before the afternoon's festivities, but her iron will proved unbendable.
Around 3:30 we piled into the famous Bull and headed to Salt Lake for a visit to Justin's lifelong friend, Dave Hedengren, and his lovely consort, the former Margaret Campbell. After Justin's garrulousness in political and literary discourse and Lia's patience in corralling her angel children were exhausted, we headed south to Draper for a barbeque at the home of Justin's aunt, Dahnelle. Eli, deciding that her own life had heretofore been too much bereft of "fun," sought a misguided remedy in the form of a violent outburst of unbridled insanity; she screamed wildly and without provocation for thirty minutes before gluing herself to her mother's hip, procuring at once her own "fun" and her mother's misery (we later recollected that we had passed a Wal-mart on the way to Draper; perhaps it was this that turned our erstwhile placid child into a shrieking fury). Julia had a riot at the barbeque, ignoring all food (save the ice cream cone her paternal grandmother clandestinely sneaked into her hands) and orbiting gigglingly around her cousin Jacob. Together, Jacob and Julia resemble a pair of unstable electrons.
In the evening, we made a valiant stab at finishing Separate But Equal (it's quite long) but were vanquished by fatigue and altogether too much "fun." Our readers, likewise, have certainly been subjected to more "fun" than the perusal of a blog should legally or morally afford; and we shall therefore forgive any who may, with the best of intentions, have been overcome by slumber ere they reached this conclusion.