Hoppy Easter!!! April 8th, 2012

10:30 AM CST. Four cups of coffee. I watched Charles Osgood play an old song on the piano, wearing a bowtie printed with jonquils. I read another chapter of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, the one where she shares the coming of spring in their new mountain home, and the "TRANQUILS" that her daughter saw in the garden. I planted, this morning, the hen-and-chicks that the Ettrick bread-angels brought last night when they picked up this week's shipment -- bound for Barron and Bloomer, via the children who are coming home for the holiday. It took me more than fifteen minutes to figure out what to wear to an Easter dinner with the in-laws: the closet is still filled with the blacks & browns of winter, and the winter butt requires me to eliminate a few spring-like skirts, and it's 60 degrees now but predicted to hit 40 degrees by dark.... Hoppy Easter! The sun is shining, and Hubby just bought his fishing license. Spring is truly sprung......... ok, maybe we'll get a little more snow..... this is Wisconsin, after all!

I shall not share here the musings on the meaning of the religious "EASTER" that have flitted through my mind: too much like preparing for the Chapter 13 lecture! But I shall say this:

When we had young children at home, and Easter baskets, and an Easter dinner, it was a different sort of day. Oh, my! And, many of the years, the snow was still piled deep in the places where the snowblower had thrown it for the winter's six months, and crocuses tried their inspiration darnedest to put their colorful heads out where we could spy them, contrasting with wet dark leaf piles or dirty icy snow scraps. I remember the year that River ate the eldest child's Easter candy; and the year that I set up an Easter egg hunt in the house and found the last few about July, covered in ants that trooped in through the cracks in the window frame; and the annual whining from Hubby about green plastic Easter basket grass that clogged the vacuum for months (years?). I remember a driveway covered in "art" drawn with Easter gift chalk, books never read, school supplies lost in a drawer, and discussions about whether or not one should or should not eat the chocolate bunny's ears first.

Gotta go!