Easter Eve

It is a festival day.  Why don't they call this "Easter Eve"?  Unlike Q, I am not a fan of Easter.  Never have been.  It is a pastel holiday, and I am a fan of deeper, darker colors.  When I was a kid, we'd have to dress up, but I didn't have any real dress up clothes.  I can remember the discomfort of it all.  We did the usual, hiding colored eggs and plastic eggs filled with crummy candy.  I got the basket with the hollow, cheap chocolate bunny sitting in a field of fake green "grass" surrounded by jelly beans of many colors.  I hated the eggs.  I hated the candy.

But I ate them.

It was child abuse, I believe, and any parents who are doing that now should be locked up.  If, however, you are a parent who is giving yummy Cadbury Creme eggs and rich, dark chocolate bunnies that set you back a day's wages. . . then maybe.

I will fix an Easter dinner, though, with some bottles of really good wine.


Life seems more complex somehow than it used to be.  Maybe it has always been so for everyone of every generation, but that doesn't make it any less personal.  You think you were doing well, then suddenly everything comes due at once.  One day you're golden and the next day you are upside down.  You've re-plumbed the house, and that was rough, and now you are paying thousands to have trees removed and trimmed.  This seems like something the city should do, but for some reason. . . . You are having the house pressure washed, too.  It has turned green virtually overnight.  You know after the pressure washing the house will need painting.  You've tried to kid yourself, but you know it is true.  And the deck replacement will cost more than you imagine, too.  In the afternoon, there is a knock on the door.  It is the tenant.  She stands there with a pest control man.  WTF?  She has called him to look the apartment over.  He tells you all sorts of bad things about places where animals can get in, and then he tells you how much it will cost to have his company fix it all.  Uh-huh, you say, send me the estimate.  You look around as he talks and see that the property looks really run down.  It was so beautiful, you think.  I spent so much money.  You notice boards that show the beginning of rot.  The yardman has let the jasmine grow up part of the house.  The big driveway needs mulching again, and the other two need more gravel.  The azeleas are skinny and leggy and need replacing.  That night in bed you wake in a sweat thinking about money, remembering another bill for $3,000 that needs to be paid right away.  Where will you get all this money, you wonder, thinking that there isn't a way in the world you will ever be able to survive on retirement pay.  Your breathing is shallow and rapid.  Shit, shit, shit, you silently cry out into the darkness.  Your life is seeming like one big disappointing disaster.  How do people do it?!?  How do they just go on?  You cannot figure that out in the darkness nor can you figure a way out at all.  It is one of those nights that never seems to end, a cloudy rainy morning replacing the darkness. . .  the pervading gloom.