T.G.I.F.
It's Good Friday and I was going to write a whole entry explaining all the aspects of Holy Week and how I find them so fascinating from a "history of religion" stand point. But, I'm in a bit of a sour mood again, so that may have to wait until Holy Saturday or even Easter Sunday. Easter is one of my favorite holidays. I may even like it better than Christmas, in that there isn't a bunch of shopping foo and wah where you have to make a list of all the people you're going to give gifts to and how you're going to get them all delivered. It's just me spending hours in the seasonal aisles of Target and alarming the cashiers as I stack dozens of baskets on the counter.
I like giving Easter baskets because usually the recipients aren't expecting them. I really surprised my parents last year. The Puddin' and I were heading to Richmond for our Easter lunch with his family but I snuck over to my parents house to leave a basket and Easter lily on their kitchen table around 5am. In a rare turn of events my father (the night owl of the family) actually got up before Mom and was hopping around waiting for her to come into the kitchen. He kept asking her if she had gone to the kitchen yet and finally she said "what, do you think the Easter Bunny came?" But as she told me on the phone later that day, "He really had come!"
This year, though, there are forces working to rain on my spring time parade. As mentioned in the previous paragraph there is an expectation that the Puddin' family have some meal together at every major or minor holiday. And this year it was decided we should all eat at our house. But apparently I didn't get the memo that Rich's brother Lee's new girlfriend was explicitly excluded from these festivities. Really I should have guessed that since she's smart, funny, pretty, and puts up with Lee's crap while simultaneously being sweet and kind to him, that she would be banned from all family functions by the Matriarch. Silly me.
There has been some line drawn in the sand that if the Banned Girlfriend comes then the Matriarch will not be coming. But if the Matriarch doesn't come, then apparently the Patriarch and the Uncle-arch (work with me) are not allowed to come either. So my dinner for seven became several painful phone calls and dinner for four.
On the bright side, my parents rock. I called Mom earlier today to ask if she had an egg cooker I could borrow (to hard boil eggs so that the yolks are in the middle for deviled eggs) and Dad started to make me one out of pipes. Thankfully, I found mine so Dad didn't have to go all Mr. Wizard in the back yard tonight and we'll all have beautiful deviled eggs this weekend. I just got off the phone with them again and it's cheered me up a great deal. And there are rumors that
So while I'm still annoyed about the unnecessary drama for Sunday, I have 40 eggs in my fridge waiting to be boiled and dyed/deviled. Oh, and there are new pics over at Flickr of random stuff for your amusement.