it better have

"It's stopped snowing," said Momma, peeking through the front window.

"It better have," I answer, not sure what the unspoken "or else" might have been. It was only about an hour ago that the snow started to fall and I was threatening whoever the hell thought that shit up.

Tonight gave us in my li'l town a little of the ol' wtf. I noticed it much earlier in the evening as I drove home from a little shopping jaunt. It was a late night jaunt to the food co-op for coffee, milk and half and half. I'd just passed the lutheran church. I'd laughed at them on my way to the store as they stood outside with their feelings, the spotlights making day of the trio of crosses, a black scarf across the center one as if we would forget which one had held Jesus, duh. Traveling away from the co-op minutes later, the only lutherans I saw were saddling up and heading home.

It was about this point that I swore I wasn't seeing snow. It's been a fairly windy night and ungodly cold the last few days. It had to just be some dust and dirt whipping in front of the wind across the road in front of me. But then I saw it again, not a lot, just little glimmers in the headlights. A quick look past the streetlights, still a little inconclusive, but mostly I just don't want to see snow even knowing by this point that it couldn't be anything else.

I finished my errands without spotting much else that would make me think it was snowing. I wanted so to doubt that I was seeing this infernal shit yet again this late in the year. I was snug and warm in the Carolinas when the blizzard of '93 hit this town, but having read the story and heard the story a few times, an April snow, even of the flurry variety is reason to think of grocery stores and a dozen eggs and a loaf of bread. Or more importantly, the flurry makes one think of extra six packs of beer and perhaps at least one extra pack of smokes.

I finally arrive home and whisper the dark vision to Momma. There was nothing but the cold and the weird clouds above to make one even consider the possibility. She decides to find the humor in the irony of this situation that for me only furrows my brow deeper, brings closer down those dark clouds.

Fast forward to an even later night cigarette, I'm bundled up to stand outside the back door, hating the cold and reading from my current book. What do I get for my efforts but a cold wind whipping what is certainly no longer a flurry. The snow is falling indeed and heavily enough that it's begun collecting on those places that first show the snow, the table on the back porch, the cars. Momma points out the surrealism of seeing this heavy (to us) snow while the trees are all sporting their fresh coats of leaves. The dogwoods are the white beauty we look for now, not that all forgiving blanket of snow.

It was a sight, the snow swirling now, the wind blasting it hard and cold now. It was disturbing and somewhat less than pleasant. I was so happy to wear shorts lately, almost looking forward to the yard work I never get around to. So happy that the kids won't be inside and underfoot quite so all the time. This stupid snow, for all its transience, puts one in a mood. It's the snow's damn fault too. It didn't have to come sneaking up on us.

And then Momma peeked out the front window and made her discovery known, the snow had stopped falling. My own peek confirmed this but also confirmed that for the date, it's still a damn lot of snow sitting on the ground. It better melt by the time my ass gets out of bed, or whoever thought an April snow would be okay is going to get my foot stuck up their ass up to my knee. Maybe if I was in a joking mood, but I'm just not right now, not with snow dammit.

uuuggghhh . . . easter

Let it here be known that I hate Easter. I wouldn't trade a one inch square piece of a turd for Easter if you really want the truth. And it's not just the nonbeliever in me screaming and pouting about having to celebrate one more holiday that isn't really now what it originally was.

I can sort of understand some of the ancient concepts regarding spring time renewal/rebirth celebrations. In days when the animal skins we wore still looked like the animals they had once been, we were very happy to see the end of the deadly winter months. If nothing else the ground would finally thaw enough to bury all the babies that didn't survive the cold so we can quit looking at them finally. I'm imagining a time when we were past eating them but somewhere before the enlightenment.

The reason it really gets me is that so many other people don't really mind celebrating at all, and we just can't get away from it all. I could slip into the usual media rant, but they don't get nearly enough credit for all the education they do of the nation's youth, and there's the whole point of the post to consider.

It's not like we are turning down invitations to Easter celebrations. The family celebration is always worthwhile both because we just don't see family often enough and because, as Momma says, "I may not give a shit about Easter, but I do give a shit about ham."

The only other thing we do for Easter tends to involve our local homeschool friends. I may grunt and groan my misery to Momma, but I won't turn down an opportunity for the kids to see their friends, and I won't turn down a chance to hang out with other grown ups. Plus they're all great people, and they deserve my company, my mood lightening face full of sunshine and peppermint.

Through the drudgery of preparing for the homeschool party I have found myself giggling a bit. The plan is for the families to bring plastic eggs to hide. The eggs can be filled with acceptable items for the kids to enjoy. Mine include jelly beans, some stickers I dug out of a drawer and cash. I still have three eggs that I am clueless as to what to stuff in them as I've run out of crap that I can reasonably expect not to make enemies over. I'm going to have to actually buy something at the store when I stop to get snacks on my way to the group.

The giggles started last night. We needed both eggs as well as filler material. I didn't want to go any farther than the grocery store. I need beer and smokes anyway, so that was the logical store to go to, though as it turns out, they were not the best place to find egg filler material. As I wandered the store contemplating, I kept finding myself imagining sticking every conceivable and some inconceivable items into these eggs. So I end with the list of things I will NOT be placing within an egg regardless of how fucking hilarious it would be to see these lovely children find:

-cotton balls
-combo toothpick/flosser tool
-dried beans
-dollar in pennies
-Qtips
-random legos
-banana (seriously, funny as shit in theory)
-dead battery
-travel toothpaste
-play worn Hot Wheels car
-the tiny rocks I keep finding around the house (most likely from playground at UU church where we meet)
-pencil stub
-Easter candy from last year
-coupons
-beer bottle caps

As has been made plain, I've basically laughingly considered every object upon which my gaze happened to fall that would both fit in an egg and wasn't something just wrong in the situation. I even though about leaving sarcastic little notes in an egg confirming to the finding child that this particular egg did indeed have nothing worthwhile. Alas I can't seem to go out quite like that.

And I still have those last three eggs. I'm tempted at this point to find the Easter pencil erasers we wound up with last year. It seems odd the number of times they've happened to turn up in the last year only to have completely disappeared now. I know they didn't get used because we've found these new pencils that have erasers built onto them. I wonder if anyone would get them and recognize them as having come from them. That would be funny.