Quite a week

Well, this has been quite a week. I was pondering what to blog about and then I thought, oh! Easter! And then I thought, oh, the snow! And then that other snow! Yes, it's been a week.

So, Easter, last Sunday. I wasn't looking forward to it at all. Easter is a funny holiday for us, because we don't do it religiously. I'm quite familiar with the religious version, from the years I was a churchgoer, and it seems odd to ignore all of that. Palm Sunday, Good Friday -- they aren't just words on the calendar to me. But I don't get into it much with the kids. We've sort of by default not given them any religious education, and I can't see myself starting now. They'll have to decide for themselves whether they want it in their lives.

What we've done at Easter since they were toddlers is what many people do. We hide eggs and baskets and bunnies. Every year I bring out the old baskets and bunnies and plastic eggs and plastic grass, and I buy a bunch of candy from the grocery store (sometimes Target, never anywhere fancier), and on Saturday night after the boys go to bed, Rocket Boy and I fill the plastic eggs with jelly beans and the baskets with everything else. We laugh a lot, reminisce about when they were little boos, and eat jelly beans. And then I hide the baskets and he hides the plastic eggs. Only this year he wasn't here, so I hid everything. And it was sad.

The first holiday challenge was getting the Easter box down from a high shelf in the garage. I couldn't get anywhere near the shelf because we have a train table in the garage and I'm too fat to fit around it. I ended up leaning across the table with a hoe, hooking the hoe into the finger hole in the box, and pulling the box down onto the table. Then I just left it until Easter because the twins don't usually go in the garage.

My strategy this year was to avoid mentioning Easter. I just wasn't up for it. So when Kid B said he'd like to dye eggs, I bought white eggs on my weekly shopping trip, but I didn't mention them again and neither did he. Likewise, I didn't say, on Saturday, "Go to bed early so the Easter bunny can come!" I didn't even get out our collection of Easter books. Maybe next year, if there's no pandemic going on.

So on Saturday night I just casually read them a chapter of our current bedtime book (The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman), said good night, and left them. After I figured they were asleep, I fetched the box from the garage, filled the baskets with grass and chocolate and bunnies, filled the plastic eggs with jelly beans (3 or 4 per egg, preferably matched to the egg's color), and hid everything. Rocket Boy always hides eggs in their bedroom and ours, but I did not want to risk waking them up and I hate having them rummage through my stuff. I made a rather grouchy sign that I taped to my door: "No eggs in bedrooms! No rabbit was here! Not even one!" And then I went to bed. And I was so sad.

The next morning I woke up a little late -- they were already up -- and again I felt sad. No little people creeping out to see if the Easter bunny left anything. No Rocket Boy to giggle with. Just the clicking sound of middle-grade people playing on iPads. Then I got up to pee and as I was heading back to my room to dress, Kid A called out, "I already found four eggs!"

"I saw some in the bathroom," I said, and they were off. Acting like they were five, not twelve, they raced through the house looking for rabbit treasure. They dragged a lot of stuff back to the computer room so they could eat it while playing games, but it's fine. They were happy and even I cheered up.

We spent the rest of the day eating chocolate and jelly beans and watching the snow come down. Because Easter was the beginning of our first big April snow event. It lasted through Monday and totaled around 17 inches. Fortunately it had been so warm beforehand that the snow didn't stick to the pavement, but there was plenty of snow on the lawn and the trees.

By the next day, Tuesday, April 14th, all 17 inches began to melt, and so for P.E. class we went for a walk to the park. They've never been big on building snow people or any of that stuff (though they're always up for throwing a snowball, preferably a really icy one, right in their brother's face), but for some reason at the park they started rolling balls of snow as if for a snowman. The snow came up like a carpet, revealing the bright green grass underneath. For some other reason, Kid A decided to bring one of the balls of snow home. "Coals to Newcastle!" I shouted at him, and then had to explain what that saying means, an explanation which I don't think he even listened to. Mom's comments are so boring.

So the week passed in an orgy of candy-eating (I even bought more jelly beans on my weekly shopping trip, since King Sooper's had an abundance of leftovers). It was a four-day school week for us, because Friday was a "conference exchange day," but most of the teachers didn't seem to realize it was a four-day week until right at the end, and they all had things due on Friday. All the Friday things had their due dates moved to Thursday, but the things that had previously been due on Thursday were still due on Thursday too. I decided not to complain to any teachers, because I get the impression they are all still so stressed out. But we didn't actually get all the work done, especially for language arts/reading. Kid B only submitted one of the pieces he was supposed to play for band. He didn't finish writing all his haiku. It's OK. We just do what we can.

By Wednesday evening just about all 17 inches of Easter snow had melted, so it was time for another storm. It started as rain, turned to snow overnight, and by Thursday morning we had another huge dump -- maybe 10 or 11 inches at that point, and it continued to snow all day and into the evening. I couldn't find the newspaper! (It turned up the next day.) We got another 17 inches of snow out of that storm, bringing Boulder to a total of 151 inches of snow for the year so far -- our snowiest year in recorded history. Also, that's more snow than any other U.S. city with a population of at least 50,000 has had this year. More than Anchorage, Alaska; more than Rochester, New York; more than Duluth, Minnesota. And of course the year's not over! We could easily have a big storm in May, or more in April, or both. Something to look forward to.

Well, as we wait for the delivery of our Chinese food (our Saturday treat), I will share one more set of photos. Yes, I finally made a mask. After how many weeks? Two? Three? I finally got with it and sewed some of the fabric that's been sitting around on the ironing board in the middle of my tiny kitchen. The fabric had cat hair on it, but I brushed that off and went ahead. The whole "for some reason I can't sew a mask" thing has really been getting to me.

Isn't it lovely? The inside is pink and purple flowers (see below -- I read somewhere that you should use different fabric on the inside and outside, so you can remember which is which.

I got this pattern off the CNN website and I ended up rather displeased with it -- it was missing key instructions, such as how much of a seam allowance to use. Also, I messed up the bobbin on my sewing machine twice, burned my fingers on the steam from the iron, and in general was just very very unhappy with the process. But it is done -- I have a mask. Now I should make another, plus some for the twins. Maybe tomorrow. This is enough for now.