On Sunday, the Easter Bunny visited the young children in the religious education classes of our church. This was the first time the SMUUCh Easter Bunny knew how to make balloon animals for the children, so they had something to be excited about beyond candy. I actually saw one toddler start to cry when her mother picked her up to take her home.
It's unclear as to whether the children or the Easter Bunny enjoyed the visit more. The Easter Bunny was nearly bouncing with excitement when I helped him with his sartorial details last Thursday. Iltflinthills accompanied the Easter Bunny during his sojourn with the children; my daughter was bubbling, too. The Professor provided the following documentation of the Easter Bunny's visit.
The Professor and I tried to watch this critically acclaimed new show in the fall of 2006. However, after a couple of episodes, we found it so boring that even the prospect of dangerous radioactive rain falling on the town of Jericho couldn't hold our interest.
The show was canceled; devoted fans protested; and then CBS revived Jericho for a short season. Tremor3258 had me watch an episode early in Season 2. I couldn't believe Jericho was the same television show. It mesmerized me, even though I could only remember the main character and I couldn't keep the other characters straight.
Tremor3258 was delighted. He told me that the series really became interesting toward the end of Season 1.
Of course, my response to Tremor3258's contagious enthusiasm for the show was all it took. As soon as I started watching Jericho regularly, CBS canceled it . . . permanently.
I realize that my renewed interest and the subsequent cancellation was only a correlation and not a causation. But, once a TV show on the verge of cancellation captures my interest, that really tends to be its kiss of death.
If we remember to take the camera to church, I might be able to post photographs of the Easter Bunny later.
In a not totally unrelated matter, Thursday afternoon I was helping IMO convert batting into some refinements to a certain costume. It was jolly to see how happily excited IMO was about his job scheduled for today; in past years, most people who have donned the costume have been seemingly resigned to the task. IMO is embracing it. Hurray for enthusiasm!
How can time pass so quickly? It seems just like yesterday when we took you home from the hospital and made you so nervous because you sensed how scared to death we were of breaking you. I hope you feel much more relaxed around The Professor and me now. We feel fortunate to have a son like you.
We're looking forward to the post-church birthday/Easter celebration tomorrow.
Thank goodness the medicine seems to have left Marisol's system! She is sleeping well now, has crawled out of the dumps, and no longer constantly bites everyone's head off.
Marisol is even eating again. She lost eighteen pounds in the last ten weeks because the medicine killed her appetite. (And, trust me. Marisol really did not have any extra weight to lose.) Her face seems to be all eyes right now. However, she seems to be eating like the old Marisol again. Why on earth did she not mention ALL the problems the medicine was causing so she could quit taking it sooner?
I promised Marisol a pie. She loves pie dough. My back is still hurting from the drive to Minnesota, but it is getting better. Maybe today I'll be up to rolling out the crust.
The sciatica pain left me on Tuesday, so I am a much nicer person, too.
I don't feel like a very loving mother right now.
If SOMEONE wants me to stop singing to my iPod, which I'm only doing because she'd prefer not to converse and I need to do something active to stay awake while I'm driving, she should make certain that I hear her soft-spoken request. Perhaps I don't hear her since I'm listening to music on my iPod. It's not as though the iPod is on so loud that I can't hear the noise of the traffic; I never play it too loudly to hear a voice at normal volume.
Also, no matter how sorry I feel that SOMEONE who is temporarily having unpleasant side effects from a medication, I deserve some sympathy, too. After sitting in the car for two days (in order to fetch SOMEONE home for spring break), my sciatica pain is back. Plus, I didn't sleep well last night either, probably because of the strange bed and the fact that the pain in my hands which apparently developed from gripping the steering wheel all day woke me up and kept me from falling asleep anytime soon afterwards. And, no matter how miserable the car ride today may have made SOMEONE, she should realize that I had to travel twice as much as she did.
Devoted readers, part of me is sorry to complain so much. However, The Professor is at a conference in Boston, and I need to blow off some steam or I might explode.
I so hope tomorrow is better.
In 1974, deciding an apartment would be easier for her, my grandmother sold her house in northwest Chicago. She and Grandpa had lived in that house for over forty years; as a child, it was one of my favorite places in the world. (How could you not like somewhere where you could ALWAYS make a tent out of two chairs and a blanket smack dab in the middle of the tiny living room?) My grandparents had the biggest yard on the street, let alone the block, because their house (which was probably the smallest on the block) and garage were built on two adjoining lots. Their front yard had hosted many of our running games.
When Grandma sold the house to a contractor, we knew my grandparents' house and garage would be razed and two houses would be built. For a long time, I did not want to drive by and see the changes. Then it became extremely inconvenient. Yesterday it finally dawned on me to check Google Maps' Street View.
Completely unsurprisingly, after 34 years, I can't recognize anything; even the trees are different. The street is evidently now one-way heading south, which strikes me as so strange because my mom or dad always parked facing north, right in front of my grandparents' fence. The houses along the street seem much more prosperous than they did then; I'm glad the neighborhood seems to be doing well.
The two "new" houses are attractive. Just think. Children could have grown up in those houses, fairly sure that all the history of the world began when those houses were constructed. Grandchildren could be visiting the residents of those houses, just as we used to visit Grandma and Grandpa.
If this scenario is true, I wonder whether these grandchildren ever go on Chicago vacations (i.e., spend the night with the grandparents without their parents). I doubt whether either one of these houses has a sauna in the basement; nor did anyone's grandfather dig out the basement two wheelbarrows of dirt a night after World War II ended and he could foresee obtaining construction materials.
It is sad for me to consider that probably only five people in the world remember that small and wonderful house that seemed such a permanent fixture of the neighborhood when I was young. Thank goodness I'm lucky; my children bring a sweet promise to the future which I wouldn't trade for anything.
BTW, happy birthday to my brother!
The Professor sent me this link to The Onion's fake news broadcast site on the Internet. While the story did make me laugh, it does point out that there is no way to authenticate the results from electronic voting machines. At least paper ballots can be retained for a recount.
Maybe the USA should try to save paper in other ways in order to attempt to protect the integrity of our election results.
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There's nothing quite so guaranteed to bring a smile to your face as to be greeted enthusiastically by your cat when you go outside to fetch the newspaper. Kissa bounds, much more than runs, up to me and immediately lies down on the driveway with her stomach up. She loves to have her neck and tummy rubbed and knows that if she makes it easy for me, she's likely to get just what she wants. Thank goodness the weather's warming up!
Sometimes I just have to wonder which one of us is in charge here but, of course, it's Kissa.
Yesterday was my quilting guild's monthly meeting. Each month, as you sign in, you can buy tickets (at 50 cents each) for chances at the meeting's door prizes. I usually buy two tickets to help the guild in some small way but never expect to win anything because most of the 70-odd (numerically, not characteristically) women and one man at the meeting seem to buy many more tickets than I.
When one of my numbers was called yesterday, I was pleasantly shocked. There were two prizes left when I got up to the table in the front, a rotary cutter and a coupon for machine quilting. I already have a rotary cutter, so I gladly took the 50% off coupon for machine quilting of a future quilt.
I turned in my competition quilt, which has so many flaws in it that I really submitted it to add to the number of entries. Not many people have offered to display quilts in our upcoming quilt show, so I'm going to enter The Professor's Rocky Road to California scrap quilt from 2004. When I had the quilt professionally machine quilted, some machine oil got on the back of the quilt. Unfortunately, when I removed the machine oil, some of the green dye from the pieced part of the quilt ran in several places. 
However, the woman in charge of registration hopes to get 100 more quilts for the show, so she was willing to accept even a flawed quilt. (I was so disappointed when the dye ran because this quilt was one of my better efforts.)
In response to last Sunday's invasion of the perfumed churchgoer, the church office prominently posted new signs all over the fragrance-free area. There are two noticeable signs on the wall, plus the seat in front of each chair in the fragrance-free area has a notice pointing out that the chair facing the chair with the notice is in the fragrance-free area.
So far, the signs have done the trick. I attended the entire church service this morning. That made me happy.
Also, a screw came out of The Professor's glasses as we were driving to church, and the plastic lens fell out. The Professor was shocked that I had an eyeglass repair kit in my purse. (Where else would I keep it?) I had to wait for us to arrive at church to fix the glasses because otherwise, what with the motion of the car, I would have lost the only extra screw the repair kit still had.
Anyhow, I managed to put the lens back into the frame soon enough that The Professor could see during most of the church service. Now I just have to remember to buy another eyeglass repair kit or at least more screws.
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