Easter Recap

When last we heard from "The Adventures of Gretchen Mother/Choir Geek"...

Gretchen had foolishly decided to redecorate the bedroom during the week of Catholic terror better known as...Holy Week.

Did Gretchen's church choir manage to pull off all that Handel?

Was Jimmy capable of caring for their child for three nights in one week while Gretchen was off singing her butt off?

Was Gretchen able to finish all that painting without painting herself into a corner? Both literally and figuratively?

Will she finish all this home-improvement before the invasion of the in-laws?

And what about that pesky cold Gretchen felt was on the way?

This and many more questions will be answered if you stay tuned...

WHEW!

Easter has been survived.

I will bring you a recap with bullet points. I love bullet points. It's a bullet point kind of day.

• Wednesday = 5 hours of painting + 3 hours of choir rehearsal.
• Thursday = 2 hours of painting + early dismissal at Jude's school + 2 hour 8-year old's roller skating birthday party + 2 hour Holy Thursday/Washing of the Feet Mass.
• Friday. The day of the big Good Friday Tre Ore at church. Theodore Dubois' "Seven Last Words of Christ". Since I just couldn't force my child to sit through 3 hours of tragic sacred choral music, Jude was sent off with my friend Cathleen and her daughter, Kiyomi, to an egg hunt. Yes, he was playing with a...girl. A bit of an issue when first discussed, but ended up being totally fun, of course. My choir? FABULOUS. If I do say so myself. And looky...you may check us out too. This is a live, unmixed recording, but I think we sound pretty danged good...

  BSC First Word

• Bad news re: Friday was that I totally forgot to book out with my agents, and they called me with a last minute audition right when the big sing was going to start. They were NOT HAPPY with me that I couldn't make the audition.
• So my penance (as though a 3 hour Good Friday service was not enough penance) was TWO auditions on Saturday. Both kind of stupid. Argh. Poor Jude was dragged around with me from audition to audition. I guess it was better than playing with girls.
• We did get to go to another egg hunt on Saturday, at the house of some old friends of ours who have a little 3-year old girl. Once again, it was Jude and a bunch of girls. At one point, Jude was playing with this toy, this long tunnel thing like this...
• He put the thing over his body and stood up so the tunnel was vertical. He then proceeded to chase the girls around and try to whack them with the top of the tunnel, which he could whip around by bending at the waist. Get the visual?  At which point my friend Brian, who never misses a phallic symbol if he can help it, pointed out that Jude had turned himself into a giant plastic penis, and was chasing the girls around and attacking them. I'm afraid this was true.
• So Saturday night, Jimmy had one of his many ailments, and took to bed. I was thus forced to do the Easter bunnying all by myself. All that damned egg filling, and basket stuffing, followed by furtively wandering around the yard late at night with a flashlight. Gang dudes kept cruising past our house and checking me out. It was rather unnerving.
• Easter morning, Jimmy was still laid up, so I went outside in my bathrobe, clutching my coffee while Jude scampered around egg hunting. In the middle of filling his basket, Jude suddenly looked up, shook his head seriously and said "The Easter Bunny is SO kind." I love my child. I also took this as a personal compliment.

 
                       

• I'm taking this bullet point to vent a bit. Doesn't the Easter Bunny seem a little confusing to you? I mean, Santa makes sense, you know. He's a man, and he's got a sleigh and magic reindeer and a vast workforce of elves. But the bunny? He's just one little mammal. Where does he carry those eggs? Does he carry a magic basket clutched in his teeth? Does he have a little magic burrow with a bunch of...squirrels or deer or... you know, wildlife type creatures who stuff plastic eggs from the Target with Hershey's kisses? The whole mythology of the bunny is a bit vague. Somebody should work on this.
• After the egg hunt, Jude and I got gussied up and went to church for yet more singing. The one good thing about Jimmy not feeling up to going to church with is is that I got to dress the child the way I wanted. In his little suit and tie. Last year, Jimmy brought him with him to church (I had to go early to practice with the choir) and had ignored the nice little outfit I had laid out for the kid, in favor of dressing him Jimmystyle - this weird scarf/ascot around his neck in lieu of a tie, and a fedora!
• Hats!

 

Okay, Isabella looks like a demon child there. This is better...

 

• The bedroom is painted. I moved all of the furniture BY MYSELF. That includes two dressers and a king-sized bed with bed frame. Don't ask where Jimmy was. I will write more about this process, and provide pictures later this week.
• Jude's Spring Break has officially started. The activities for Monday, his first big day of holiday were - watching Mom paint, going with Mom to a dental appointment, and cleaning his room. I have promised him that his holiday will improve.
• The cold went away.

That is all the bullet points I've got.

Comments

[Michele]

Wow! I'm exhausted just reading that. I was not so productive. I did a round of brewpubs, wineries, resale bookstores, memorial services and farmers market.

[VandyJ]

Spring and fertility and bunnies--sort of goes together. I always took it on faith that magic does not need explaining.
Turbo has decided that the Easter Bunny is a kangaroo--cause the bunny hid lots of eggs way up high. That the only way it could have jumped that high.
And so the magic is saved for another year. Although we have said aloud that those who don't believe get no loot. That may keep the "belief" going long enough for Bruiser to enjoy the magic.

[Elizabeth]

I think you need to build a house out back for Jimmy. A little doghouse. Please don't tell him I said so. :)

And you look gorgeous in your hat. I'm going to comfort myself with the recording as I'm so sorry that I missed you live --

[unmitigated me]

Gawd, I love the internet:

"In second century Europe, the predominate spring festival was a raucous Saxon fertility celebration in honor of the Saxon Goddess Estre (as in estrus and eggs!), whose sacred animal was a hare. The hare is often associated with moon goddesses; the egg and the hare together represent the god and the goddess, respectively."

Those crazy Pagans.

[Ginny Marie]

Are you crazy? I can't believe you survived all that AND blogged about it! Wow! Jude looks extremely handsome in his tie. Happy Easter!

[Arabelle Mccuen]

Everyone seems to have a great spring break. Anyway, how was the dental appointment? It's great to know that your child accompanies you to the dentist. Usually kids go frantic when they hear the "dentist" word. But it's amusing how others are too excited to be in the dental clinic, right?