Easter

Another major holiday here and gone. The biggest, if you're a Christian. Why is Easter so much easier to handle than Christmas? It's a cakewalk. No presents to shop for. No cookies to make. No cumbersome, prickly, painful decorations to put up. Okay, if you have a big family dinner, there is the house to clean and some major cooking, but none of the other bullshit. Maybe some stubborn Easter eggs that won't peel. Could it be that the true meaning of the day has a chance to shine through?? As in 'I am the Resurrection and the Life'? *Looks around at world* Naaaaaahhhh. Probably more likely crucifixion is more depressing for people than a birth. And everyone's still burned out from Christmas.

We did have a very nice Easter dinner at Scott and Ann's. Scott was multitasking over a hot stove when we got there. Awesome food: dried fruit and herb stuffed pork loin, mashed taters, a wild rice stuffing. Loads and loads of appetizers beforehand, and a cheesecake for dessert. We contributed steamed asparagus, hollandaise sauce, and a store-bought sushi platter which went over surprisingly well. And I played with Jello® and my egg molds all Saturday and made Easter Egg Jigglers. I made a very important discovery: alcohol *can* be partially substituted for the water to make an adult version.

Drank too much godawful cheap,sweet, fruit-flavored wines, ate too much, but it was all a wonderful day. Mom wasn't even too annoying. I didn't even mind getting thoroughly humiliated playing Lord of the Rings Trivial Pursuit. I protested because it's based on the movies, not the books. Since I have not seen these movies 17 times or more, how did I stand a chance? Ann put in 'Return of the King' and we watched most of that (after the youngest children had left, of course). The bonus material got me geeked to buy all the extended versions.

We found out Chris and Lindsey are coming to Michigan for the weekend of Scott's 40th birthday party at the end of April, which got us all even more geeked. Now I am scrambling to get Friday the 29th off work. I had already PTO'd Saturday, and now I need Friday off, too. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the part-timer I will call today will work it for me. If need be, I will sweeten the deal by offering to work one of her days. I'd rather not, but I will if I have to. It will mean preparing a large family dinner for Tim's side of the family on the 17th on very little sleep, and doing as much ahead as possible, but it will be do-able. I'll just promise not to be crabby, and take an extra B-complex.

Other than that, I have been amusing myself with more bauble shopping. I have now progressed to buying loose stones. ("You bought a naked jewel??" a coworker asked the other night *G*) Yes, I have been prowling e-Bay for loose iolites, because Jewelry Television and all the other shop-a-thon channels don't have exactly what I want in iolite jewelry. Why iolite, and what the heck is it? It's a stone in the cordierite family, its own unique group. It was once used by Vikings to navigate their ships. Somehow they used it as a polarizing filter to figure out the sun's position. It's blue, beautiful, sturdy, comes out of the earth that way with no treatment at all, and it's one hell of a lot cheaper than tanzanite. It almost *looks* like tanzanite. I bought a 5-stone ring from Jewelry Television a few weeks ago, and was so lovin' the color and clarity, I just had to have more of this stuff. I bought two loose emerald-cut stones for earrings, and I won an auction the other night for a 3.4 carat stone for a pendant. Hopefully a local jeweler won't charge me a fortune to set them. But I really didn't pay that much for the stones, so I'll still come out ahead doing it this way.

TV has been something to avoid lately. At least the news channels. Sorry, I don't need the latest update on the Pope's health, or to hear the horrible microphone-amplified sounds trying to come out of the poor man's throat. And the Terri Schiavo case is a complete disgrace. Or rather the coverage of it. I don't even HAVE an opinion on it, that's how confused I am. You could make a coherent argument for either side. Or you could utterly condemn either side. There are so many would have, could have, should haves going on here what can you do but throw your hands up in despair? And how on God's green earth did the highest levels of our government get involved in a private, ugly, acrimonious family affair? That emergency Congressional session on Palm Sunday, of all days, was a display of....?? Precisely what was that supposed to prove? Who was it supposed to impress?

Until it's over, I refuse to tune in to the talking heads who claim to know Mrs. Schiavo feels this, that, or nothing. I refuse to presume to know anything. That she's still in there. Or that she's been gone for 15 years. We have so-called experts talking about keeping dissected hamster brains alive in petri dishes that had more EEG waves than this woman's brain does. The lack of respect and discretion is disgusting. Fox News camped outside the hospice like vultures, and a blaring update every 5 minutes. The serious, furrowed-browed faces of Bill O'Reilly, John Kasich and Nancy Grace as they pontificate and dissect and argue and interrupt and practice today's in vogue style of rude news . All of you make me sick. You're all probably masturbating off-screen because your ratings are so high. You. Don't. Know. Shit. You don't know what Terri Schiavo thinks, feels, doesn't think, doesn't feel. Only God knows that. Only God knows if her soul is still here on earth in her wasting body, or is already one with Him. It's pathetic that now all this woman will be remembered for is the 15 years she spent in a vegetative state. Not the years while she was a living, breathing member of the human community.

And as for you, Michael Jackson, you bleached, dysfunctional primate: Guess who you're going to have to stand before and answer to some day. No army of lawyers, yes-men, Liz Taylor, or your cute jammies are going to pull the least bit of weight with the ultimate Judge. Here we have the perfect storm of human trash: buttloads of money, the dysfunctional, reality-challenged people who own it, dysfunctional predators who use their own children to try to get their hands on it, and news media descending upon the story like the Nazgûls' flying beasts.

Is it any wonder that TV channels featuring women with Dolly Parton hair and accents squealing over butt-ugly jewelry, or channels featuring more women speaking to the shopping audience as if we're all retarded are actually more appealing??

Yes, I know. I still have a bit of trouble with the concept that the TV "ON" button is also the "OFF" button.

At least there's always The Weather Channel.

I need to listen to more music. I need to clarify my will. I need to quit stuffing chocolate Easter eggs into my mouth.