. Spinning .

As I ran out the door this morning to keep a nine a.m. appointment with my accountant, I took one last stab and found the remortgaging papers he would need. Most years, my books are so up-to-date and well done that I hand him one cover sheet with both personal and business tax info, and all he has to do is recopy the numbers to the form and do accounting magic with the depreciation, small business deductions, and we’re good to go. I also usually have the stuff to him by mid-February. It’s just been that kind of year. But I have amazed even myself at pulling together all the information he needed, pulling off a holiday dinner for twelve, and getting the framing and housework done as well. No matter what, it seems I’m made of sturdy stock and manage to get things done in the end.

Took my dad to the Senior Citizen’s Center today to fill out the forms for the elderly property tax freeze he must fill out every two years. At first he didn’t want to sit down in the only available chair by the desk at which we met with the woman who handled this, instead motioning me to use it. The lady kept telling him to sit down, not realizing what he was doing for both me, and every woman who walked up to the desk. She probably felt he was senile–having to work daily with the elderly has possibly preconditioned her–until I explained that he was being a gentleman. She was much nicer to us after that.

After we got back home, I gave him a much-needed haircut. It makes me nervous because I notice how paper-thin his skin is, how fragile it faces the gleaming scissor blades as I cut. I keep my fingers at the scissor tips as I trim around his ears, and sure enough, I snip the tip of a finger. But I am young, I will heal.

Well the furniture is all back in place, I’ve cleaned the raspberry jello off the carpet, the leftovers are smooshed inside the refrigerator, and I’m dead tired. Still have the taxes to finish up, and a meeting notice for Narratives to write and print out so that I can run around and post it on campus tomorrow.

Spent some time with my niece who tried to fix the border between columns on this site, but she’s talking real html, not Typepad’s easy way of doing things, so we didn’t have time to go through it all. My nephew brought two certificates to frame, and I gleefully told him that he’d end up paying double-time holiday rates on them. The littlest family member was toddling around trying not to get stepped on, and the oldest, my dad, ate like a horse–you wouldn’t believe how much that man put down.

My only regret is that I hadn’t taken time to learn how to use the digital camera. Watching my husband, at just over 6 ft and solid walking down the road with his little buddy, our 6-year old great-nephew, Leif, was such a beautiful sight. These two just clicked right from the start and it’s a joy to watch them hang out together.

The whole day was hectic, but a lot of fun. We even started some kind of word game at the dinner table, which surprised me because usually our family just descends upon a meal like locusts and doesn’t bother with small talk. Saying Grace, and “please pass the…” is usually the limit of our table conversation until we’re filled to overflowing with food.

Jeez, I really hate to see family traditions fade away with the generations…

If your sense of humor is a bit warped, like mine, check out J-Walk’s Easter Story.

I don’t want to get involved in political correctness or gender or racial jokes, but it seems to me that freedom of speech should be just that: Freedom of Speech. If we can make jokes about God, Jesus Christ, the President, the Pope, and on and on, why do we have to be prohibited from laughing at ourselves? I was raised in a primarily Italian and Polish town, and the jokes flew back and forth and if you were smart, you just changed them in the retelling. They were all funny, and everybody laughed.

One of the first religious jokes I heard was when I was in about seventh or eighth grade, and it concerned the letter that the three children at Fatima received from the vision of the Blessed Virgin. It was to be opened, I believe, in 1960 by the Pope. That, supposedly is the true part of the story. The jokes were about what the letter revealed, and one punch line was that it was “the bill from the Last Supper.” Kinda hokey now, but we all thought it was funny.

Were we just redneck jackasses, or were we just human beings able to find something amusing about the human spirit?

Whether you are looking for Easter eggs and chocolate rabbits, enjoying an aromatic baked ham, relaxing on a Sunday afternoon, or reflecting on the story of one Man Who lived a life of love and peace as an example to the world to follow and suffered and died for His beliefs, have a Happy Easter.

Well, the eggs turned out lovely, my bulka rose and smells wonderful, I’m starting the water to boil the piorogi, the sauerkraut has been simmered with butter and zyzpki (sp.) which are those fifty-dollar a pound Polish dried mushrooms that only grow in the Black Forest or something like that, I’m doing the potatoes tonight as well, the laundry’s all done, finished all the framing that had to be finished, put a good dent in the income taxes, and I’ve little by little picked up the house. This last thing is the reason I like holidays; the house must get cleaned. It’s sort of a two-day affair of moving things from where they don’t belong to the room in which they do belong until everything looks kind of where it’s supposed to be.

On the one hand I wonder why I kept putting all this off and why it looked so overwhelming, when it can easily be done in a couple days. On the other, why do it every day if all it takes is one day a month?

Have a great holiday for those of you who celebrate it. I’m looking forward to being with the family. There’s an age range here from 15 months to 1,108 months. Amazing, isn’t it?

Anybody else screw up their Easter eggs?

Remind me to never, never, never buy those weird swirly egg dye kits ever again. After boiling the eggs and not having so much as one even crack, I starting coloring them. I ended up with one gummy, sticky, fuzzy (when I tried to wipe off the gummy-stickies with a paper towel) dark green and hot pink never-to dry egg which I finally cracked open and ate after wondering if the cleanser I tried to scrub it with would penetrate the shell, and two close-calls that I managed to save before I gave in (I am a stubborn one) and did it the old fashioned way–food color.

I love using the brown eggs, and dye them nice and deep, then wipe olive oil on them when they are dry. They end up looking like wooden eggs, and they’re really beautiful. Side bonus: They’re slippery and it’s fun to watch them fly around the dining table.

Wonder if I can mess anything else up. Yep. It looks like my bulka isn’t rising after an hour of sitting.

Uh, tomorrow is Easter Sunday, isn’t it?

Can’t believe I put everything off until the last minute. The problem with stress is that it inhibits productivity and everything takes twice as long to do because nothing is well-thought out.

The problem with beyond-stress, and I think this is where the body’s natural chemicals kicked in so I’m saving pill-money at least, is that it brings productivity to a complete halt. No stress because one simply does not care that nothing is getting done instead of worrying about it.

Hope my family can help me convince the little ones that brown eggs are indeed Easter colors.

It is difficult to think differently when stubbornly holding onto one’s beliefs and peace. We cling like leeches to a satisfying meal of blood, and blood to writers is a state of mind; free-flowing thoughts that transcend the commonplace and warp the world into a desperate place to be, an Eden where all the trees are apple, forbidden and delicious.

That said, I must vacation from my paradise for but a day or two, driven by the serpent to satisfy his needs with unlovely things.

I must, in other words, sit down and prepare my taxes for an early Monday morning meeting with my accountant, who like the IRS, does not appreciate creative bookkeeping.

Sometimes the ray of light just means another broken window. Sometimes that is enough to see by, and find your way.

Dead-on noon; the backyard is just a different colored sky. Shades of blue are green, and clouds and birds told only by their shape and size of moving shadowed shades of grey. At noon, up and down is one.

Sometimes, it is only the seemingly hardest among us that see through the shell and understand.

Thank you, Rina.

Maybe because it is Easter Week, and a time for reflection upon life, death, goodness, gifts, friends, and pierogi. Maybe it is only floating bits of time that get in each others’ way and crash together in coincidence.

Last night in a telephone conversation my sister cried, relating to me a dream she had about the last hours we spent with my mother. And it was real, untainted by the fantasies that dreams can add as softening details. We switch roles once more, and I am the stronger one to assuage the guilt I know she feels at leaving fifteen minutes early that afternoon. It is as troubling, I realize, as mine at being there.

Another happy phone call; C tells me of the birth of her second grandchild, a boy, 2,500 miles away. We talk of weight and length, and how perfectly he fits into our ideals. Forgetting, of course, his older sister who was also so very perfect at a very different size.

The chemicals course through her veins and she murmurs in agreement that she is feeling what I can hear in her voice. But back to happy blue things and flowers. This new life, as are all to someone, is what she has been waiting for, and she is laughing as we hang up the telephones.

I remain a moment longer there, my hand still upon the phone, feeling the smile of birth drop away and I worry. This is what she has been waiting for.