Easter Weekend

This weekend felt like it was really long. That’s probably because the kids had a week off for spring break and because the week before that was all half-days.

Cadillac took Thursday off and had Good Friday off, so he got a 4 day weekend. That probably made it feel longer! I kept thinking Thursday was Friday and then Friday was Saturday.

On Saturday, we left the kids with his folks and had a little date afternoon in Solana Beach. Cedros Avenue has a bunch of stores, some antiques, some not, mostly kind of on the expensive side. We went into one warehouse where they were selling fabulous made-to-order wooden furniture. As we walked through, the employee told us we could go upstairs and downstairs and downstairs was their wood shop and their…

INDIANA JONES FLOOR!

So we scuttled downstairs.

It wasn’t as spooky as I’d thought; they’d painted the stairwell a bright aqua. What bad thing could happen to you in an aqua room?

Then we got down there. This is the first guy I saw:

The eyes are totally freaking me out. It’s from Africa and it was about $1500. They also had lots of Chinese dragons and various gargoyles. I think (I hope) most are to keep out bad spirits, but I’m not sure; and frankly, I wondered about the sort of morality of taking other cultures’ artifacts, possibly religious ones, and using them as art. Where did these objects come from? How were they acquired? Were there spikes involved? Double-crossing archeologists?

Then we headed upstairs, where we saw this keris.

Which reminded me of Therese Walsh’s wonderful novel, THE LAST WILL OF MOIRA LEAHY, which prominently features a keris. Some of these knives are said to possess magical powers, good or bad. If I were superstitious (which I pretend I am not but actually kind of am) I don’t know if I’d want to randomly buy a keris for display. But since I had no extra $950, I was spared this dilemma.

On the eve of Easter, Holy Saturday, I guess, we planned to go to bed early so we could go to 7 am mass. Sometime that afternoon, Cadillac said he’d dig the Easter baskets out of the garage and wash them. At 630 pm, I asked him if he was going to do it, and he said LATER! CALM DOWN! and said we’d– er, the Easter Bunny– would do baskets EARLY for a change from every other holiday where we have to prepare. Then we started watching THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, a movie that somehow was nearly 5 hours long with commercials, and got caught up in all the side-pony action.

After Moses saw God, he came down from the mountain with a magnificent perm.

Anyway, we got totally sucked into the movie. I thought the way they made it was interesting in what they focused on and what they skipped. For example, they spent several scenes on the shepherd girls who all wanted a piece of Moses because they had no man in the desert. But then they skipped over the locusts and frogs and everything with the narrator saying, “And then God sent frogs and locusts…” and that was that. Maybe they didn’t have the special effects.

Our kids watched some of it, which surprised me because I remember my parents watching it and me thinking it was absolutely the most boring movie ever created. But they seemed to enjoy it. I think they pretended because they didn’t want to go to bed. But we made them go at 830.

At 10:45 I finally said we ought to go to bed. It’s not like we didn’t know how the story ended (it kind of wrapped up too quick for all the build-up, I think). I asked Cadillac if he’d gotten the baskets out.

No, we were watching this movie, he said.

So I dug everything out and put the baskets together.

Then, because I’ve been having terrible insomnia, I took some sleeping pills and we went to bed.

The Easter bunny came early, and Cadillac said the kids should find eggs before church though I will have it Be on Record that I said AFTER. So you have something to look forward to. But whatever. He let me sleep through that part, not that he could wake me– the pills hadn’t worn off by church time. But I staggered up anyway, Cadillac complimenting my toughness so I felt better, and got dressed and put on make-up. Slacks, a blouse, a jacket. Then I went out to the living room.

My Eldest looks at me and says, “So, you’re not coming to church with us, huh?”

Then I wondered if I in fact looked totally hideous, so she assumed I was staying home. “Why else would I be dressed up and put makeup on this early?” I said.

“I don’t know. Calm down!” she said. (Oh, I see where she gets that CALM DOWN from now).

We all sucked up our tiredness and went to mass. Unfortunately, halfway through, my son started sneezing (too much perfume!) and I had to send him out to blow his nose because I had no tissue. What an Amateur Mom move! Then my oldest grabbed my hand. Her palm was cold and sweaty. She said she didn’t feel good. She didn’t look too good, either. I told her to get some air in the garden. Then I went out to find her and couldn’t, so I went back in and got the rest of my family and said we ought to take her home, so we left after the Eucharist. Score! I mean, darn! I mean, I suspected she was okay but I couldn’t really make that call, because that would be the One Time she’d get sick all over the pew.

So we found her outside. She said she felt better, she was just in the restroom. Totally normal. By then the mass was ending for real, so we went home.

It turns out having a bunch of candy at 6:30 in the morning is not good for someone with wacky blood sugar, as runs in our family. Who knew? (Answer: EVERYONE. ‘Cause I told them). But if no one listens and I can’t monitor people all the time (especially those who are nearly teenagers) then what can I do?

It was a good Easter. The bunny had the foresight to get my oldest the Hunger Games trilogy. Oddly, I’d only read the first one. Funny how convenient that was. Very convenient. And Cadillac and the kids actually LET ME READ so I read the entire second book that afternoon. Boo-yah! See, all’s well that ends well, or whatever.