Auntie Johanna is on record as complaining about the lack of niece photos lately, so here, have some Easter pictures!

Eliza and I dyed the eggs on Saturday night while Jim was pulling a rare weekend shift. It’s easy and cheap to make your own colors, so that’s what we did. I’m glad I didn’t spend too much money on fancy dye kits because when you have a toddler as an assistant designer and enthusiastic tosser-into-the-dye, the eggs tend to come out sort of murky. We got a couple of good green ones, but most of them were some form of brownish-reddish-purplish:

Originally, Jim and I had decided we’d do the Easter egg hunt after the Easter drag in the afternoon, but then I discovered a problem with this plan since we intended to have some of the hard-boiled eggs as part of breakfast. (Is this universal or a Euro-thing, eating hardboiled eggs on bread for breakfast on Easter? Because Jim always seems mystified by this, and I can’t tell if I’m the weirdo or if he’s a heathen.)

Anyway, so we scotched that plan and he distracted her while I hid the eggs and some little gifties, and then I made loud crashing noises and yelled for Eliza to come see what was going on. In the very near future, I must make time to upload the video footage he got of her saying, “Ooooh!” and “BEOO-dee-ful” when she spotted the Most Expensive Easter Trinket Ever:

Properly fortified with eggs and Easter bread (AM and Jim) and/or hopped up on chocolate (Eliza) we headed out for the Easter drag. We are always the first ones out there because we head out right at 11 and most of the churches don’t get out until at least 11:30, but it’s fun. Basically, everyone parades up and down the street in their finery. The firestation rolls out its trucks and lets the little kids crawl around in them while one of the firefighters hands out candy (since it’s always a young-looking guy I suspect some sort of rookie hazing ritual at play). Merchants hand out stuff to the kids (see green bunny ears clutched in Missy’s hands):

and there’s facepainting:

a clown who makes balloon animals, and a bunny:

and a hotdog:

If the latter seems incongruous, well, that’s how we roll in our hood. Also, HQ for the festivities is a locally beloved old-time hot dog place. The hot dog made a really big impression on Eliza this year. Tonight, she took off her shirt, rolled herself in a blanket, and impersonated various sandwiches, including a hot dog and a grilled cheese sandwich, as well as something with mustard on it.

Barney’s a heatseeker — if it’s warm, he’s on it in it near it whatever. It is HIS.

He loved our old computer. It had vents on top that let out warm air and every evening as I worked/blogged, there he would be, perched on our little blue machine, nodding off as he soaked up the blissful warmth. Like so:

 


Amazingly, as clumsy as he is, he never fell off, even when he nodded off like that.

Then, last August, we got our new computer:




Poor cat. Even a more nimble feline could not perch on the inch-wide top of this flatscreen monitor.

He has found a poor, sad, pathetic substitute in the modem and external hard drive. At night, he hunches grumpily over the pair of them, shooting daggers in my direction. Tiny Man, he is maaaaad:

In r.e. Elliot Spitzer, John McCain, Clinton, Mark Foley, etc. scandals: I have arrived at the conclusion that man/woman, black/white, whatever. Our real priority for our politicians should be that they are EUNUCHS.

Is there NO ONE in the corridors of power who can keep it in his pants?

***

Pet peeve: People who give you their email address and then NEVER check it. Are you aware that this is the 21st century? Yes? Then WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM?

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‘Nother Pet Peeve: I wish my damn cats would stop changing the settings on my computer. Every time they do that “Oh hai, pai attentshun te MEEEEEEEEEHHHH!” thing where they stand on the desk and stick their butts in my face they step on some arbitrary and impossible-to-reverse-engineer combination of the control, shift and letter keys and the only way to get out of the resulting bizarro screen settings is to log out and start over.

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You’d think that for someone who grew up speaking different languages and has family members who speak English with an accent, I’d be better at understanding whatever it is that people who speak with accents say to me. Case in point, I registered Eliza for school today. At least, I think I did, but I’m not sure, because the intake woman was  sweet but utterly incomprehensible to me.

This does remind me of my dad and his favorite tailor, a talented and very friendly man of indeterminate origin who turned every alternation into a nail-biter. “I THINK I’m getting my pants hemmed, but he might be making them into shorts,” I recall my father saying fretfully after one such interaction.

Since we both listen(ed) to music way louder than is generally considered healthy, I certainly have a theory r.e. this phenomenon, but I’m just guessing.

***

Burying the lede somewhat for fear of jinxing things: If all goes according to plan I will be teaching the intro karate class at the Hipsterville Y starting next month. This new plan is about 24 hours old. I was chatting with the current instructor after class yesterday and she was lamenting the fact that she would be ending the class at the end of this session because she had so many other commitments coming up, and there wasn’t anyone at the dojo who could take over for her. Then she did a figurative dope-slap on herself and said to me, “Hey, do YOU want to teach it?”

We decided that this was a plan of unsurpassed genius — my beginner classmates would be able to stay in class, I would get to teach again (don’t ask me about teaching karate, because I will never ever shut up about teh awesome), and the dojo would have a representative at the Y. She ran it by her husband (the dojo director) today, who ALSO thinks it’s genius, and then I approached the Y about it, and pending blablabla crossyourfingers they seem to think it’s genius and sent me off with a 345,275,634-page application, including paperwork for 2 different criminal background checks I have to complete.

Elizasmom: Guaranteed CRIME FREE!

You know, occasionally vehement expression of opinions aside, I have always thought that Eliza’s toddlerhood wasn’t too bad. She has, for a Small Person, been relatively reasonable, and I can even give her sympathy for some stuff — getting shampoo in your eyes sucks, so the hair-washing-related screaming? Dude, I get that.
However!
Someone has subjected us to a swift and painful descent into the Terrible Twos, and since she is almost three, she is apparently trying to cram 12 months into three. Or possible into one weekend. Jesus H. You-know-who, what the heck was THAT?!
By last night Jim and I were saying blearily to each other, “So, HOW much longer until that summer camp?” Given that he has historically been the more reluctant of the two of us to put Eliza into school/daycare situations, his giddy anticipation of his freedom should tell you something.
Jim has also apologized for have been a handful as a baby, since we seem to be reaping the karma of his past.
My head is ringing like after a rock concert, only I seem to be having not the happy post-show glow today, but rather more of an escaped-from-a-rabid-dog sense of relief. I just stress-ate my way through the secretary’s candy bowl. I think I owe her a bag of Snickers.
As I left the house, I told Eliza that we were all going to have a GOOD attitude and use CALM voices and then I made her shake on it. However, I suspect that she does not view oral contracts as legally binding.

Quotable: Eliza, on Saturday, as she finished playing with one of her toys: “Goodbyeeeeee! It’s been a thrill. See you tomorrow!”

***

Jim wanted to go skiing yesterday and suggested we all go, since the mountain he had in mind had babysitting for the kiddos.

I was on board, sort of, until I thought through the whole “hurtling down the slope on greased slats” aspect of the undertaking. Eeep.

Luckily, he is always receptive to an argument for spending less money and I had a perfect one, since he had told me some friends would be there and the distaff side of the couple was planning to check out the tubing that was offered. Tube rental was way cheaper than lift ticket plus skis plus lesson.

Thus, while Jim cut a dashing figure schussing down the mountain, I staggered over to the tube slope to scootch my butt along a frozen surface repeatedly.

I couldn’t find our friends at first, so I was the creepy lone adult on the hill with all the children — and the parents who had their children as beards.

I asked one of the employees what the proper procedure was and I think there were some crossed wires because I was ordered to sit down and then he whipped me into a spin and pushed me down the hill without further ado. I staggered back to the top, overcoming my nausea just in time to do it again.

By the time I determined that it was possible to request a non-vomit-comet straight push down the hill I was hooked on the spinning variety, and when AY, the aforementioned potential fellow tuber, tracked me down, I recruited her to the cause, which she joined with enthusiasm.

I think the employees regarded us as a challenge — can we make the grown-ups cry uncle. (No! You cannot!) One of them did that thing where you realize halfway into your sentence that you’re saying something hideously incorrect and performed some impressive verbal gymnastics to not quite say, “Wow, you are really daring for being such a geezer.” This was simultaneously flattering and depressing. Luckily, I was having too much fun to care. Also, at one point he spun with such force that he knocked himself off balance and slid partway down the hill. Heee.

AY and I have decided that we need snowtubing chutes in our yards forthwith.