Easter

I've been taking a mostly bare minimum approach to holidays this year, since just keeping things going on normal days generally feels like quite enough, thank you.  And Easter was going to be fine.  We've never made a big deal about the bunny, church was going to have egg dying and an egg hunt, which I worried about because while finding actual hard boiled eggs is beautiful and simple and all that, my kids (who definitely don't believe in the Easter Bunny, I thought) do look forward to candy.  But the grandparents were coming through with that - a candy egg hunt at their house after the pure and healthy boiled egg hunt.   It was all going to be just fine.

Mr. P even made a point of telling me over and over for the past week "I know you're the Easter Bunny."  I rolled my eyes and said nothing.

Whether she overheard or not, I don't know, but Shmoogie was on Friday suddenly laser focused on "Where are the Easter baskets?" And "Do you think the Easter Bunny will come?"  Which might be actual belief, she is only 7, but I kind of doubt it... she is, after all, almost 8 and pays such close attention to everything around her that she lettered "you need to releese your taxes Trump" with near perfect spelling and spacing on her protest sign all by herself while I was in the shower (I was pretty upset when Bayboh added all the scribbles a little later when no one was looking, but she didn't seem to care as long as people could still read it).

But anyway.  There I was on Saturday, with a seven year old I'd just discovered was expecting a visit from the Easter Bunny, but also with a pretty tightly scheduled day and nothing to put in Easter baskets and also no milk.  Or bananas.  So on the way home from my afternoon late birthday outing with a friend, I stopped at Trader Joe's for Easter basket candy and milk and bananas, and maybe also deli ham and tortillas... and $83 later I had several bags of unplanned but clearly necessary groceries, and was an hour late for the babysitter.

Then the unearthing of the Easter baskets.  Bayboh was thrilled, Shmoogie was pleased, and Mr. P was MIA.  Bayboh's basket had grass already in it, but the others didn't, so I took his out saying the bunny would take care of that, but that was not ok with Bayboh.   Shmoogie's basket has a lid, and she took it off, happy babbling about it all the while, to which I replied, walking up the stairs to fetch something or other, thinking only of table space and dinner that hadn't yet been eaten, "Oh, you can leave the lid on, the bunny can take care of that," which provoked a sudden shift in mood as she yelled after me, "How, with PAWS?"  And I scowled to myself, thinking "still with the Easter bunny is seriously a real bunny? isn't this all just a ploy to get more candy?" and yelled back "Then how does it carry the eggs??"  To which she hissed, "IN. THE. BASKET!"

So there.

It was going just great, Bayboh and Shmoogie asleep, Mr. I-don't-believe-in-anything-except-maybe-all-the-Greek-mythology-because-that-stuff-makes-SENSE Pants was awake but in his room in the basement, and I was almost done putting out these few eggs filled with candy that no one needs (really, seriously, because it turned out the boiled eggs were for giving out to grownups, the kids egg hunt was candy after all, so we now have a pound of candy each, not to mention what they ate already), when suddenly there was Mr. P wandering into the dining room, trying to look confused and half asleep.   Clutching an egg half-guiltily to my chest, I glared at him, turned him around and pushed him out the door with a firm, "Good NIGHT."