Easter Oyster

 

I hope that my readers had a wonderful Easter. I went to the Vigil Mass at the nearby church, and they did a lounge version of the Exsultet, with two women and a piano. That was kind of lame - I wait all year to hear the Exsultet, and then that?? I found a recording online of an Irish monk with such a strong accent that it was kind of distracting, but at least it was the chant and not some lounge music. But spring is finally here! We have daffodils coming up in the neighborhood.

Ma Hat celebrated with dyed eggs and blooming amaryllis, just like last year.

The Dairyman's Daughter tried some natural dyes, and she posted some beautiful photos of her eggs on social media. The blue from red cabbage and yellow from turmeric were fantastic; the red from beets was kind of weak, but she admitted that she didn't use fresh beets. 

I wore a screaming pink dress to celebrate this most festive of days.

And here it is with Famous Hat's replacement.

To my surprise, everyone else wore very subdued colors at our parish. Come on, if you can't go all out for Easter, then when can you do it? At least the cantor chanted the "Victime Pascali Laudes" in Latin. I wait all year for that too. After Mass, a couple were handing out treats to the kids, and they gave me a Cadbury egg and a sugar cookie, which tells you something about my maturity level. At brunch I split the Cadbury egg lengthwise and offered half to Travalon, who said, "What's this? An oyster? An Easter oyster? Now you have a blog post title!" When he realized it was candy, he did accept it.

We drove to Oconomowoc to visit his mother, but his oldest brother and his wife were already visiting her, so they told us one couple would have to leave. Travalon's brother and wife said they would leave, even though they just got there, because we had come a lot further and they couldn't stay long anyway. I would have liked to talk to them longer too, but the retirement home is strict about the "different households" rule. They did let us take his mother down to the lakeshore, and as we sat enjoying the absolutely glorious day, a weird little experimental airplane flew noisily overhead, doubled back, and landed on the lake! Then it loudly made its way across the lake like a power boat and took off again, looking for all the world like it was going to plow into the houses on the lakeshore. That was weird. I joined the family Zoom call via my phone as we drove back to Madison, then we went to Rich's house for a much smaller gathering than in previous years. Anna Banana II was the only other woman, and she and I took a walk between dinner and the multiple desserts. We saw this cute display in Rich's neighborhood.

After she left, we did talk about sports a lot because, after all, I was the only woman there. We got to bed at a reasonable time, but I had trouble sleeping after all that sugar. This morning Travalon and I were taking a walk before I started work, and I pointed out where one pair of cranes is nesting. I told him where the other two pairs are nesting, and he said, "You sure know what's going on with the cranes in the neighborhood!" I said, "I don't watch soap operas, so this is the drama I get involved in." Then when we took our mid-morning walk, we saw one of the cranes on the other side of the road. As we were heading into the house, we looked behind us and saw it had kind of followed us, but it turned the other direction and went up the path by the tennis court. I said I wondered why it would follow us, did it suspect we were up to no good or was it curious? Travalon thought it was probably just curious.

Famous Hat