Despite the tremendous amount of sugar that passed through my household today -- or perhaps because of the tremendous amount of sugar -- the children are already halfway to dreamland.
It was a nice Easter. The Easter Bunny hid everything indoors: it was too cold and snowy outdoors. No fun looking for eggs hidden under drifts. My hubby, who is largely a grumpy bastard, took the time to write a letter back to my older daughter from the Easter Bunny, signing it Hoppy Easter: the whole thing was written with his left hand in order to disguise the script. She's very impressed.
I'd boiled 2 dozen eggs: 9 of them cracked, which is a new record. Is there some magical keep your eggs from cracking trick that I don't know about? It was kind of cool. There were little whirling fragments of rapidly cooking egg yolk whirling around in the boiling water like bright yellow hankerchiefs in a hurricane -- but the thrill sort of faded when I realized that we wouldn't be dying those particular eggs.
Then there was a surprise brunch invitation from my Mother in Law (very long and very boring story short, my inlaws and I Do Not Get Along, sort of the way Gas and Fire do not get along) Apparently there's a new 'open invitation' for Sunday Morning Brunch up on the hill: my MIL is longing for togetherness. Cynical me translates this as there must be a major construction project on the horizon but hope springs eternal that I'm wrong.
At brunch, I learned many things.
One: the girls like hash browns, the kind that come in a box and are cooked in the oven. I never even thought to buy these (I generally just cut up some potatoes, onions, and whatnot)
Two: We definitely don't 'do' Easter the way the rest of our family does. The girls got to hunt for eggs and they had a little candy in their basket. My Mother sent up some catching bunny games, so we hid those. The emphasis has been on the experience: the dying of the eggs, the carefully setting out the carrot for the bunny, searching high and low for the eggs. My younger sister in laws go all out: multiple toys, bags and bags and bags of candy -- the youngest SIL told me they spent close to $60 on Easter stuff. They have one son. He's three. My brain is still reeling from this: I always worry if I'm doing too much and if I'm going to spoil the girls.
How do you know where the line is? We're the oddballs in the family: we don't necessarily HAVE a lot, but we DO a lot.
Three: Who ever said women weren't competitive never listened to a bunch of women talking over the brunch table. This definitely extends to the domestic sphere: from the planned garden to living room choices to you name it, I'm not sure of how many homemaking choices are made by my extended family not because they like the results as much as they want to get 'one up' on each other.
Sometimes the position of black sheep and weirdo has it's advantages: I've got the freedom to run my home the way I think is right because I think it's right, not because it's better/worse/the exact same thing as any of my relatives.
Sigh. This entry had a point when I started, but I'm not sure what it is now. So instead, I'll leave you with a link to a LJ post about making a giant marshmallow dessert. Some of the language in the comments may be unsettling for people who don't like profantity (The F word makes more than a few appearances), so if that bugs you don't click on it -- other than that it is totally culinary in nature.
http://nicki-w.livejournal.com/143962.html
Technorati Tags: Family
