Day 65

The Easter Bunny came and all he left me was this bag of goop!

Easter Sunday.  A big day in a predominantly Catholic society.  Our day started off with a bang.  The Easter Bunny got up early and made certain that there was a basket full of goodies awaiting our boys when they woke from a semi-restful night's sleep.  The bunny, however, made a slight mis-calculation.  You see, our Kitchen gets a great deal of sun in the morning hours through a very grand garden window that has no covering.  When the boys went to open their surprise, what they found was something less precious than a ornately carved chocolate bunny holding a basket of flowers.  What they found was a puddle of mud.  In fact, since Chocolate is what they do here, most of the easter candy was ruined.  Having become a family that takes everything in stride, we all had a big round of laughs and got ready for the day.

We busied ourselved with the mundane details of life and gave ourselves a good spitshine for a jaunt into town.  We had arranged to meet some friends at the river for a nice Sunday stroll with the kids.  A chance for them to skate and a chance for us to unwind after a long week.  We had a very nice walk down the waterway and ended up settling in at a small playground so the youngest could have some fun on the monkey bars.  It is his favorite and the boy is absolutely fearless, even if his mother is not.  It was nice to spend this time with mom since she has been so busy with business travel and usually misses out on these events.  Our pleasant afternoon soon turned sour as some very threatening clouds began to roll in.  Soon we were caught in a downpour and were an aweful long way from home.  No doubt about it, the crew was going to get wet . . . VERY wet.  We were not far from a tram stop, so we rushed over and bought a ticket just in time to jump aboard.  As you can imagine, we were not the only ones to take refuge on this form of public transit and we were soon enveloped in the humidity of humanity.  As more and more folks packed themselves into our tiny train car, I began to wonder what the occupancy limit was.  We had to be getting close.  The wet smelly funk of multicultural folks massed together in tin can on rails was a putrid mix that I can't begin to describe.  Thank God nobody in our train passed gas, for that icing on the top of this cake would have been enough for me to lose my breakfast.

Fortunately, we only had three stops to survive before we were within reasonable walking distance of our friends' home.  We jogged our way through the wet cobbled maze and soon were wringing out our wet clothes and seeking solice in a warm cup of expresso and hot chocolate.  After we had dried a bit and finished our coffees, the boys ran upstairs with our friends' son to play who knows what while the adults exchanged our coffee cups for wine glasses.  The remainder of the afternoon was spent with warm company and a bottle of the local red.  Stories were traded and finger foods consumed to quel the growing rumbling at our midsections.  Soon the afternoon has passed and it was time to make our way back home for the evening.  We said goodbye to our friends and headed for the car.  Somewhere along the way I lost my sunglasses.  No need for them on this cloudy afternoon, but a bummer none the less.  I think it is one of God's cosmic little jokes that any time you spend good money on a pair of sunglasses they always end up lost, broken or at the bottom of a very deep body of water.  The crappy replacement that you buy and a convenience store won't break if you run them over with your car and regardless of your best efforts to misplace them, the just keep turning up.  I am going to test this theory and order some Bill Dance Blue Blockers.  I guarantee I will have the damned things till I am 80.

Back home, it was time for the usual evening routine.  A little forgiveness of the appointed bedtime for the youngsters since there would only be one more day left in their break from school.  Soon though, we were all fast asleep and dreaming of dryer weather.