easterpalooza
Posted on April 7, 2007
Filed Under marriage, kids, parenting |
Just in case you were wondering what the Madmarriage family does to celebrate Good Friday, I’ll let you imagine us canceling our plans to attend Easterpalooza at my brother’s house, with its chocolate fountains and rented bunnies that run for their lives, hiding from the dog beneath the deck while screaming children partake in the competitive egg hunt, searching with sugar induced hysteria for the Golden Egg that contains a check ample enough to cover the down payment on their first house or a three year lease on their Hummer. We canceled these exciting plans in order to vomit and mop up vomit and vomit some more and maybe do some laundry when we take a break from vomiting.
Usually we wait for the end of Easterpalooza to begin vomiting. But this year, like some cruel example of muscle memory, we are able to conjure the nausea before eating ourselves sick. Not a chocolate egg in sight and G began throwing up at 4 a.m. this morning. She announced, outside our bedroom door, “I’ve been throwing up.” And when I stumbled out into the hallway to get a read on the situation I slid and fell to my knees in a great big slick of stomach bile. “Oh honey, yes you have been throwing up, and how.”
So after we mopped the floor and changed our clothes and G threw up a few hundred more times and we changed the bed and did some laundry, the sun was coming up and it was high time I had a little coffee to help me embrace a day with the Roto virus.
My SIL was particularly upset that we were not able to attend Easterpalooza because we were supposed to bring several hundred Deviled Eggs that are now rotting in my fridge. Her buffet spread was shamefully light.
Today we learned that nothing triggers the gag reflex quite like the smell of hard boiled eggs in the fridge, so we are all giving that kitchen a wide berth. I’m hoping the Easter bunny will help us out with some waste management when he arrives early Saturday morning.
This afternoon O, feeling rather proud of himself, declared, “The kitchen smells as ripe as a dung beetle.” And then quietly asked “Why do people eat dung beetles? Do they need to be ripe when eaten?” 
While we’re talking about Easter, I’ve got a question. When did Easter become another holiday that centers around gift giving? When I was growing up we put out a basket for the bunny and received some jelly beans and a marshmallow peep or two and that was the end of it. O and G came home from school last week and announced that they wanted to write a letter to the Easter Bunny requesting a new Webkinz because Maggie Cavanaugh wrote a letter to the Easter Bunny last year and he granted her wish for a swing set. I calmly, in my ‘life is not always fair’ voice explained that Maggie Cavanaugh’s Easter Bunny must suffer from a severe Santa-complex and that we should be happy and relieved that our bunny is perfectly content to hand out candy and hard boiled eggs and disappointment.
Before signing off and continuing to clean up the contents of G’s stomach, I beg you hop on over to Betty Bower’s site and try out her Brutal Death of Our Saviour cookie recipe. (Thanks for bringing it to my attention, Chris.) It’s a fun and delicious family activity and has given me some ideas about how to answer some of my own children’s questions about Easter and the death of Jesus.
And if that doesn’t quiet their inquisitive minds then I’m presenting my brother’s theory on the holiday, one that he developed when he was four and hasn’t amended much since. When asked by my very Episcopalian grandmother to explain the significance of Good Friday and Easter, he replied, “Good Friday is the day the Easter Bunny ate too many jellybeans and Easter is the day he died for the sin of eating too much candy.”
Works for me.
(P.S. I borrowed the term Easterpalooza from author Christie Mellor who has put out another clever and funny book about parenting.)
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7 Responses to “easterpalooza”
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Oh, no! We were throwing up for perhaps nine days straight in February, so believe me when I say I know.
I’m with you on Easter. In fact, I have not bought anything yet; nor have we colored eggs. As soon as I get off my arse and stop reading blogs, I’m going out to get dye and some candy. We’ll dye today, and when the boys wake up in the morning they’ll have baskets with dyed eggs, candy, and the equivalent of a dollar-store toy. We might even have a hunt if it’s not too cold.
Done. The excess is just another example of the general excess in this country of late. And it’s all gross.
I kinda got a bit sick there with the imagery of the deviled eggs and the dung beetle smell… made me feel the joys of Easterpalooza…
Hope all are on the mend…In time for the dreaded Rabbit…
cce:
Want to know what I dislike most about stomach-bugs? O.K. I’ll tell you. It’s the whole concept of the “oral-fecal route.”
By the way, I wanted to wish you happy day between Jesus’ crucifixion and re-animation. I called your cell phone, your home phone, Better-Half’s home-office and his cell phone. Despite calling repeatedly and in quick succession, I wasn’t able to get a hold of anyone. Doesn’t anyone carry the phone to the toilet anymore?
Our egg-hunt is off.
Sunday’s forecast is for 65F at the putative 10 AM start. Who wants to hunt eggs in the cold and why is it dipping into the 50’s in Miami in April?
Poor Floridians…not 65 degrees. Better put on those mittens.
We’ll be picking our easter eggs off the frozen tundra while vomiting.
Happy hunting. I’ll call when the virus has made it’s way through the madmarriage household.
i’m sorry g got sick (you guys get that a lot, eh?). too bad the dog wouldn’t help out. ok, that’s gross.
that betty bower is a hoot!
oh, and it was a beautiful day here today. the kind that makes living in this place bearable. we might go to matheson tomorrow. wish you were here…
Does Betty Bower have a recipe for Lapin en croute?