I have exactly nine minutes to write this, so I can absolutely not afford to mince words. The lack of sleep from the other night which was nobody's fault but my own finally caught up with me- I knew it from the moment I first opened my eyes. Even two cups of Daymaker down the hatch couldn't lift the fog. Olive felt it too, I swear. She ignored her easter basket and lay there chewing on a sock for much of the morning. And then when we returned to the park I could tell she didn't want to be there, she just pulled at the grass and kept a grim expression on her face.
We didn't really get Olive an Easter basket. For my own enjoyment, I gathered a few of her seasonally appropriate toys and books and arranged them in a whicker bin. I also pulled a sweet little embroidered summer dress over her head, which was completely hidden beneath her big sweater.
We don't really celebrate Easter, although we'll be all in for the egg hunts and whatnot when she's old enough. My understanding of the religious side of things can best be summed up by David Sedaris in his Essay "Jesus Shaves." Struggling to communicate in his non-native language, Sedaris and his French classmates could only explain so much: "Son of your father....he be die one day on two morsels of....lumber."
While Olive and I and the dog were strolling in the park past big families dressed in pastels and having BBQs, I reassured her that while her family may throw a lackluster Easter, we really leave it all on the field at Christmas, and that's really what matters. To us.
By the way, aside from all the little kids in the ribbons and small suits, we also saw two hugely fat children - I'm sorry but I'm calling it like it is- both boys, probably ten and eleven years old, shirtless, pants sliding off, who were actually kid-you-not chasing a yellow butterfly around a field. One of them held a 16 liter bottle of Mountain Dew, the lime green plastic lit up by the morning sun. It was sort of touching.
Two other things worth noting from this day: I tripped coming in from the recycling, flew halfway across the room and landed on an open closet door, half of my body in the closet, the other half in the hallway. In recounting that story to our friends at dinner tonight, I told them I'd been bisected by the closet door and everyone took a moment to appreciate how seldom we get to use the term "Bisected" in regards to our physical person, and how satisfying it is when we do.
Also, Olive romped around on my bed tonight completely naked, rolling around in all the blankets with obvious gusto, making her dad laugh so hard. That was my favorite moment. That's what the picture is from.