Eggsistential

I tend to get overwhelmed with the negatives in my life. They hover like a dark cloud…my need to figure out how to fix them gnaws at me.

Sometimes though, I snap myself out of my snow-coated thought cage and realize that I’m standing in my kitchen at 9 a.m., wearing my pajamas and eating a Cadbury egg. Things can’t be that bad if I don’t have to be anywhere and I’ve got a kitchen and a Cadbury egg, right?

(When I typed that, I realized there’s a wholly depressing other way to interpret that scenario, but for me it was a positive.)

What’s my point? My point is that sometimes I just want to stop thinking about how to be happier and just be happy. I was happy with my Cadbury egg. No, that Cadbury egg won’t pay off my debt or make me love my job, but it was nice while it lasted.

So...I hope you all find your own Cadbury eggs today. Happy Easter!

The Incrediblest Ediblest Egg

It is Easter. I hope yours was filled with family, fun, and Cadbury Creme Eggs.

Some people get all crazy with them...

I find the egg best enjoyed in its purest form.

Happy Easter!

(Btw, you can skip Hop. Seriously. Skip it.)

Baseball and Eggs (separately)

Today we made it through our first entire Twins game with the boys! This feat allowed me to learn that baseball has nine innings, not seven. (I don't know why I thought it was seven - is there a sport with seven of something?)

It was a cold, rainy day, but we had so much fun. It helped that we had good seats this time, so we could see what was happening without the TV screens. Plus, it was a daytime game (less tired whining) and we brought blankets. And we ate a lot of crap, which I'm pretty sure is an important part of the baseball experience.

Then, after the game, we dyed Easter eggs. For the first time ever, I undercooked the eggs. (Seriously, how do you hard boil eggs wrong?) Luckily we only cracked one...kind of a giant waste of eggs though.

Hope everyone has a nice Easter. We plan to pay reverence to the Cadbury Egg...truly a miracle.

Btw, I just learned the word "obeisance" and I think we should all try to use it in conversation tomorrow. Go!

Candy Day!

Happy Easter! We don't celebrate any of the religious stuff over at our house, but we do revere that lovely rabbit who so kindly delivers candy - and, this year, Pokemon cards! (I guess the rabbit heard that Aidan had resorted to drawing his own Pokemon cards in a delightfully wholesome attempt to keep up with the junior Joneses.)

In my opinion, the best thing about Easter is the Cadbury Eggs. However, even I wanted to vomit when I saw this evil combination of two of my favorite foods.

Still, I appreciate the creativity with which many of my fellow sweet-lovers approach the holiday. So here, for your enjoyment, are few other ways to love your Easter candy:

• Torch the Peeps (thank you, Kevin!)
• Cakespy's suggestions for leftover candy
• A festive way to get caffeinated

And, finally, why didn't anyone tell me this existed? I might have booked a flight.

Enjoy your (hopefully) day off. Try to incorporate a fruit or vegetable between bites of that chocolate bunny.

Thank you, Easter Bunny

My children woke up at 5:45 this morning. They scampered into our bedroom around 6:15 a.m. This was the most excited they've ever been about Easter, and I wanted to share their enthusiasm...but not until 7 a.m.

After unsuccessfully attempting to make them "rest" in our bed for another half hour, we got up and the fun began. It started out as it always does: a plastic egg trail led them down the stairs and to their baskets. But then they realized there was more...the Easter bunny had hidden eggs in our backyard as well! 

Now, I use the term "hidden" very loosely here, as it was more like someone haphazardly dropped eggs within a 6 foot radius of the backdoor - in the dark - but you'd think we had taken them to the egg hunt on the White House lawn the way Aidan kept exclaiming, "This is a dream come true!" Owen, on the other hand, showed tremendous focus as he scrambled to get more eggs than his brother, all the while laughing maniacally. 

And now, having each consumed several pounds of chocolate, the boys are watching cartoons in their PJs while the blueberry muffins bake. And it's only 7:37 a.m. 

Happy Easter!

P.S. I recommend reading celebrity Aspergian John Robison's Look Me in the Eye blog for his explanation of egg-laying bunnies. 

Small Talk

I braved our spring blizzard this morning to go to Target. Thanks to our Vegas vacation, we were not only out of groceries, but we hadn’t yet procured any of the supplies needed to play Easter bunny on Sunday. Other than being especially easy because my husband was home with the kids, the shopping portion of the trip was uneventful. Then I got to the checkout.

“You’re doing your Easter shopping late,” the cashier, an awkward white male in his early twenties, said as he bagged my Cadbury eggs. I gave him a polite smile and shrug. He continued with “You didn’t want to get it done earlier?”

Well, yes, I wanted to start months ago by compiling a collection of toys small enough to fit inside plastic eggs and then going to a gourmet chocolatier to have special chocolate bunnies crafted in the likenesses of both of my boys…but then I remembered that Easter is virtually meaningless since we don’t subscribe to organized religion and my boys would be just as happy with M&Ms and a copy of “101 Dalmations.” And by the way, you clearly don’t have kids, so shut up.

I did not say any of this, of course. Instead, I smiled politely and made it through the rest of the transaction in silence until he did the obligatory, “Do you want to save 10 percent today?” To which I quickly replied – as I always do – “No, thanks, we already have a Target card.”

His reply: “Well then you should have used it.” Perhaps in response to my look of shock, he then added, “You could have earned 180 points.”

Asperger’s, is what I thought. This guy clearly has Asperger’s syndrome. Asperger’s is the highest functioning end of the autism spectrum – to oversimplify, it basically means that social skills don’t come naturally to individuals who have it. Though Owen isn’t officially diagnosed with it (his diagnosis fell slightly below Asperger’s, under the straight-up “autism” criteria), I often think his behaviors, paired with his exceptional intelligence, make it a more fitting diagnosis.

I find myself making Asperger’s diagnoses a lot when I meet socially awkward individuals – men, mostly. I also often wonder whether they know they have it.

True, my unscientific assessments might not always be accurate, but with the rates of autism spectrum disorders in Minnesota being calculated at 1 in every 81 children (the highest of any state), I’m probably not always off base either. And really, I’d rather just give these guys the benefit of the doubt by assuming that rather than being rude, they are just trying to navigate the complicated terrain of small talk. I hope that when Owen gets older, people will do the same for him.