Easter Greetings, Road Trip Wrap-Up, And A Cell-Phone Story

Happy Easter, and to those of you who do not celebrate the holiday, why, hello there!

And speaking of Easter, let me just say here and now that once again, the opportunity to use copious amounts of bunnies was wasted. The Cadbury people did not use the Cadbury bunny ad in which the bunny clucks like a hen and lays the creamy Cadbury eggs. No fluffy cute bunnies were used to advertise Easter sales on spring dresses or hats. No bunnies were paraded around for frikking anything. So, in an effort to give cute bunnies their due, here is an absolutely terrifyingly, mindbendingly cute bunny.

So there. And I have absolutely no segue into the next section, which is about my road trip. Except to say...

I made it through The Road Trip With Mother, sanity intact, and all with only two pairs of shoes. She was so well-behaved, Mom was, that I was almost ashamed of my pre-trip trepidation. True, there were a few moments when we had to explain her cell-phone to her again--she's had it since Christmas--, and we did have a few "Nance and Patti as Shirley and Evelyn Moments", but all in all, the old girl did all right. I think most of this was due to the fact that she was sitting in the backseat of the van and couldn't always hear all of the conversation clearly all of the time. But I could be wrong. But I doubt it.

I must say that I was deeply touched--deeply--by the concern some dear Dept. readers expressed in the comments regarding my taking of only two pairs of shoes. You were so very kind to be worried about this obvious fashion risk. But rest assured that I am nothing if not fashion savvy. I made sure that the two pairs I did take worked perfectly well with the choice of pants I packed. And, our motel was right next to an outlet mall that had several shoe shopping offerings should a footwear crisis emerge. None did, and sadly, our itinerary was so packed and the weather was so inhospitably cold that the opportunity never presented itself even just to browse. But fear not: I have a pair of incredibly stylish leopard print point-toe slingbacks on hold already here at home. On discount. You would not believe me if I told you the price, so I won't.

But I digress.

The trip to take my mom to see her sisters was a ton of fun. I re-met cousins and my cousins' daughters and the wives of cousins. There was a lot of talking and my uncle mixes a helluva martini. He and my aunt are incredibly good hosts and democrats. I love them. And they are good to my mother--way better than I am. Someday they may look under the bed in the guest room and discover that I have been living there quietly for months.

Finally, I want to share with all of you what I came home to. No, not a messy hellhole of a house. It was clean and wonderful and Rick and Jared and Sam were glad to see me. They even wanted to wait until I came home to color Easter eggs. No, it's this:

Jared came downstairs this morning, still a little sleepy. We said good morning and he started grinning. He even chuckled a little. We started laughing, too, even though we didn't know what was so funny. "What is it?" we asked. "I got up," Jared said, "and I always grab my cell phone first thing. I noticed that sometime in the night I had gotten a text message. So I retrieved it to see what it was. It was from Sam. It said, STOP SNORING."