Better late than never

I spent Easter in Arizona with my kids. The weekend started off fine, and even though it ended on a sour note, with me putting myself as a candidate for the worst father ever, it was still nice to see them. It'd been far too long.

We dyed eggs, and Tortellini and Togers hid them in the back yard so that Mr M could go on an Easter egg hunt.

I only had one contribution to the egg hiding, and that was trying to use camouflage to hide this one in the pool.


Tortellini thought it would be fun to draw various things on some of the eggs she colored. They turned out pretty cool. She's creative, that one.






But my favorite egg might have been the one my ex's boyfriend made.


Togers didn't draw on any of his because I told him not to draw a pentagram on an Easter egg.

Mr M got tired of searching for them rather quickly, but persevered and found them all anyway. What a good sport.

Here comes Peter Cottontail

A few minutes ago I was talking to Mr M about the Easter Bunny coming tomorrow.

"Dad, there's no such thing. The Easter Bunny isn't real. It's just a guy dressed in a bunny suit that comes and leaves candy in your house."

Yeah, dude, 'cause that's less creepy.

You'll realize one day the grass is always greener on the other side

Two stories from Easter Sunday:

The first came from Mr M telling me that there's no such thing as the Easter Bunny. No. Instead, humans just dress up in rabbit costumes and go around delivering candy and eggs. After all, it's not like a bunny can make candy. Duh!

When I tried to convince him otherwise, he just kind of rolled his eyes and walked away.

A few minutes later he came back holding the chocolate rabbit that was in his Easter basket. He pointed to the side of the box it came in and said, "If the Easter bunny is real, then why is there nutritional information on the box? Huh?" Then he turned it over and pointed to the bar code, "And this right here proves that someone bought it."

I asked him where he thought all the other candy that was on the counter came from.

"You."

I think the gig is up.

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The second story came from when we were hanging out at the pool. I'm not sure if I mentioned this on here or not, but my ex-wife and her second husband are getting a divorce. Needless to say, they didn't exactly part on good terms, and a lot of her neighbors have heard her version of the circumstances surrounding the end of their time together. They all think he's a jerk. Of course, they're only going on one side of the story (as am I), but they have definitely formed opinions.

So, while we're sitting at the side of the pool, my ex starts talking to one of her neighbor ladies. She introduces me as her ex-husband, and the lady gave me kind of a funny look.

My ex said, "No, he's not that husband. He's the first one. Apparently I like to collect ex-husbands."

I added, "I'm the husband she wishes she'd never left."

If you can't see me happy well just look the other way

The perfect way to spend an Easter Sunday:

1) Have the kids spend the night and dye eggs the night before.
2) Wake up and do the whole Easter basket thing followed by an egg hunt in the back yard.
3) Eat a lot of candy!
4) Make a good lunch (at least by my standards) of ham and cheesy potatoes.
5) Hang out with the kids at their pool (even if the water is too cold and you end up getting a slight sunburn).
6) Go home and take a short nap.
7) Go to a concert.



I went with a girl who is way out of my league, but as they say, it's better to aim high and miss than aim low and hit, right?

The show was amazing! I'd never seen them play live, but I'm really glad I went as I was still waffling about it a week prior to the show.

At one point, the lead singer asked whether there was anyone in the crowd who'd never heard of them but just stumbled in from the casino to see what was going on, or if there was anyone who was hearing them for the very first time. The girl I was with fell into the category of those hearing them for the first time, so she raised her hand. The lead singer looked directly at her and said, "Well, we're glad you came." A few songs later, he jumped down off the stage and started to walk into the audience while he was singing. I leaned over and said, "Looks like he wants to come out and say hi to you." She laughed, but then as he continued singing the song, he walked straight to her, shook her hand, stopped singing and said, "Welcome to Travis" then continued on with the song.

All I'm saying is, you know the girl you brought to the show is hot when the lead singer of the band makes it a point to introduce himself.

I told her, "You could soooo get backstage if you wanted to."

She said she wouldn't go without me. I really believe that she could've, but I'm glad she didn't.

After the show, she thanked me about ten times for inviting her, and asked me to put together a mix CD of my favorite songs of theirs. Instead, I'm going to put a CD together with all the songs I can remember them playing at the concert since that includes a lot of my favorites anyway. However, I'm not sure I can give her a mix CD without asking if that means we're "going steady" if she accepts it.

Oh yeah, I tried to take a picture with my camera phone so I could make everybody jealous, but this is how crappy it turned out (I added the circle - obviously, he doesn't have a red aura).

I kill you all with a six barrel shotgun, I kill you all but I need you so

Here are a few of the things my youngest son has said over the past few days. Some is Easter related, some isn't:

Mr. M.: Dad, the Easter Bunny came last night.
Me: He did? What did he bring?
Mr. M.: He brought lots of stuff.
Me: Like what? Did he bring eggs?
Mr. M.: Yeah.
Me: Did he bring candy?
Mr. M.: Yeah.
Me: Did he bring guns?
Mr. M.: No! The Easter Bunny doesn't bring guns.
Me: Ok. Just checking.
Togers: Besides, [Mr. M.] already has enough guns.
Mr. M.: No I don't!

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Mr. M.: Mom, the Easter Bunny isn't a bunny. It's a guy in a bunny suit. And he doesn't walk, he just drives or flies to everyone's house to leave candy for kids.

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Mr. M.: Mom, I'm gonna learn Spanish so I can go to China.
Ex-Wife: Except in China they speak Chinese.
Mr. M.: No Mom, they speak Spanish.

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Mr. M. doesn't like to eat fish, so the other night when my ex-wife fixed some for dinner, she lied and told him it was chicken so that he'd eat it.

Mr. M.: Mom, my chicken tastes like fish. I think it's because they have a machine that they put fish in and turn it into chicken.

Hippity-Hoppity Happy Easter Day

True or False. Spending a good portion of the evening on Easter Sunday gazing at the following view means that you're a pathetic individual.

Where was Peter Cottontail?

I was on the phone with my daughter about how their Easter was going. She told me that she got a bunch of candy and a new shirt in her basket. I told her that the Easter Bunny didn't make it to my house so I wondered what happened.

She said "He's probably still mad at you because you killed one of his friends." She was referring to a time when we were visiting my parents and had gone with them to visit my grandparents. I was driving their car on the way back when a rabbit ran out in front of the car and I ran it over. I didn't feel too bad about it other than the fact that my kids thought it was gross (after all, it happens all the time).

A few months later I saw my parents' car was missing a big chunk of plastic from the bottom part of the front bumper. I asked my mom what had happened there, and she said it was from when I hit the rabbit. Then I felt bad.

Now I feel even worse, since the Easter Bunny is boycotting my house because of it.

Other Easter News

Parents, go to Eric Snider's blog to see why you may be in charge taking care of Easter yourselves.

The Spirit of Easter

It's almost Easter, and you know what that means. My thoughts have turned to all the candy that you can only get this time of year (Cadbury mini-eggs are my favorite). What you may not know about is the controversy surrounding Peeps research.

Scientists have performed a series of tests to investigate the tolerance of Peeps to such stressors as excess heat, cold, radiation and fear (among others).

As could be expected with research which has the potential to cause pain for the test subjects, there is fierce opposition.

I for one think that it is fine to continue with this research program. Peeps are capable of doing their own research on the subject, and if they didn't want it to continue, they would rise up and put an end to it themselves.

The Gospel of Judas

With Easter Sunday fast approaching I thought I'd talk about something religious for a change. I don't know how many of you have seen this already (it's been all over the news) but an ancient text containing the Gospel of Judas has been translated. You can read up a little more on the page I've linked to (or do a google search), but the highlights are that Jesus supposedly taught Judas about mysteries of the universe, and that he supposedly asked Judas to be the one to betray him.

According to one scholar (whose name eludes me, and I'm too lazy to look up again), this makes sense with the passage in the King James version of the bible where Jesus turns to Judas and says "that thou doest, do quickly." Sounds like instructions to carry out some predetermined course of action, no?

I don't know exactly what this means to modern religions (if anything), but it is certainly an interesting view. We all know that there are two sides to every story, and in the case of the history contained in the Bible, there are twelve. Each of Jesus' disciples recorded their version of events, but only some of those made it into the widely accepted King James version. These were decided by church authorities who stood all the scrolls up on their ends, left them over night, and came back the next morning to see which were still standing (because that can only happen by divine intervention).

My guess is that this "new" manuscript won't have any effect on what people believe (just like the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Mary, which are still largely unknown), but it's certainly interesting to think about. And the timing couldn't have been better.