Peep Hunt

Today is Easter and in this household this means a peep hunt.  12 years ago when Maggie was 3 years old, the same age as Bob is now, and Harry and Lily were one year old I had an Easter egg hunt.  I made my dye from ingredients found in the kitchen, red cabbage, yellow onion skins and beet juice.  I was starting out with brown and green eggs from my own chickens.  The colors were subtle and lovely and the safest way to have an Easter egg hunt for 3 Labradors that will be carry the eggs in their mouth.  Theoretically.  The two of us had baskets and we walked around the yard with the dogs and as they picked up the eggs they were rewarded with a peep when they gave up the egg.  After a while our baskets were only half as full as they should have been, and where was Lily?  Maggie had walked around the yard with me and Harry with his father, and in our excitement we had not noticed that Lily had slipped off to get an egg and then never came back.  The egg hunt now turned into a Lily hunt.  We found her under a bush chomping and crunching on an egg.  We lured her out from under the bush with a peep which she quickly accepted and then she smiled up at us.  Her teeth and lips were colored like an Easter egg.  And I never found one dozen of the eggs I had hidden. 

That is not exactly true, I have a strong feeling that the horrific gas reminiscent of sulfur hydroxide, bad eggs, were those dozen eggs.  For 2 weeks.  Yep, for 2 weeks whenever we were near Lily, especially inside tears just flowed from our eyes and a green gas cloud encompassed my beautiful yellow lab.  And it took weeks for the bluish/reddish color to wear off around her mouth.  Even with what seemed like gallons of Febreeze the house had a bad egg smell for the longest time.  To this day I am not particularly fond of Febreeze.

The next year we started the annual tradition of the "peep hunt" replacing the hard boiled eggs.  That worked out well for Harry because he is so big and his mouth so large that he could just stand in an area and inhale and the peeps would fly into his mouth.  I might be exaggerating slightly, but he could walk along waving his head back and forth and just inhale the marshmallowie goodness.  Maggie would pick up the nearest one to her and then walk around the yard drooling with the single peep in her mouth.  She would keep that peep in her mouth until it literally dissolved into a gooie mess that would stick to her teeth and then she would try to wipe it off, on the couch, or a chair, so I would have to walk around behind her cleaning up the furniture as I tried to lure her into the bathroom so I could wash away the peep.  Yes, disgusting and work for me.  But she seemed to get such pleasure out of her antics.  She was always so good, this was one of her very few bad behaviors so I would forget this habit of hers and each year I would go through this again and again.  After awhile it just seemed to be the tradition.  An irritating one, but a tradition none the less.  And don't we all have some family tradition that just ain't right.  Or is it just me?

Now when we instituted the peep hunt Lily was just as happy about this as she was with the hard boiled eggs.  She would run up to each peep, carefully pick it up and then bring it back to me and spit it out on my shoes.  Then look at me with the "Peep, Peep, I found a peep, a peep, I found a peep.  Aren't I a good girl, peep, peep, I found a peep."  I would hug her and tell her what a good girl she was, after sufficient compliments she would eat the peep and then repeat the entire process.  Over and over and over.  I think she found close to a dozen peeps and was just as excited about the last one as she had been with the first.  Lily was a very special child.

By the time we had the first peep hunt, both Lily and Harry were two years old.  They grew into adult dogs on their second birthday.  Like all good labs should do.  Bob is three, he is still a baby.  He has decided he is not interested in growing up.  But he is a good boy, and not a giant, so it is not as difficult having a 3 year old puppy, where we had 3 dogs with Maggie, Harry and Lily and Harry is freakishly giant for a lab and Lily was a good sized girl herself.  So thankfully at 2 years old they decided to grow up, sit down and give up most of their bad baby habits.  

Friday for earth day my friend Bob and I went to the Lincoln High School plant sale.  We went to where they had the sale last year.   No sale.  But there were the most beautiful gardens with a pond and lots of water plants and areas just filled with butterfly plants, and it was gorgeous, simply gorgeous.  So we walked back to my toy to try and look in a different part of the school for the plant sale.  Bob climbs in over the top like in Hawaii 50.  Well, not to miss out on the fun, I also climbed over and in to my car.  It is a little high to do that, but it is kind of fun.  We continued to use this as our mood of getting into the car for the rest of the trip.  So we drove around to the front of the school found the sale and bought a few things.  I wanted a red porter weed, they didn't have any, but I did pick up a couple of pentas and salvias which will add some much needed texture to my garden that is mostly bulbs with long pointy leaves.  I need some different shaped and textured leaves to give a little interest to my garden and these plants should help.  They are annuals here unlike in south Florida were they are perennial, but that is OK.  You can get them reasonably enough each year.  And the salivias have come back with mixed results. Some come back with vigor in my other garden, and some of my favorite colored ones did not make it more then one year.  But that is one of the many things to like about plants.  They have their season, and they will give you their all for that season and then they may or may not come back.  And that is OK.  You can always replace them with the same or different plants.  And if you kill a plant for the most part they are not gross and gory, not like loosing an animal or person.  Plats just fade away.  Trees of course can be a bit more of a problem because of their size, but they do not yell or cry out, they simply are pushed aside by something that will thrive in that spot.  Very civilized I think.  Much more so then humans.


I hung one of my bells yesterday, the buoy bell.  I have this chain that weighs as much as the bell. Maybe more.  I pulled out the big ladder, drug it over to an oak tree that has a limb that would work.  I lifted the chain as far up as I could and hung it on the ladder so that when I climbed the 10 feet above it I could pull the chain up to the next level.  Then I climbed to almost the top of the ladder and pulled the chain up further.  Up to the next to the last step and I could hang on to the tree and lift part of the chain over the branch and adjusted the chain.  Then down the ladder and I was able to just lift the bell up to hang.  Fortunately Judy and Denise were just pulling up and Denise assisted me to maneuver the bell into place to hang.  It is hanging a bit low.  But it is hanging.  I think if it was up a little higher I think it would catch more wind.  So I will pull out the ladder again and try to adjust it.  But not today.


Today, I was supposed to go to Lily/Jason/Owen's for an Easter brunch and egg hunt.  But I am not having a good day.  I have been very moody and weepy.  I spent most of yesterday unproductively sitting and crying.  I thought that putting my big girl panties on and getting to watch Owen at his first real egg hunt would help, but I am too paralyzed to get dressed and leave the house.  I will have to put on some old clothes and head over to the Opera House to paint the set. This evening I will drive into Tally to see Spamalot.  Hopefully I will be in a better mood because I am in a dark, sad, depressed mood.  Yes, even Pollyanna has a bad day.  I finished Thuggee's robe.  I have finished the newspaper for the show, and made copies for all handouts I had.  I have no reason to be in this mood.  But it has been growing over the past couple of days and last night it was particularly bad, and not much better today.  I don't want to be in this mood, so I will do whatever I can to make it better.  Maybe ice cream.  I know that it is OK to be a little sad or depressed.  And maybe part of this is what I am holding on to, holding in.  I have to write Larry's obit.  I have to plan his memorial service.  I need to get up and put on big girl panties and deal with this.  Make an ending.  Have a conclusion to this relationship of 25 years.  To put him to rest.  And I have a new friend in my life that is somehow without his knowledge or input somehow causing me to drag up a lot of old emotion about this past life.  Something about him makes my heart feel things that I have not felt in a long time.  Not normal things you feel about someone you do not know well.  No, these feelings are feelings that have not be closed from a marriage that is long gone, and literally dead.  My brain knows that these emotions are not from this other person, but for whatever reason he is a catalyst that is causing all of this turmoil.  So as much as I would like to be friends and even get to know this other person a little better, maybe this is not a healthy thing for me now.  I will not deny that I obviously need to deal with these emotions and I am hoping that the memorial service will help.  But for today, maybe ice cream or a chocolate bunny will help.  I will open my heart and examine all the packages that I have carefully wrapped and hidden away in that closet in my heart.  But not today.  And as much as I hate giving up a friend, I may have to do that until I am ready to open that closet.  I have tried to figure out what this other person has or does or is that brings this out in me, and I can not come up with something substantial enough to really count.  So today I will just have to deal with these emotions as best as I can.  Slip away to be alone and cry, just sob my eyes out.  Each time I do that I feel a little release.  I cried through most of the Wizard of Oz last night.  I sang and recited along with the movie and smiled and cried.  Tears of release.  Not specific to anything in particular, but just releasing.  And for as long as many of the packages in the closet have been put away I don't even remember what they are or were put away for.  But that does not mean that they do not have to be dealt with, they do.  And I will someday.  someday, not today.