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Monday, April 12, 2004
 
Hallelujah! Christ is Risen! Oh, Look, Mia Picked Up Another Egg! (camera flash) What Channel is the Weather On? Can I Have Your Basket? Thank You! See the Pretty Bunny? Do You Have Any Regular Mustard? I Don’t Understand Why Anyone Wouldn’t Have Regular Mustard (Amen)
So, now I’m at the “other end” of the weekend. And I feel like it.

Quite the whirlwind of activity, the weekend was. (And writing Yoda-speak, I am not.) I’m still rundown; I could’ve (and should’ve) gone to bed when Mia did (at 6:30). Just one more bad decision to bring my lifetime tally to 4,326,985. Before the weekend, I felt so normal, and then . . .

-- In a Hell-focused society such as ours, it’s easy to understand why Dante’s Inferno is so popular. But it’s his less-adored work, Paradiso, that intrigued me most this weekend. Particularly the canto he left out, which continues to boggle the minds of grad students everywhere. This missing section involves a part of Heaven reserved for husbands who scrub the grout in their kitchen floors with toothbrushes and Soft Scrub in the hours leading up to wedding showers that their wives may be hosting in their houses. Yes, it’s an obscure canto, but I’m sure you can find some information on it.

-- I’m not usually plagued with severe bouts of heartburn, but I was this weekend. In fact, the only time I was not afflicted was after eating an entire medium pizza and chasing that with some ham and turkey roll-ups at a friendly picnic. The heartburn didn’t really rear its ugly head until after I went to dinner (still full from pizza) with Michelle, and then went to the club to play and had four ciders. And then . . .

-- I broke a guitar string. On stage. In front of a pretty decent crowd. Oh, yeah, and I was about to go into a guitar solo. Now, for someone’s who’s been “playing” guitar for almost 20 years, it should be fairly easy to transpose a guitar solo to another string. But being that I am, despite my experience and music-theory knowledge, a pretty sloppy guitar player, I was left thinking, “Fuck. How the Christ am I going to do this? What note am I sliding down to? Fuck.” The cider wasn’t helping matters. What I should have done was cover it up with some impromptu guitar noise that, given my situation, would’ve seemed appropriate. What I did do, however, was fake it. And sounded every bit like the guitar ‘tard I am.

-- What’s the best way to get last-minute things done before your family arrives for an 11-a.m. Easter get-together? Well, waking up before 9:19 a.m. would be a good start. Waking up perfectly sober and/or un-hungover would be good, too. Still, in my foggy state, I managed to use the blower to sweep the back porch (not a 10x10 square porch, either), clean pollen off the patio furniture, mow the back yard, take out the trash, and mop the kitchen floor (again!) with a broken Swiffer Wet (no handle, so on my hands and knees). In an hour.

-- It’s nice to have gatherings . . . at someone else’s house. And when I’m not hungover. But the combination of my mother and my father-in-law had me on edge. It’s like I’m a tennis ball being volleyed back and forth. One player is very shrill and likes to loudly commentate everything the kids are doing, and the other is very hard to please and likes to tell us what we need (or what we need to do). (I should ‘blog a list of the things that we need and/or need to do.) And, also, all the kid-related events (like egg “hunting”) seem less fun when its just an extended photo-op. So, anyway, I was ready for everyone to leave after a while. Sadly, “a while” came and went with people still in our house. (If you're reading this, I don't mean you.)

-- Do you know the muffin man? Yeah, because it’s me, motherfucka! Our daughter’s weekday guardian gave me her muffin recipe. So far, I’ve made applesauce muffins and (yesterday) sweet potato muffins. And they’re right up there with some of the better muffins I’ve ever eaten . . . y’know, if I do say so myself.