PAAS Goes Camo!!!

Are those camouflage stickers and PAAS coloring?? YES!! I've colored a lot of eggs and seen a lot of PAAS packages in my time. Now, some background information: I cannot begin to explain or understand why "camo" print is a fashion statement [er, in some huntin' camps]. You can find jackets, pajamas, journals, rugs... it
even comes in pink. But this was the first time I discovered and bought me some CAMO colors and stickers. I tried to make a joke with the lady at the Wal-Mart check-out, asking her when PAAS come out with the CAMO edition, and how are you supposed to find them if they're in camouflage!!... She said, nonchalantly, "Oh, they've always had that one." "Not where I'm from, Lady! Boy, have we been missing out!!.." As of late, I've been catching myself giving voice to my internal monologue. Dangerous.
Before you get all excited about pre-ordering your PAAS "CAMO" for next year, the stickers didn't stick very well and the colors were more or less the same. It was just clever branding of a traditional product for a specific market. Those PAAS people are geniuses.

We also did some PAAS "SPORTS" eggs for variety. Note that when I say we, I mean the girls and Brian, and when I say the girls and Brian, I mean just the girls. I was fixing our Easter lunch and forgot to put in an order for a PAAS Shrink-Wrapped baseball and football.

Hoppin Into Spring Break Mode

Spring Break for Rachel and Danielle officially kicked off on Good Friday. Is it almost over already? We had fun where we can: colored eggs, I made them watch the MGM classic, "Ben Hur" starring Chuck Heston, did a little golfing, watched some WGN baseball and celebrated Tax-Day by going to the beach (a year ago, it was snowing on April 15, and a year before that, it was probably snowing on April 15).

Danielle explores "greener" modes of transportation.

Gretchen waits patiently for the other half of my $5 foot-long.

Brian and the girls show off their PAAS creations.

I tried to talk one of our lunch guests, 92 year-old Bettye Kellar (not pictured), into coloring an egg, but she was having more fun sitting on the rocker, reading the April issue of Rolling Stones, and enjoying the sunshine. She's also Jewish, not that it would have stopped her. She's 92! She does whatever the %$#@ she wants.

Gretchen and I were psyched for [the rescheduled] Opening Day. White Sox had a great start to their season, which lasted as long as Gretchen's baseball.

Spring Abounds!...One Mississippi… Two Mississipp---BOOM!!!!

I thought April showers were supposed to bring May flowers… not rip the heads off them. It’s been a soggy and stormy last two weeks. Last weekend, so much water had collected, the houses on our street looked like they each had their own Medieval moat around their property. Just in time for mosquito season, alright!

Today’s weather activity culminated in tornado warnings, wind advisory alerts, a flash flood warning and severe thunderstorm warnings, you know: the usual. In the last hour, the sky has gone from the color gray to gray-green to black to gray to an almost blinding white. The sun has tried to peak out from the clouds a few times. But that was in between tornado warnings. The coast is clear for now. But for a while, our local NPR station was giving storm updates every two minutes, each one book-ended by that sharp high-pitched eeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrblllppppgppplllggllp eeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrpppllllggghhggg. Then, as the storm was lifting, the station happened to be playing Claude Debussy’s Clair de Lune, as if the clouds were choreographed.

But I don’t mind a little rain now and then. As the local gardening radio show host would say, “A little rain is what separates us from West Texas.”

In the last six weeks, the most beautiful canvas of azaleas has been blooming all over South Mississippi and Lower Alabama (L.A.). I’m learning, slowly but surely, all the different vegetation around the area. Thanks to the patient advice of a good friend and horticulturist, a few neighbors and the nice lady at Ace Hardware, I almost have everything in the front yard identified and didn’t have to do too much experimental “prune first, ask questions later.”

I even filled some planters with a modest crop of fresh herbs, tomatoes, onions and arugula, just in time to find out that some of the herbs and all the lettuce won’t make it to July. But boy, they sure are tasty now! It’s funny to think a year ago today, we were still shoveling snow. Mmm, memories.