Happy Belated Easter

Time for reflection. Lent is over. For me that pretty much means nothing now. Sure, I grew up Roman Catholic, but I have given that up long ago. (I used to joke that I gave up church for lent. I also like to say that I was a practicing Catholic until I got it right, and now I don't need to practice any more).

Easter is also the time for chocolate, egg hunts and bunnies. What these have to do with Christ rising from the dead is far beyond me, however my guess is they, like the Christmas Tree, are actually holdovers from pagan spring festivals (well not the chocolate, but the rest) as symbols of birth, new life and fertility. C'mon - we all now how fertile rabbits are. I would guess that long ago the church (back when it was only one christian church - and yes, Catholics are christians too, no matter what some baptists and other say) merged these pagan symbols into Easter as they merged in the pagan societies. This is the same with Holly, Christmas Trees and the Yule Log - they are pagan symbols of the Yule celebration - which is the longest night of the year. They didn't even change the name of one of them. But my children are too old for the Easter Bunny (though they still like the chocolate).

What is true is that it is now spring, though right now it doesn't feel like it. One last (hopefully) blast of winter is just starting to let go, and it should be back up in the 60's or so by this weekend. Trees are budding, I've already had to cut the grass once (hey, it earns me 2-3 AP, so why not?) and Diane has ordered some flowers to plant. Tomorrow at work is our first anual 'Green Clean' at work - a spring cleaning of our cubes - which isn't really a bad idea when you come down to it, regardless of how much some people may whine about it.

Now is the season when young men's minds turn to thoughts of love. But I'm not young by any stretch of anyones imagination (I passed young a long, long time ago). I'm not mature - I don't think I'll ever get there, and if I ever come within sight of it I plan on turning and running as fast as I can, but I'm not young. And Diane isn't in the mood right now anyway, and won't be for a few more days. My sons are either too young, not looking, or - well, at least the oldest one seems to finally be starting to put things together and realize that without a job or driver's license he has absolutely nothing at all to offer the girls (they don't want to drive or pay for any kind of date), so maybe he'll have a chance this summer. He at least is planning on getting off his butt!

The dog was enjoying the warm weather at least, and loved the huge ham bone.