Home again, home again jiggety-jig! My connection problems are a thing of the past. Happy, happy!

The weather is getting colder. I was lulled into a false sense of spring when we actually reached 50˚ on Wednesday, but Mother Nature is now cackling and rubbing her hands in glee at having duped me. They, as in weathermen, are saying possible snow showers on Saturday so spring is still in the wings.

It is raining again today, and the dampness chills the bones. Francisca and I, however, are intrepid souls, and are going out when I finish here to a few shops and to the Zion Union Heritage Museum.

I give my two friends an Easter basket and have already bought trinkets for them and am hoping for a couple of more when I shop today. Some are useful while others are just whimsical. The candy I’ll buy next week. I think I’d be too tempted to eat it if it were already around the house. We, as kids, always had inexpensive chocolate. We didn’t care. Candy was candy. Now, I buy it all at the candy store.

Our Easter baskets were the best. There was candy: a chocolate rabbit which was a tradition and a necessity, jelly beans which always tasted the same no matter the color, big, hard colored beans with white in the middle and the filler candy like a little rabbit or a chocolate egg. Small toys were also in the basket. I remember yo-yos, paddle balls, a box of crayons, an Easter coloring book, a stuffed animal, usually a small rabbit, and even a pail and shovel. The grass which covered the bottom was always plastic and the rabbit with missing eaten ears used to stick to the grass. The adult me thinks it sort of gross, but the kid me didn’t care and just pulled the grass off rabbit.

Easter will come as it must, but it will not be in spring unless all of the vestiges of winter disappear.