My casual morning has made me a bit tardy in writing today. I was up quite late last night and slept in this morning. It was Gracie who decided it was time to get up and out. It was probably a good thing as I have to hit the aisles and grocery shop. I don’t even have the bare essentials: coffee and toilet paper. I finished the last of the coffee this morning and the toilet paper roll looks a bit skimpy.

The Red Sox lost their opener yesterday. They tied it up only to lose in the bottom of the ninth. Oh, the dismay!

My neighbors have returned from Florida so that’s another sign of spring. Today, though, is still in the 40’s which I think is chilly. The sun is shining and the sky is blue but they are merely for effect. They look best from inside the house through the window.

We always had today off from school when I was a kid. We were supposed to go to church in the afternoon during the vigil, but we seldom did. Once I went and brought a book which I hid inside the hymnal and read while I was sitting in the pew. I looked pious with my head down as if deep in prayer. Even when I was working in the public school, it was a day off. One year the school committee decided that because Good Friday was connected to religion it was going to be a school day, but people could take it off for religious reasons. The number of teachers who called in floored me especially as some of them hadn’t seen the inside of a church since their baptisms. We had no substitutes  and had to have kids in the auditorium for large-scale study halls. That was the one and only time we had school on Good Friday.

We never had a countdown to Easter the way we did to Christmas. We knew our baskets would have candy, a stuffed animal when we were younger, probably a coloring book and crayons, maybe a kite and a few other small toys. We could always count on a chocolate rabbit and jelly beans. The rest was usually a surprise. I saw the best chocolate rabbit for sale in a catalog. It came with extra ears as the ears were always the first to go.

When we were younger, my mother bought inexpensive chocolate as we didn’t know the difference, but when we got older, she shopped at a candy store because we could taste the difference. I still shop at a candy store to make up baskets for my two friends. I buy little treasures to add to the candy and wrap all of them so the baskets are more fun. Today I have to candy shop. That makes going to the grocery store a bit more palatable.