A pretty good Easter weekend in our house.

Family Weekend

As happens when your kids are in Catholic schools, it was an extra-long weekend. CHS had a four-day weekend, while St P’s had early dismissal Friday and were out for Easter Monday.

Throw in C being home sick and L having her annual school service day on Thursday and it was even longer.

C has the “Punta Plague,” as M is calling it. It should be no shock that a big chunk of CHS came back from spring break sick. It took a couple days to reach her but has kind of wiped her out. She may have had Covid in the front, had a stomach bug in the middle, which may have been associated with strep that came on in the backside.

When we asked M if there were a lot of kids out sick last week her response was, “Bro, the entire school is sick.” Love it when she talks to me like I’m an idiot. She’s been coughing like a smoker but has no other ailments.

I guess that’s what mass travel in the post-pandemic age will be like: we all act like old people after a cruise and get sick for a week or so upon our return.

Like I’ve done every year, I volunteered to assist on the St P’s service day. That has usually meant going to some kind of donation center and sorting things, since there’s only so much these places can ask large groups of kids to do. Which really means I do a bunch of sorting while making sure the kids don’t do anything stupid.

This year L’s group got sent to an adoption center that had just changed locations and were tasked with organizing several rooms that were filled with donations. That was a bonus as there were a lot of diapers, wipes, lotions, bath soaps, etc that had that good, clean baby smell. And most of the clothes we sorted were either new or at least washed if used. Which made it a pretty pleasant experience, and far different from the year we dug through huge bins of donated items and found fun stuff like dirty diapers, broken glass, animal waste, porn, and drug paraphernalia.

Our kids weren’t super focused but they did more work in the four hours we were there than the lady running the place expected, so they left a good impression.

I got a hug from the St P’s teacher who organizes this day since it is my last time assisting. We joked that if she needed extra help next year she was going to reach out to me.

Saturday we spent the day getting the house ready for hosting our family Easter gathering. I decided the pool cover looked filthy after collecting crap for five months and spent nearly four hours cleaning it. For some reason I always forget how long that takes. I think my brain blacks out the memories.

When I was done I opened up the cover to do a quick inspection and get a head start on cleaning out the leaves and worms that worked their way in since October. There was a large frog/toad floating in the water. I tried to scoop him up and it slowly tried to evade me. I think the water was so cold it was still semi-hibernating. I got him into the net and when it looked like he was going to hop out, I flung him lacrosse-style about 30 feet to the grass. Not sure if he survived his flight or not.

Easter Day was super nice here. Sunny, pushing 70. Nearly perfect. We bought some pulled pork and I smoked a couple chickens to go along with.

We had 22 people in all. A very good meal, between the stuff we bought and made and all the contributions from the rest of the family. The five nephews had an Easter egg hunt after we ate, and we were able to sit outside and enjoy the ideal day. Easter is always better when it is warm and you can be out in the open.

The Masters

I watched as much of the Masters as I could, between prep, errands, meals, etc.

I was very glad that Jon Rahm won. He seems like a good, thoughtful dude and plays pretty amazing golf. For him to win by four strokes after four-putting his first hole of the tournament and then having to play in the worst weather of the weekend was quite an accomplishment. He could have easily doubled that winning margin.

Like a lot of people I had mixed feelings about Brooks Koepka’s early domination. I enjoyed his style of golf and brash personality at his peak a few years back, but was disappointed when he fled for the LIV Tour after insisting he wouldn’t. I get that a hundred million dollars, or whatever he got, can change a person’s point of view, especially when he was in the midst of a pretty serious injury recovery and questioned his golfing future. He may not have been villain #1 in the whole fiasco, but I still heap some blame on him.

That said, I couldn’t help but get sucked in by how well he played through the first three rounds. I was glad a lot of golf people that I follow were having similar mixed feelings; it was good not to be alone.

This was my favorite thread that came out of the weekend. It is also a reminder that occasionally there are still a few good things on Twitter. Tech Karen will probably ban threads like this soon, since they give people joy.

Ortho

I took L into ortho Monday morning to have her braces removed. She set the family record of just 15 months; she was originally slated for 23. Other than a little gap when she struggled with her rubber bands a little, I think she did exactly what they told her so she could get them off as quickly as possible.

I guess she’ll have a six-month visit and then we’ll be done with ortho after seven and a half years of regular visits. Knock on wood.