BLOSSOMS TIMIDLY APPEAR

After a seemingly endless onslaught of cold weather, it's slowly beginning to warm up - - although it's still in the chilly 30s (Fahrenheit) at night. 

On Easter morning - as if by some Divine miracle - spring blossoms began to appear. Much of the rural terrain around my house has been ravaged (and ruined) by vicious storms and violent winds - with toppled trees and wayward branches. Nothing is like it used to be, but the appearance of blossoms are a timid sign of hope.

Speaking of "hope", I have some (timid) updates concerning my previous Easter Disaster post. Walmart gave me a refund for the recent items that I ordered but never received.

I got a quick reply from Wild Fork Foods, concerning the wrong order that I received (which ruined my plans for an Easter dinner). They requested to see a photograph of the erroneous items I received - - and I complied immediately. Hopefully, they will resolve this annoying issue.

Despite this smidgen of good news, I'm still extremely depressed, frustrated, overwhelmingly tired, and in deplorable health.
But I'm delighted that winter is finally gone.

A few photos taken on Easter.

 

HIPPITY-HOP-HOP

 The rabbit is a pagan symbol of fertility.

The bunny rabbit is a delightful sign of the threshold of spring.

I had an amicable encounter with the Easter Bunny about a hundred years ago.

Although I never particularly liked the Peter Cottontail song, I made this video to enthrall you.

I never purposefully wanted a rabbit collection, but I sure have a heckuva lot of them.

They multiply quickly.

 

The Easter Bunny encounters a tumbleweed

This photo was taken in Texas (in my back yard)

COTTONTAIL

 

 

 I can only remember two visits to the Easter Bunny when I was a child. One was with my parents. The other was with my two older cousins, Maryann and Dianne.
My cousins and I walked to downtown New Brunswick, New Jersey and saw the Easter Bunny at a local department store. I couldn't have been more than three years old.

The only thing I clearly remembered from the excursion is that the Easter Bunny was a lady - because I noticed that she was wearing a woman's wristwatch.

The above photo was taken during the bunny visit accompanied by my parents.

Here Comes Peter Cottontail was a fairly popular Easter song when I was a kid. I disliked it then, and now - three hundred years later - I still dislike it. BUT, once I hear it, the song keeps reverberating in my mind over and over like a mesmerizing demonic chant.

So......I decided to make a video of it, as an annoying memory of my childhood Easters.
Do you know how difficult it is to make a video of Peter Cottontail with any plausible or logical content?
In exasperation, I simply slapped together a mishmash (I hate that word) of bunny gifs and cartoons. My incredible creativity at work....

Strangely enough, I recently found two Easter toys from my early childhood. Both are made of metal (ah, the good ol' days) and both played Here Comes Peter Cottontail when the crank was turned.
Neither of them play tunes now - they're completely worn out - like myself.

This Peter Cottontail toy used to have two big plastic ears.

This metal egg was my favorite of the two.

I've noticed that when I write absolute crap (like my previous blog post) I get comments.
When I post decent things, nobody comments at all......

When have you ever posted "decent things", Jon?

Look carefully. You'll find them. 

Lately I've been extremely depressed - - over physical ailments and personal problems (which never ever cease). Blogging and making inane videos helps keep me from going over the edge......
sort of.....

WILD NIGHT

Easter went on a rampage in the southern states. Devastating tornadic weather swept through Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, parts of Tennessee.

The news media hardly mentioned it. They were too busy force-feeding you an overdose of the Virus Bullshit. 

Easter always crowds my mind with appealingly sweet thoughts of spring: pastel flowers, fragrant blossoms, soft blue skies, ripe green fields - bunnies and baby chicks.

Here in the wilds of Tennessee Easter Sunday was drenched with torrential rain, dark with dismal skies, and chilly enough to make me hibernate under winter blankets.

It was a joyless day, but the really  wicked weather waited until dusk before it arrived. The winds whipped up with such incredible force that I thought I was back in Texas. 

I tried to ignore the howling gusts until suddenly the front door blew open all by itself!
To condense a long story, the dead bolt was installed improperly by the previous idiot who lived here. I have been meaning to fix it for an embarrassingly long time, but procrastination kept getting in my way.
The door-opening incident has inspired me to put the dead bolt on my lengthy ''To Do'' list.

Fortunately the lock on the doorknob works, and I barricaded the door with a chair.
During my five-and-a-half years in Tennessee I never felt wind this strong. A wooden ladder blew off the back porch and a metal chair soared off the front porch. Heavy things kept hitting the roof, which inspired my Gothic imagination.

I always worry about those tall trees that I like so much. They are only about twenty feet away from my bedroom. If they ever topple over, I'll be toast.

Since I'm surrounded by a forest, I could be pelted by trees from any direction. The thought curdles my blood during high winds.

In a cowardly attempt to ignor the foul weather, I crawled into bed and started to watch the old movie Easter Parade. Judy Garland didn't even finish singing her first song when the lights went out.

The power outage happened just at dusk. It was going to be one helluva long night.

Admittedly, I'm very ill-prepared for these nasty flukes of nature. I have oil lamps but no oil. I have transistor radios but no batteries. I don't know where the heck the battery for my laptop is.    
I have one feeble flashlight and a few candles.

It's almost impossible to describe how dark it is out here in the proverbial middle of nowhere. Blacker than the darkest shade of black.
The wind raged with sinister screams,  rain poured relentlessly. Unknown things outside kept banging and crashing. 

The thought that it was about ten hours until dawn inspired me to do a search with my feeble flashlight - looking for ANY item that might connect me with the outside world.

I found an old transistor radio in a drawer. Batteryless, of course.

A long extension of my search finally yielded an ancient cassette player that fortuitously had batteries in it.

Aside:
I don't often get to use the word "fortuitously".

By the feeble light of the flashlight, I transferred the batteries from the cassette player to the radio.
They worked!
Sort of.

The radio is lousy...and the radio reception out here in the Tennessee Boonies is far beyond appalling.

I could only pick up jumbled fragments of distant stations, undecipherable smatterings of words and music - - all sandwiched between rude, jarring static.

Note:
Is this blog post getting too long? Relax. You won't find this quality of free entertainment anywhere else.

To make matters worse, the only way the radio would work at all was if I put one hand on the station dial, put my other hand on top of the antenna, and pointed the radio toward the east.


(no, I am NOT exaggerating or kidding)

So I crawled into bed (accompanied by my two timid cats) with my feeble flashlight and the exasperating radio.

And all through the black night I kept one hand on the dial, the other hand atop the antenna, with the radio pointing east.

I managed to pick up a hillbilly station that was playing extremely morbid Gospel music about dying and going to Heaven, which I suppose was a redneck version of Easter joy.
One agonizing song after another - with no commercials or breaks whatsoever.

After about the forty-fifth song, I moved along and FINALLY found a station from the local town (which, from where I  live, is about a zillion miles away). 

At around 3:00 a.m. they finally gave a weather report: high winds, flash floods, but no tornadoes.
Three thousand people were without power (that's about the entire county) and dozens of trees were uprooted. 

There were uprooted trees on the street where my cousin lives (she lives near town).

By dawn, the wind started to abate and I was exhausted. I fell asleep.
When I woke up, the power was back on and there was no discernible damage outside. 

Thank God for small favors.
And unnecessarily long blog posts.

EASTER

Bunny and me

There is nothing more annoying than a frequent blogger. I've been blogging far too frequently lately and I harbor smidgens of guilt about it.

I haven't been replying to your comments, which makes me feel even more guilty. Be assured that I still love you. I'm simply caught up in the unconventional frenzy that has become our world, which has made me less conscientious than I usually am.

This is no ordinary Easter. Life as we once knew it has completely collapsed around us. We are struggling to cope and wondering if normalcy will ever return......

.....if, indeed, "normalcy" ever really existed.

My life has presently been reduced to wondering what style mask would be most becoming on me when I dare to venture out.

You don't think I'm really going to wear one, do you?

My dignity has been sapped by tussling with masked women in Walmart over a roll of toilet paper.

I wrote a sizzling blog post about the present situation of our nation, but (reluctantly) decided to scrap it.
I didn't want to scare any one.

Before I forget:
I was very pleasantly surprised at the favorable comments I received on my Good Friday post. Thank you!
I didn't think my video would be of much interest.

So, how was my Easter?

It's presently late afternoon. A chilly, dank, dreary day. I'm listening to the torrential rain and occasional thunder.

I had initially planned to have ham for dinner, with asparagus and sweet potatoes - but decided not to go through the trouble.

Then I planned to have chicken, but forgot to take it out of the freezer to thaw.

So, I had boneless pork chops, brown rice, and green beans - which was really good.
And I had orange cake with coffee.

 I'm actually in a very lethargic, uninspired mood.
Last night I watched The Wizard of Oz while eating pretzels and jelly beans.
I think I'm in my second childhood.
Or third.

Here are a few photos of Easters past - some taken when I lived in Texas.

 Scratch (also known as Kitzee)

eating the Easter tulips

Scratch

encountering the Easter Bunny

The Easter Bunny

encountering a tumbleweed

(there were lots of them in my yard)

In Texas I used to buy the Mexican eggs, which were always brightly colored

I used to bake these egg-shaped cakes. They were filled with cream and had pink, yellow, and purple flowers on top - but they were a helluva lot of trouble to make.

Mother and chicks

Scratch

devouring mother and chicks

EASTER

I had written a long blog post for Easter and scrapped it after careful consideration. Nobody wants to read a long blog post on Easter.

Come to think of it - nobody wants to read a long blog post when it's not Easter, either, but that's beside the point.

Instead, I've decided to post some inane photos that nobody wants to see.
Some were taken recently. Others are Easter leftovers from when I lived in Texas. 

 A few days ago I went outside just before sunset and saw the rising moon caught in a tree.

As it grew darker, the moon broke free from the tree and sailed into the sky.

 The back yard at dusk and a tiny dot of moon

 All of the beautiful purple and white blossoms have completely perished due to the frost we had last week - but it's finally warm again and the trees are quickly turning green. So are the weeds.

 I found an old box with a springtime tea set that has been packed away for many years. It's an appropriate display for Easter, but I'll probably never use it - so I'll pack it away again.

I also found these two items that I got in a Springfield, Missouri antique store. The chick on the egg (right) is old, but the chick emerging from the shell isn't an antique. I think it's cute, anyway.

As if this wasn't enough, here are a few old Easter pics that I took when I lived in Texas.

 These flowers are orange stars, which were popular for Easter in West Tx.

 My cat Scratch eating the Easter tulips

 Scratch encountering the Easter Bunny

 

Scratch eating the Easter chicks

The End

Have a wonderful Easter!


my other blog:

Cabinet of Curious Treasures

THIS ONE WON'T TAKE MUCH EFFORT

Well, Jon, what do you think your blog readers want to see for Easter?

Me - - hanging from the nearest tree. Kinda like Judas Iscariot.

Besides that.

They sure as hell don't want to absorb anything wordy or thoughtful, like my Good Friday post. It scared the jeeters out of them (there are many times when I scare myself, but that's beside the point). Many thanks Geo, for the only comment!

My readers obviously prefer mindless, inane fluff. Like beer-induced rants. Or boring photos.

Did you drink any beer lately, Jon?

No, I'm still recovering from last Wednesday. 

I'll post some inane photos. 
I wanted to take some Easter Sunday pictures of the blossoms, but there's so damn much frost at night that the blossoms are fading fast. Half of them are on respirators. They might not survive until Easter.
It's warm and sunny here during the day, but after dark the temperature plummets to minus 40. Almost.

Against my better judgement, here are an assortment of Easter-themed photos, most of which were taken a few years ago in Texas. My long-time blog readers will remember them and silently groan. 

FIRST, these are the few surviving blossoms on my property. I took these pics today (Saturday): 

 

SECOND - here are some pics I took when I lived in Texas:

  My cat Scratch devouring the Easter tulips

 

 I still have that antique pitcher - it's one of the few things the movers didn't break or lose

Scratch

encountering the Easter Bunny 

 The Easter Bunny
encountering a tumbleweed in the back yard

C

Chocolate cream-filled Easter cakes that I made myself (I can bake - - I'm not just another pretty face)

 I think these are called orange stars -
they're fairly popular in West TX during Easter

Don't laugh - he looks pretty damn good for being 105...... 
(hell, I feel 105)

 


Some vintage Easter graphics on my other blog:
http://cabinetofcurioustreasures.blogspot.com