Wacked out on wah-wah sauce

Happy Good Friday everyone! When i grew up, Good Friday was treated like a national holiday. There was no work, no school and shit, you werent even supposed to listen to the radio or watch TV between noon and 3pm (in honor of the time Jesus spent on the cross). Today i'm at friggin' work (gonna bail early though, and if anyone says anything i'll scream religious persecution), the Dude is at daycare, and life rumbles on. We used to get a week off of school for Easter! It was treated just like friggin' Xmas. And the presents, oh, the Easter presents. But shit. I didnt even get Easter baskets for Big and Baby Heads this year. I'm just too lazy and un-inspired. I blame the advertising industry for not inciting a need to shop en masse for inane expensive items for everyone from dog-sitters to the in-laws. When did Easter get demoted as a major holiday? I mean, come on. Here's another excuse for a big commercial money-making holiday and its pretty much relegated to marshmallow chickens and hollow chocolate bunnies. And the secular world is happy to celebrate a holiday based on the BIRTH of a guy they dont believe it, but not a holiday based on the STORY of a guy's torture, death and rising from the grave, just to extend his big holy middle finger at the jerks who persecuted him? Come on, even Mel Gibson knows that story has Hollywood-level appeal! If anything, Easter should be celebrated as "stick it to the man" day. Even non-believers can relate to that.

But anyway, we'll do our part by frying up some cod tonight, coloring eggs, and cooking a ham on Sunday. Next year when Baby Head knows what a plastic egg is, i'll buy him an Easter basket. Speaking of Baby Head, we made our maiden voyage back to our birth-land of Ohio last weekend with the boy. We wanted him to see his roots, and understand why we chose to live 500 miles away from them. Its been 2 years since i've been back there for a visit, and much has changed in my hometown Cleveland suburb. All kinds of new construction and buildings and houses and some areas of town are hard to recognize because of all the new development. My parent's little neighborhood is bright and cheery with nicely maintained houses and green lawns and pretty cars. I seriously thought my parent's neighhorhood would have degraded to a ghetto by now with crackwhores on the corners, but that was not the case. It actually took a step up, and it made me realize what a nice place i grew up in. But its a one-horse town, so i'm still glad i got out of there.

Later that weekend we cruised on over to the Head's east-Bumfuck Youngstown hometown. A booming economy was NOT the case there. The place was still a shit-hole. Same "dirt for sale" signs as two years ago; same truckstop strip club (although that place did make us think fondly of the Evil Doctor since he, Hot Rod, and A.Don toured this establishment when they came to town for our wedding). A new fried chicken shack was put up and a couple of ramshackle meth labs were torn down, but that was the extent of the economic development in East Bumfuck. Its amazing the Head is as smart as he is coming from that depressing dumpsite, but then again, he got the fuck out of there when he was 18.

So it was nice to see the relatives, and even better to see a couple of my old gradeschool/highschool friends, and the Dude even got to party with a couple of my friend's babies, who all happen to be the same age as him (which tells me us Ohio girls were timed to self-destruct into pregnancy around the same time). And Baby Head is an excellent traveler--sleeping through both our arriving and return flights, and being adorable and silly in the airports. But all of us were glad to get back home to TN, and it was hilarious that this was even obvious with the Dude, since he seemed to relax when he got back in his own crib and was delighted to see his beloved Exersaucer. So my boy is a southerner at heart, but try not to hold that against him. We'll make sure he's properly edu-ma-cated, takes care of his teeth, and doesnt talk like an inbred hick.