Easter? Is that this weekend?

If it hadn't been for my sister telling me about her Easter plans, and signs on various retail establishments noting that they would be closed on Sunday for the holiday, I might have forgotten about Easter. The Beau is Jewish, I'm ex-Catholic, and neither of us practice any religion. Even the grocery store where I tend to shop (the Far West HEB) seemed to have more Passover supplies than Peeps. I think that not working in an office had the biggest effect, though.

I don't miss Easter at all except for the Elmer's chocolate eggs. Apparently Katrina didn't harm the Elmer's candy factory on the Gulf Coast, although they had trouble finding all the sugar they needed. Usually the HEB has a small supply of Elmer's, either the Heavenly Hash or the Gold Brick eggs ... or maybe I'm thinking of another store. Anyway, I was craving some Elmer's eggs and couldn't find any, which was sad, and I wish I'd remembered a week earlier and searched a little harder. The Heavenly Hash eggs seems to be smaller and less almond-filled than they were when I was a kid, but saying that makes me feel like an old fart, so I'll stop.

Easter is coinciding with tax-crunch time this year, and that's how we're spending the weekend over here. I decided to use an accountant this year, but she flaked out and appears to have vanished from the face of the earth. At first I was angry but now I'm just perplexed -- this is someone I know from other places and she seemed quite reliable. I hope everything is all right, and also that she'll return the paperwork I gave her. Meanwhile, I've spent the past two days scrounging up a lot of paperwork and estimating my taxes so I could file for an extension. I am still not sure if I'll try another accountant or do the work myself.

Anyway, I did find out that it's dead easy to file an extension. The form takes up a quarter of a page. You do have to pay on time, but at least I can have some time to get everything right. I might as well join the rest of my relatives, anyway -- they're all automatically getting four-month extensions because of Katrina. For them, this is purely Easter weekend, no tax worries. My sister is sad because the store ran out of strawberries, which she wanted to accompany an angel-food cake she was making for Easter dinner. I am happy that the biggest problem she is having in her life is a lack of strawberries (and also that her new carpet was sloppily installed, but in a pinch, her new contractor boyfriend will fix it up for her).

In other news, Beau and I finished the wedding invitations today. I will have to post a photo somewhere. You open up the envelope and it looks like a SpongeBob birthday invitation, but inside is an elegantly printed wedding invitation on ivory cardstock. This may be conveying the message that we seem like laid-back rebels in terms of wedding planning, but deep down we're still pretty traditional. I don't think that's actually an accurate message, but the invitations are darned cute. (My parents are getting the printed invite without the SpongeBob card outside.) All we have left to do are to print address labels. I mean, that's all we have to do for the invitations. We still have plenty of wedding-related stuff to do that I won't bore you by describing.

I should post here more often. It's so easy. It's practically relaxing.

Posted at April 16, 2006 12:20 AM