Moved to Seattle?

So, since April 1 we have had 1 whole day of sunshine. Every other single day has been either partly cloudy, overcast, or rainy, with the majority of the days being rainy. I recall last year there being some rain in the spring, but nothing like this. It's starting to feel an awful lot like we've been transported to Seattle, minus all the greenery, and plus (I expect) about 9000 times the amount of dogshit on the sidewalks. I am only speculating on this last point because I imagine Seattlites to be wholly more conscientious about picking up after their dogs. No basis for that. I've only been there once, the weather was great, and I did not encounter any dog doo (and I walked everywhere on that trip, except for one brief and harrowing car ride from the airport).

So, yeah, been gray and cold and rainy (actually snowed yesterday). And I might add, it really sucks. So, not to be a gloomy gus, but it has been nothing but gloomy here, on top of everything else that goes on in this borough. It is coming up on a very active time of year, however, and it would be nice to be feeling all warm and sunshiny. I mean, seriously, with the amount of things we have up in the air, you'd think we were a family of sky-diving jugglers. Sigh.

Our family fortune cookie would read, "Major change is coming, but not in the weather. Button up!"

Tomorrow is Easter Sunday, or just Easter. My mother asked me if Felix was going to get an "Easter Bunny Basket" which I guess is her way of trying to unreligiousify the idea of Easter in my mind. But the answer is yes, we are going to set him up with a little Easter basket with a couple treats. The odd thing is, since Easter is not nearly as commercial a holiday, it has not had much traction in our secular, non-TV influenced day to day living. You don't even get a day off from work, so there has been almost no reason for us to even think about Easter. But right now it would be nice to have a excuse to have a little change in the weekend, have a little extra treat like an Easter basket. Mom asked if Felix had been talking about Easter, to which I replied, "Uh...no. He doesn't know anything about it. We haven't been talking about it at all...hasn't really been on our radar." So, not only will Easter be a nice treat, it will also be mostly a surprise. And Felix likes surprises if they are good ones that involve little treats. So we'll outfit a little basket with some fake grass and some goodies. I suppose I might tell him some sort of story about the easter bunny or the origins of the holiday. Trying to explain the Jesus stuff would be way too complicated, so I'll probably stick to the historic rites of spring type stuff. We might color Easter eggs, too. Who knows. I'm sure Felix would love that.

One nice thing about celebrating Easter is that even in its fully celebrated form, it is not a majorly commercial holiday (beyond the confectioner market). There's no pressure to drop a lot of money on Easter presents or even, really, to have some fancy meal. A nice meal is good if you are having a big gathering, or if you want to just get out for a treat, but in general...Easter basket with some goodies, a couply little trinketty toys and plastic eggs, an easter egg hunt, and voila! Low impact holiday! Of course, you just have to deal with some places being closed. We don't usually go anywhere on Sundays except for the park and whatever shopping chores are leftover from Saturday.

At least the forecast for tomorrow is sunny, even though it will be cold. So there is that. Weather forecasts here seem to be more accurate than we used to see in the midwest. Not sure why. Maybe being on a island gives us more predictable forces than the anything goes climatology of the middle west. And not sure why it would even be considered the midwest since it is really just the middle. Minnesota should be called the upper middle, not the midwest, since it is, technically, at the topside of the middle, not the middle of the left side. And then the middle east isn't even in this hemisphere...wtf is that about? The middle west is Ohio to Nebraska and the middle east is Libya to Iran. Maybe that makes more sense...does being the midwest really mean that America's heartland is actually the very center of western civilization? Sounds nice, but not likely. Then you have to get into the semantic argument about whether "middle" equals "center" and if "center" refers to geographical, cultural, ideological, etc... Of course, New York and its New Yorkers would immediately take issue with that since everyone here knows that NYC is in fact the center of EVERYTHING. I mean, really, where would our economic crisis be without New York and Wall Street? Flounding, looking for its center...or maybe not even existing. Which is optimistic. i do believe that given the chance, American masters of finance would have come up with the same crap regardless of where they were based.

I guess I should read more history. I know Japan had their big bust and never fully recovered. But did anyone have a "Great Depression" like we did? And did they recover? Or is that what happened to all those hundreds of countries and societies whose names have faded into the dust. They couldn't have all disappeared due to being conquered by their neighbors. I bet thats what happened to the Incas and Mayans. High finance. Sub-prime mortgages and complex securitized financial instruments. Human sacrifice, basically.

Sigh.
Enough for one laundry-day.