Pbenjay's Blog

Milk Chocolate Easter Bunny

Well, if you thought my Not So Good Friday story was something, let me tell you how we spent Easter Sunday…  The fact of the matter is that in a way it was more traumatic but of significantly shorter duration and it ended with a funny episode. 

Finley was up before 7am and I think she went downstairs even though I had told her not to do that, the night before.  She came into my room and I gathered her up and put her in bed beside me foolishly thinking  just maybe she would rest a bit and I could catch another 15 minutes or so – NOT.  She began to weave a long tale about how she had seen the Easter bunny and he had told her she was special.  Then she told me that she knew the bunny had put one of the baskets in the office (and he had!).  That had me a bit worried  so I asked her where did he put the other and she said the closet – Whew! The other was hidden in the kitchen.  We got Frankie up and down we went in search of the Easter loot.  Sure enough Finley made a bee line to the office and snatched the pink pail off the shelf.  We got Francesca to look in a couple of rooms but basically she just kept asking Finley for some of the candy, so I guided her into the kitchen and pointed to the pail.  Happy smiles all around.

They each bit the head off their chocolate peanut butter rabbits and Finley ate at least half of her solid chocolate bunny I had brought from NYC – it was a gift from my friend, Alice.  Frankie was still chomping down the Reese’s rabbit. Well I guess breakfast is out of the question now!

We were going to take the girls to the playground in downtown Delray Beach and then to lunch at Crepes By The Sea.  Things didn’t exactly go down that way.  We almost got out the door and into the car but …..If you follow this blog you know that I made a pact with the family that my blog would not be a platform for letting the world in behind closed doors.  So having said that, here’s the upshot of what happened.  We ended up taking Francesca to the ER. YES SHE’S FINE!  It was just a situation where we thought it best to make sure all was ok. AND all is ok.  

However, making my way to Bethesda East on Easter Sunday was somewhat disconcerting, considering how we spent Good Friday!  I carried her in and stood there at the reception area while I watched one of the two nurses laughing and playing on her computer.  The other one looks up and says, “May I help you?”  Let’s see now, I’m holding a small child in my arms wrapped up and  even though it was Easter we didn’t come to trick or treat!!!  “I have an emergency with the baby”, I say.  OH! So I was ushered in and given a wheelchair to sit in because I couldn’t keep holding her.  

Francesca was such a good girl;  The nurse put a bracelet on her wrist which we all admired and told her it was her special bracelet.   She (Frankie) wasn’t keen on having her shoe removed and something wrapped around her toe so they could check her heart rate.  Then Finley announced that the machine in the room was a blood pressure machine and that she once had to have her blood pressure taken and it squeezed her arm so tightly that it hurt.  Thank you Finley for announcing that to Frankie.

The best part (for the kids) was that each little curtained-off room had its own TV screen and we all got to watch Tom & Jerry cartoons.  Things move slowly even in an ER, so I would say we were there close to two hours.  Because Francesca had been such a good girl, we were going for ice cream.  She wanted strawberry which was probably because Finley wanted strawberry.  I had to convince them both that we should have some lunch first and didn’t everybody want to go to Crepes By The Sea?  

After lunch, we headed to Orange Leaf which is one of those places where you can fill a cup with your own choices of frozen yogurt and toppings.  The entire room was filled with double pump stations with flavors ranging from chocolate to banana to coconut and red velvet BUT NO STRAWBERRY. You coulda guessed it, right?

Gen X You WIN!   Everything in Chiara and Tom’s house is highly technological and complicated. Did I ever tell you how the night that Finley Ray was born and all the grandparents (that would be 5 of us) were staying at the condo, NONE of us could get the TV on!!  Well, the night I stepped on the glass,  Peter was out;  He had taken Tom’s new BMW to go visit a friend.  He almost didn’t get there because he couldn’t get the car started. The key didn’t turn it on!  He thought the dashboard looked like a rocket ship and no matter what he did, he could not turn the car on.  I’m not sure if it was Peter or Theresa the cleaning lady, who finally discovered the button that actually turned the car on!  Coming home the gas light went on and Peter stopped to get some gas. BUT how to open the gas cap?  Can you believe he couldn’t find out how to open it and the guys in the gas station couldn’t figure it out either.  He drove to a second station and again the attendants didn’t know how to access the gas tank.  Really now! He just drove home, parked it in the garage and threw up his hands in amazement. Gen X You WIN!

On Sunday, we thought it would be a good idea to put some gas in the Truro for the morning run to the airport.  Peter is not a fan of self-service gas stations to say the least.  In fact, he downright dislikes the whole idea of them but hey here we are in Florida and this Shell gas station has only self-service.  He pulls up to a pump and turns to me and says I have no idea how you open this gas tank.  In our car, a RAV 4, there is a lever on the floor clearly marked with a gas pump symbol.  No such lever here, no symbol on the dashboard or the console.  Mmmm well the car is still running and I suggest we look at the manual.  The fact that two adults who have over a 100 years of driving experience between them can’t open the gas cap is ludicrous.  I looked in the index and there was nothing about where the cap was or how to access it. We looked at the page that identified all the things on the dashboard and there was NOTHING about the gas tank there.   We started going through the manual page by page – still nothing.  Meantime,  we are sitting in the car with it running on Easter Sunday.  I thought just maybe the guy in the building might know because after all it was a fairly common car.  Peter looked at me like I had two heads and said, “You mean the guy who is selling cigarettes and gum?” Ok maybe it was a dumb idea. Five more minutes and fidgeting in the car, I suggest Peter go out and locate the gas tank. Now he looks at me like I have 3 heads and says, “Oh and you think it opens manually?”  One minute later, Peter opens the car door and says, “I have the gas cap, it opened manually”.  I burst out laughing, uncontrollably.  I couldn’t stop and neither could he – it was one of those crazy times when ALL the stress and tension you’ve had about a complicated problem(s) is resolved in the simplest silliest way.  We just laughed and laughed, tears rolling down our faces.  It was then that I thought perhaps the guy selling gum and cigarettes was sitting in his booth saying to himself, “those two guys can sit out there with the car running all day, I’m still not going out there.  Can’t they read the sign that says Self-Service”?  And that brought more gales of laughter.

Gen X you win!!!!