
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!!!!
Read Full Post »
“Give Me A Number And I’ll Give You The Guts”
Posted in From My Point of View - Personal commentary on Movies and Books, Smooth or Crunchy, tagged Baseball, Branch Rickey, Brian Helgeland, Harrison Ford, Jackie Robinson, Negro League, Pee Wee Reese, Rickey, Robinson, World Series on April 23, 2013 | Leave a Comment »
Jackie Robinson
“Give me a number and I’ll give you the guts” turned out to be a promise hard to keep. When Branch Rickey , the General Manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers made the unprecedented and momentous decision to bring a Negro ball player into the major leagues, he altered the future outcome of American baseball. Rickey had it in his mind to change the game, prove that he still had it, and assuage a gnawing age-old guilt he harbored from his college days. And of course baseball was his life and his business and he knew the way to infuse life and money into it, was to win and win big. His eye was on the prize of the World Series.
But back to the promise…Branch Rickey planned on adding a black baseball player to his farm team, the Montreal Royals with the intention of bringing that player into the Dodgers. But not just any player; The man would have to be good, he would have to be strong, he would have to have courage and conviction, he would have to have a thick skin and he would have to want the prize as much as Rickey did. He found these characteristics and qualities in Jackie Roosevelt Robinson, a short stop playing for the Kansas City Monarchs. Rickey knew that the road ahead for this player would be fraught with every kind of discrimination that was still prevalent in our country at that time. He knew and hoped Robinson who was known to have a temper, would be able to withstand the pressures and pain that came with the number. All that Branch hoped for was, Promises made, promises kept.
In the 1940′s post-war era, baseball became and has remained as The National Pastime of the American public. People of all ages flocked to the games; It was an inexpensive and entertaining way to spend the afternoon and could also be a family affair. There were two white leagues (AL + NL) and the Negro league, each with their own style and fans and never the two to mix. That is until Branch Rickey decided to break the color barrier.
Brian Helgeland directed this film based on the significance of Jackie Robinson’s role in baseball. He extracted an excellent performance from Harrison Ford. Although at times, one might say Ford’s portrayal of Branch Rickey bordered on caricature, he was entirely believable and best of all, you forget that you are watching the former Indiana Jones. I thought there were notable performances from John C. McGinley who played the Red Barber, T. R. Knight as Harry (Harold Parott), Rickey’s right hand man, and André Holland who portrayed Wendell Smith, the sports writer for the Pittsburgh Courier, and Lucas Black as Pee Wee Reese. Chadwick Boseman embodied the moody and guarded reticence of the angry young Robinson and showed us a deeply moving display of pent-up anger and frustration when Robinson was being horrendously taunted by Ben Chapman, (Alan Tudyk), the manager of the Philadelphia Phillies.
42 brings the injustice and ultimately the absurdity of racial discrimination once again to the forefront of our consciousness much in the same manner as The Help. We are collectively ashamed and cheered by the triumph of those oppressed characters, once again confirming the age-old adage that good triumphs over evil. Rickie predicted it himself when he said, “ We can win only if we can convince the world that I’m doing this because you’re a great ballplayer, a fine gentleman.”
I found myself tearing up during many scenes, it was emotionally moving. I Loved It!
Rate this:
Read Full Post »