Easter 2023, and the rest

— पांच हजार तीन सौ बयासी — So yesterday was Easter. It was nice, lovely, a perfectly pleasant day in spite of it shifting from drizzly to rownright rainy all day. Gina and Beth were the hosts at their house, for the second Easter in a row, and although the degree to which it rained varied all day, it actually wasn't raining for either of the Easter Egg hunts: the one for the children in the backyard, or the one for the adults in the front yard. That said, the air was still very damp, it was quite chilly, and a far cry from how warm it had been for Sherri's 70th Birthday Party Easter Sunday last year—the one where Shobhit and I gave Dad and Sherri covid. Speaking of which: when I hugged Sherri goodbye before we finally left Olympia, after about an hour visiting with them back at their house, Sherri at first squatted down as though she were avoiding me. I was like, "What are you doing?" and she quipped, "I don't want you to give me any crud!" I mentioned to them then, just as I had earlier to Gina and Beth at their house, Shobhit and I actually took covid tests twice this weekend—once on Sunday morning, and once on Saturday morning, before we went to meet with Laney for another Happy Hour. If not for meeting Laney on Saturday, we would have just tested the one time yesterday morning. But, so far as we can tell, we really don't have covid. And, guess what? Dad and Sherri said they had planned to test and then spaced it. Sherri had a doctor's appointment three days prior and had tested negative then, apparently. We had a similar conversation with Gina and Beth: Sherri had posted about a week before on the Facebook invite, Please leave Covid at home this year, to which I replied, facetiously, Huh—what—I don't know what you're talking about; and Beth also replied, Yeah—play it safe, take a test before you come. Making such a request these days seems increasingly performative, even though I continue actually doing it. I felt so bad about making the mistake last year, I have literally not gone to a single family function since without testing. Well, yesterday Gina told us they had also intended to test and then never got around to it. I am now quite certain Shobhit and I are the only people there who tested before coming over. So. Out of how many people, then? Certainly fewer than last year, when there were 30 present for Sherri's 70th birthday (including even my brother Christopher, who came from Wallace, Idaho for it). Even the Facebook invite this time around said, The guest list is dialed back this year, as all of 9 people were on the invite list. That would have excluded the children without Facebook accounts, of course: 1. Dad
2. Sherri
3. Angel
4. Brandi
5. Nick
6. Jaycee
7. Gianni
8. Enzo
9. Rachael
10. Raiden
11. Ruby
12. Gina
13. Beth
14. Matthew
15. Shobhit
16. Wendy So that's about half the crowd size as compared to last year, which worked out well for a day when people stayed warm inside except when Easter Egg hunts were happening. Last year, Becca had come down with Tyler from Lake Stevens, and Christopher had brought Tristen, Christian and Braeden; those combined alone made six fewer. Other notable absences from last year included Gina's son (my nephew) David and his family, Jackie and their two kids (that's another four); Britni, who evidently has a new boyfriend, spent the holiday with his family; Ricky is in California with his girlfriend; and apparently Alex actually had intended to come with his girlfriend and two kids but then had to inform the family yesterday morning their kids are sick so they played it safe—thankfully—and stayed away (that's another four fewer than last year). Had Alex's kids been okay, there would have been an even 20 present yesterday, but in the end there were just 16 of us. It still worked out just fine. As I said, I had a very nice time yesterday. That said, it was also both chill, and kind of unremarkable, in terms of, for instance—I didn't bother with a "travelogue" email for Easter, even though I nearly always do one. I did last year, which yielded a lot of photo opportunities as both Easter and Sherri's 70th birthday party combined; I did the year before, largely because it was the first in-person holiday family gathering in nearly a year and a half since the pandemic broke. Some of these also combined with photos of day trips to Skagit Valley for the Tulip Festival, which has not happened this year and fairly likely won't at all, due to Shobhit being detained by campaigning commitments. I didn't do a photo digest email in 2020, though, being the strange, early-pandemic-days holiday that was the first held over Zoom. It looks like I also skipped email photo travelogues for Easter in 2015, 2011 or 2009. I guess my point is Easter usually does, but does not always, yield an email photo digest. It's hardly like any of my recipient list will be missing my travelogues in the meantime this year: I just sent five separate ones at the end of February and the beginning of March for the trip to Australia, something that's only happened twice; plus, the week after next will yield at least two more, for my Birth Week. — पांच हजार तीन सौ बयासी — — पांच हजार तीन सौ बयासी — At first, Shobhit was suggesting we might not stay very long, because he had some doors to return to asking for campaign support in our building yesterday evening. However, he also had to follow-up with one or two at 10 a.m., which meant we could not get a head start down to Olympia either, so I rather pushed back on having any expectation of rushing out after just a few hours. There's some irony to that, though, because Shobhit went to follow up at 9:50, while I was finishing up the cucumber sandwiches we made to bring for the Easter potluck. We wound up leaving right around 10:00, and were at Gina and Beth's house in Tumwater by about 11:15—and didn't actually leave there until about 3:45, a good four and a half hours after arriving, and nearly two hours after all the other guests left! Indeed, the house was at peak-guests for all of about two and a half hours total. And a big group of us arrived all at once. Dad and Sherri were already there when we arrived, but when Shobhit and I pulled up, Brandi and her family were all unloading their car as well, so the seven of us all came in as a group. The kids' Easter Egg hunt occurred what felt like only minutes after we arrived, in the backyard. That started at about 11:25. There was time to eat after that, but then the adult Easter Egg hunt in the front yard occurred at 12:45. And then, all the guests except Shobhit and me had cleared out by about 1:30. A lot of them had other holiday stops left to make, as is increasingly the case with families. I figured Shobhit and I would be heading out soon too, but maybe because everyone else left soo much sooner than expected, Shobhit was not in a huge rush to go quite that early. He did say something like, "Do you want us to get out of your hair?" and Gina said, "You can stay as long as you like." She wasn't just being polite, either; Gina would tell us if they had something else to do and needed us to move along. So then, largely because of Shobhit's capaigning for Seattle City Council, and Gina's history dealing with local Olympia city politics when she used to work for the Olympia Police Department, and Beth's experience with mental health services, we wound up talking politics for basically a solid two hours. This is often dangerous territory, but with the four of us and none of the rest of the family around, it was surprisingly stimulating and illucidating conversation. It was actually really nice, and really cool to get to spend that quality time with them. When we were finally getting ready to go, I was really thinking at that point we'd indeed be going straight back to Seattle from there. I realized I had yet to get myself in any of my photos so I asked if we could get a group selfie before we left. Shobhit made the very good suggestion that I use the timer and set my camera on the counter, although I propped it atop a silverware container to give it some extra height. The first attempt at this shot was hilarious, as it caught Roscoe, the dog, mid-yawn, baring all his teeth. We all laughed pretty hard, but went ahead and took another shot. In the meantime, for some reason my phone did not actually ring when Dad apparently called me, so I listened to the voice mail he left: he realized they hadn't actually said goodbye when they left. Sherri's not usually one for extended periods around huge groups, even family, but they also had plans to meet up with Aunt Raenae at their house. Dad said in the voice mail that we were welcome to stop by. I mentioned this to Shobhit, thinking he'd still want to drive straight home and I was fine with that as I'll see Dad again in a few weeks, but then Shobhit suggested we go ahead and stop in for about an hour. Well all right then! I was happy to do that. We never did see Aunt Raenae. I should have known; she's late to everything, and apparently was still doing laundry at the nearby house where she was pet sitting. And Dad, who recently finished his 28 days straight of radiation therapy for prostate cancer—apparently he has to wait another year and a half for confirmation that all they did took care of it completely—was actually napping when we got to the house. I told Sherri it was fine if he needed to rest, but she was like, "Well, he needs to get up." Dad did say when he came out that he had barely fallen asleep anyway, and told us he wasn't really that tired. So, we got another hour or so of visiting, and then we headed back home. Shobhit had driven us down, and he asked me to drive us back, as he had made the mistake of picking at one of his incision sites and is getting new pains as a result—he now has an appointment to reivist the doctor on Wednesday. Anyway. Alexia had come into our condo, at my request, to see if Shobhit had left his wallet there; he couldn't find it at Gina and Beth's and was starting to panic. I was sure I'd find it when I went to look in the car after he did, and then I texted Alexia to ask her to check if it was in our condo—and, it was. When I got back in the house, Beth said, "That was really nice of you, Matthew." I said, "Which part?" and she said, "All of it." I think sometimes I get comments like this when I do stuff for Shobhit, on a pretty regular basis actually, that he's perfectly capable of doing himself. Normally I would say this is indeed kind of an issue, but I'm cutting him some slack right now given the possibility of surgery complications. But back to Alexia: she had also baked two homemade loaves of bread, one for herself, and when she went into our condo, she left one for us. And holy fuck, it was amazing. The smell alone, with its poppy seeds, was intoxicating. I went to deal with my Easter photos first, and then Shobhit cut into the bread to eat while we watched this week's amazing episode of Succession. We nearly ate the whole loaf, first with butter and then with cream cheese and cucumber. God damn, it was delicious. — पांच हजार तीन सौ बयासी — We actually hung out with Alexia twice over the weekend—or at least, I did, but Shobhit did come over to say hi on Saturday night, the second of two nights in a row that I went over to watch the next titles in our Harrison Ford-athon. Saturday night's movie was Working Girl, which was actually better than I remembered. Alexia very much enjoyed it, especially as it was far better than the previous two movies. After the movie ended, Shobhit came over, and somehow Alexia's cross stitching came up and she showed us a bunch of her projects. Oh, it was because I asked what was what looked like a lamp with a cloth hood over it, and it turned out to be a huge magnifying class she uses for this hobby. Shobhit also asked about Alexia's son Bram, and whether he might support him with his Democracy Vouchers, and it sounds like he may. — पांच हजार तीन सौ बयासी — Earlier in the afternoon on Saturday was the aforementioned Happy Hour at Poquitos, the location being Laney's choice—even though we call it "Happy Hour" but it was not at all officially Happy Hour; I had three margaritas and they were all $13 apiece, along with a breakfast burrito I ordered, and the chips and queso Shobhit had that I also paid for. With the tip my tab came to $62, which is a pretty hulking expense for one brunch. Well, two I guess. Shobhit did have the chips and queso. Which was the cheapest thing I paid for. The expense really was mine. Oh well. I had a good time, it was worth it! I have no regrets! Shobhit stayed with us at that for maybe the first hour, but Laney and I hung out and shot the shit for another couple of hours after that, lovely as always. — पांच हजार तीन सौ बयासी — So, moving further back from that, we get to Friday evening, when Alexia was finally recovered enough from her own not-covid sickness, which she had endured for a solid two weeks, to hang out with fellow humans again, which she was really looking forward to. That night we watched the Harrison Ford movie Frantic, which was great compared to The Mosquito Coast but objectively still kind of sucked. We decided then that we'd do the next movie on Saturday to try burning through them more quickly, as we want to get to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull before we get to seeing Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny in theaters when it's released at the end of June. Both movies we watched over at Alexia's condo. Shobhit was getting some new pains on Friday so wasn't feeling up to it. He was feeling better Saturday, but has new different pains now thanks to his picking at one of the incision sites. Bad move. Still, he's been avoiding certain foods as last week the pho' he made wound up giving him explosive diarrhea, so he even turned down the offer of a hot fudge sunday at Alexia's Saturday night. I took her up on it though! Anyway I think that pretty well covers the weekend. — पांच हजार तीन सौ बयासी — [posted 12:45 pm]