The Relatives Visit

There were four, two men and two women. Two were twice my size, one vertically and one horizontally. They paraded in with tons of hiking boots and flip-flops, sleeping bags, clothes, Easter baskets, personal electronics, and gifts for me of an Elvis mug and a marvelous egg-shaped motion-sensor night light truly needed in the bathroom. Moving their stuff from the van into my house and getting settled took a full 20 minutes. They arrived hungry.

I love hosting them every Easter. My possessions vanished beneath theirs and a ton of wet towels because everyone shampooed and showered daily in my half-bath, the only bath there is, so I got in there before 6 a.m. or after 10:30 p.m. My Missouri provided beautiful weather, flowering trees, and birds. We ate barbecue, Steak 'n' Shake, frozen yogurt, homemade pot roast with mashed potatoes and gravy, Chinese buffet, Trader Joe's mac 'n' cheese, dyed Easter eggs, chocolate cake, a truckload of bagged snacks, and for Easter dinner came yet another person for a truly full 1100-square-foot house that rocked with fun. My brother-in-law read aloud from an inspirational book called Jacob the Baker and I rolled on the floor laughing to bust a gut.

They flung themselves out on carpets and snored. They relaxed and read or scrolled through their Facebook or strolled around the property or sat around the firebowl. They freaked when they saw ticks on them. (I showed them what to do.) We visited antique malls, Walmart, Trader Joe's (they'd never been to one), the farm store to see live chicks and baby bunnies, the Methodist church, and a state park.

The morning they packed and departed they granted my special request to vacuum the vacated rooms, and cheerfully did so in a few minutes, saving me 2 hours of my life, and with those hours I laundered all the towels and ate all the foil-covered little chocolate eggs they had brought.

And how was your Easter?

Snacking on Snowballs

The other day having coffee with a friend I denied myself a pastry from the shop's lovely pastry case and later wondered what kind of person would deny her desire for a pastry when she really wanted one. I decided that was unhealthy. And it awoke in me a desire to live that moment over and choose differently, which gave me the bug for something gooey and sweet. . . So I drove seven miles into town and in the gas-mart's most forbidden aisles where I never go, I in my purple parka shopped among packaged creations spun up from high-fructose corn syrup, white flour, partially hydrogenated oils and artificial flavors -- treats that no Pharaoh or Chinese warlord, no matter how wealthy, ever saw or tasted or imagined. Because I am sensible I allowed only one item. It came down to brown-sugar pop-tarts or Hostess Snowballs, their coconut tops dyed pink for, I think, Valentine's Day. How very festive. I contained myself until I brought them home, and at 4:30 p.m., very civilized, I set them on a plate and had on the side a cup of rice milk in my Kansas State University mug. I think that on one of my birthdays, back in my salad days ("when I was green in judgement") I bought Snowballs and stuck a birthday candle in one. Or maybe I dreamt that. Or it was someone else's birthday. Anyway, please be seated and share this rare and beautiful moment with me.

Stolen Kisses

The H.O. Wilbur Chocolate company of Lititz, Pennsylvania invented and popularized the “chocolate buds” shown above in 1894, and it is widely insinuated that the Hershey company a few miles over “borrowed” this idea in 1907, mass-manufactured it, and made history. (Here’s a cool blog by an 11-year-old who collects every flavor of Hershey’s Kisses.) In 1909 Mr. Wilbur sued Hershey and lost. Similar in size to Hershey’s Kisses, the Wilbur Buds have a rounded bottom stamped “WILBUR” as you see. Both dark and light Wilbur Buds are deeply flavored and melt much more slowly than Hershey’s, and are less chalky and sugary but more cocoa-y and waxy. A former student and Kiss connoisseur ordered Wilbur Buds, available online, just to see what they were like and thought to share them with her former teacher. How sweet is that? The dusty-looking “bloom” on them, or on any piece of chocolate, is what happens when humidity gets to the candy, as in the refrigerator.