Happy Easter to me.

I realized something. You know how as a kid you always got a new outfit for easter? This was particularly significant in my childhood, when we would get a new church dress for easter, and we would get new school clothes (from the JC Penny catalogue) in the fall, and that was pretty much it for new clothes. Anything else that came out way was a hand-me-down. Go ahead and be shocked and appalled, but I am just old enough to remember a time when we didn't just up and buy stuff whenever we wanted to. And those wants for new clothes and new stuff (*Junk*) we viewed as needs as soon as we saw someone we admired wearing or using the coveted item. Some of you may remember a time like this as well. How quickly we forget (and how ironic that this is my opening idea for this post...). At any rate, I was a kid who got a new dress once a year and it was a big deal. I miss that new dress excitement.

And then there was Friday. Which really kind of beat me up. At the end of the day I was headed home in a bit of a funk. I wasn't doing the sleep-babble that I was doing on Thursday (You really should experience it, I start to babble and tell these stories and go off on these tangents and I only start to realize what is going on when I start to get weepy. If you ever see me get weepy, it's probably because I am exhausted, and you should make me go to bed immediately.) But that is beside the point, because this Friday Funk was an entirely different beast from the Thursday *insert clever alliterative descriptive term here*. My Friday Funk was more about not having weekend plans, not wanting weekend plans, and hoping that my body and my brain would agree on sleeping for a really long time. Of course they didn't. I got home and let my brain rest for a few minutes but then my body wanted movement and so I cleaned a few things. But by the time my body was running out of steam my brain was going full speed. The whole process took only about 20 minutes. Luckily, while I was cleaning, I found various stashes of cash that I hide from myself occasionally. I found my Christmas money from my grandparents. I found some $5 and $10 bills from a grocery shopping trip a few weeks ago. I guess long ago this stuff would have been referred to as "egg money". You know, just the change a housewife has lying aroung the house from having sold eggs that they save up for a rainy day. (This is an entirely different term than "Nest Egg"). But since I am not a housewife, and I do not have chickens from which I can gather eggs for selling, I just stick a few extra dollar bills in some obscure places and find them when I have something I really want.

I bet you can see where this is going.

But in case you can't, let me give you a clue.

Is that a shopping bag I see? Where is it from? Ooooooh. No you didn't.I might have. Peek-a boo!

(Do you love the photography? I tried to make it as if Mr Easter Bunny left nice presents in my back lawn.)And did I mention?

So here is the irony, or rather the hypocrisy, in my blog entries. When I made the purchase, the nice sales lady asked me if I needed a validation. And I was as honest as I could possibly be.

"The Shoes are my validation."

So much for anti-princess sentiment.

She refined her statement. "Uh, parking validation."

Oh, that, no. I don't ever pay for parking. I think its a ridiculous thing to pay for parking. But I will shell out for cute shoes. Let's face it. They are REALLY cute shoes.

Happy Easter to me.

Of course, now I need a dress ot match. And a pedicure. And there was this necklace that was gold with some beads and some roses that were the exact same shade of pink... Oh and the matching earrings. I could go on, but somewhere in the back of my head is the little girl's voice saying "Mommy, I won't be beautiful without my jewelry".

I know the shoes won't make me beautiful. But they might make me feel beautiful. Why do we crave that so much? Why do we crave spring flowers and new dresses and that one voice that tells us we look pretty? I think it's about renewal. It's about everything being fresh and clean and spotless. It's perhaps a prideful perversion of the whole day, but at the same time, there is symbolism in what we wear and how we show respect to honor the day. That's why we always got new easter dresses as kids. So maybe its merely a rationalization, but I think it justifies the shoes. Not a pedi or the jewelry or anything at all that is more than I can actually afford. But I can keep the shoes.