Random 5 for March 31, 2024 – Easter, traditions, karma, ants, invasions

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An early Easter – This is one of the earliest Easter dates possible. For our area, it’s early for flowers. Usually, you can find potted tulips and hyacinths all around but not this year. They aren’t as plentiful. I prefer a warmer April Easter, but I have no say in scheduling. It’s based on moon cycles. It’s also the first time I can remember when Passover didn’t coincide with Easter.

Easter traditions – When I was a kid, Easter meant ham and mashed potatoes (and chocolate bunnies). My brother and sis-in-law are coming today for dinner. They wanted steak. It’s almost blasphemy. Over the decades holiday routines have changed. I miss the smell of ham cooking in my mom’s house. She also made egg cheese and German potato salad. I could replicate that but it wouldn’t be the same without my mom at the stern yelling orders.

Karma – I heard from my niece, the same one that bit the ears off my chocolate bunnies when I was a kid. She accidentally broke the ears off her chocolate bunny purchases this year. It took over six decades but it’s karma.

An “a-ha” moment – We’ve been battling ants for a month here. Everything we’ve used or done is a temporary solution and that may be the best we can do until the bus comes to take them to the beach. We get rid of one wave and there’s another right behind them. The fact that they are most prominent in the “office” room was puzzling. Yesterday I did a “deep clean” and I found a patch of organic dried stuff. Gracie must have barfed in a spot that I didn’t see. I cleaned it up and hope that’s been the reason. There is no food or water source in the office.

The thing about ants — I don’t get freaked out with ants like I would with other insects, but I don’t like them crawling on me. We have tiny black ones and occasionally they will jump on me and walk up my arm. This happens when I’m on my computer and totally freaks me out. I’ve started to push up my sleeves so I can see them right away before they are halfway up the inside of the sleeve. We’ve been told that when it starts to warm up, they will go outside.

So how was your week?

 

64 thoughts on “Random 5 for March 31, 2024 – Easter, traditions, karma, ants, invasions”

  1. Love the niece story. She had it coming, you can’t say you didn’t warn her! All Jewish holidays go according to that confounding Hebrew calendar vs. the Gregorian one. There ought to me a law! Oh, wait… 😉

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  2. Laughing about the chocolate bunny. Easter Karma has a long memory. Sorry about the ants, but maybe now that you’ve found one source you’ll reign victorious over them!

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  3. What I hate most is waking up in the middle of the night to find a stink bug crawling on me. Yuck, on so many levels!

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  4. I miss the smell of my mom’s home made bread. Man, every big holiday, we couldn’t wait for her to make it! Sorry about the ants, hopefully they will keep on marching and right out the door!

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    • My mom rarely made bread but she made strudel (savory and sweet) and all sorts of Austrian pastries but for Easter she would slightly boil a ham “to get out some of the salt.” That smell and the hot ham sandwiches that came afterward are etched in my nose. We always had a basket of food blessed on the Saturday before Easter. Ham, potato salad, hard boiled eggs, horseradish and cheese. Yum.

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  7. We were talking today about how weird it is that Easter isn’t coinciding with Passover this year! We usually had ham and green beans and deviled eggs. And some kind of potato also, but that part wasn’t specific. Hope that takes care of the ant problem!

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  8. Yes, Passover isn’t until late April. A fellow blogger is Jewish and I looked to see so I could wish her a happy holiday – we were too early this year for Easter. We had a gray and drizzly day, not great for Easter Sunday pictures in your finest duds. Or an Easter egg hunt. And most of the week will be that way. We always had a ham at my grandmother’s house, but in later years, if we didn’t go to “The Boneyard” a rib place open 365 days a year, if the weather was bad, my mom would make ham steaks with a raisin/brown sugar sauce and scalloped potatoes. When the ant siege begins, the kitchen is the worst – they will go walking on the ceiling, lose their balance and fall onto my hands/arms or run across the keyboard. I’m freaked out by the idea they will crawl in my ears and not come out, so I put Kleenex in my ears until they are gone for good. If it was a centipede or spider invasion, I’d have to go to a hotel for the 4-6 week invasion. 🙂

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      • That is my mindset definitely. I can handle the ants, but downstairs I freak out with creepy crawlies as there are more of them there, especially after a rainy week. I have a full, five-gallon paint can and will place it over them (then leave it there a long time). The basement is paneled (dark wood) and carpeted except for the laundry and pantry rooms which are tiled. I have painted those rooms a light green with light green floor tiles … because it is all light colored, I can hone in on something that moves more quickly than me in a split second and decide my method of attack or stew and fret. I also keep a shoe to whack it if I must get into the room. The HVAC guy was there once, checking the furnace and I was talking to him and saw a huge centipede crawling up the laundry room wall. I said “quick Phil – please take my whacking shoe and get it.” He was on his knees, stood up and shook his head no and said “I’m sorry Linda, I’m afraid of them too.” 🙂

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          • Yes, a shoe with a flat sole, no ridges and I grab it by the back of the shoe and go to town. 🙂 I pray I never get a mouse in the house … I’d faint dead away. I have a country swag lamp in my kitchen and about 10 years ago it stopped working. I like the lamp and I had a handyman from a local light store, remove the lamp and take it to the light store to fix it. He left a gaping hole in the ceiling above the kitchen table. When he took the lamp down he peered in that hole and said “you must have had mice in here at one time – I see mouse poop.” I said “you must cover it before you leave – please do something so they can’t get out!” He didn’t have anything with him, so I gave him a small garbage bag to put over the hole and tape it to the ceiling. But, that wouldn’t do as I imagined mice chewing through the bag and dropping out of the ceiling. I went to the hardware store and bought a roll of screen door mesh and put that up there instead. He didn’t return for a few days and I was unsettled the whole time.

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            • Mice are not hard to catch. They are not fast and they don’t bite. I caught a chipmunk once and it bit my hand. Not enough to break skin but enough to drop him. Unfortunately he was in the house so I had to get him out.

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              • I didn’t know that about mice – I figured they’d move very quickly. Thank goodness the chipmunk didn’t break the skin. As much as I like feeding the squirrels, I will hand off a “triple peanut” with it between my thumb and index finger with gloves on, but that’s it. I follow a wildlife photographer who feeds birds from her palm and videotapes them with her phone. Sometimes a Blue Jay or Red-winged Blackbird lands on her palm. You know how long their beaks are. A neighbor’s tree held a Blue Jay nest many years ago. A person walked down the street passed under the tree and the Blue Jay freaked out and attacked the man, pecking his bald head repeatedly, drawing blood and he fell to the ground, blood streaming down his face. The homeowner was at her front window, saw it, called 911. He later went back to thank her for coming to his aid and he said he merely passed beneath the tree and had no idea what hit him.

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                • Birds with babies are very protective. My husband was bombed by a mockingbird when he mowed near the tree with a nest. He was very carefully mowing that area until the babies fledged.

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                  • Yes they are. I might have mentioned this before, but last Summer a dead baby Red-winged Blackbird was on the path at the Park where I walk. It was nowhere near a nest and was old enough to fledge. I was walking along and a male Red-winged Blackbird started dive-bombing me. I thought it wanted peanuts, as the males will come over and swoop down for peanuts like the Jays do, but it was protecting its dead baby as I neared the body. Another walker saw what happened to me as he was walking behind me. He caught up with me and said it happened to him the first time around that morning. I can’t imagine that a human had killed that baby, but it was sad to see how fiercely protective he was of it.

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  9. I don’t think we had a strong tradition about an Easter dinner menu when I was growing up. Coloring eggs, Easter baskets, and a new dress and hat were more important. Today we had Easter dinner at my house. It was a pot luck. Everything was delicious, and we ate too much. My sister brought a quiche in honor of eggs. My daughter brought two big yummy desserts. My granddaughter brought asparagus. That fits the season, I think. And so on.

    I bought a chocolate bunny wrapped in gold for decoration. I guess I can start eating it tomorrow.

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    • Pot luck is good. I love quiche and asparagus has been traditional Easter fare here. I forgot to pick some up so we had roasted carrots as the extra vegetable.

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  11. I’m not afraid to buck traditions on holidays, but steak is not considered a holiday entree! Did you ask your guests specifically what they wanted for their Easter meal? If I had to deal with that, I’d give the guest two choices to pick from, both of which I was okay with serving.

    I hope the ants will soon take their little bodies outside. It’s supposed to be rainy all week, with the chance for some snowflakes flying around in the northern part of the state on Thursday. I can predict when the warm weather will be here to stay. It will be within the first 7 days of finally having your HVAC properly working again (because then you won’t need the heat!).

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    • 🙂 My HVAC was fixed this past week! Yay! I did ask what they wanted. He’s my 93 year old brother so he gets anything he wants (within reason). If it was too complicated, I would have declined. You never know how long people you love will be around.

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  12. I remember my Grandma would do ham every Easter. That’s funny with the bunny ears and karma. I’m enjoying the Cadbury mini eggs today. I hope the ants leave soon.

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  14. It is odd that Easter and Passover are so far apart this year when The Last Supper was a Passover meal. Happy Easter!

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  16. I am a chocoholic. Milk or dark…if it’s chocolate I love it.

    Jack barfs almost everyday. Usually in the morning. I think he eats too fast. The barfing doesn’t bother him. He eats, he barfs then goes back and eats some more. The second helping usually stays down.

    Easter at our house was ham and scalloped potatoes. And for dessert lemon meringue pie. I liked the pie best.

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  17. Happy Easter, Kate and family! Your steaks sound delicious. Not really a ham fan… grilled pork chops for us today with sliced potatoes on the grill and green beans. I never could eat the chocolate bunnies in my basket much less bite the ears off. I was a sensitive kid I guess. Mom finally resorted to milk chocolate malted milk balls 🙂

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  19. Karma – I heard from my niece, the same one that bit the ears off my chocolate bunnies when I was a kid. She accidentally broke the ears off her chocolate bunny purchases this year. It took over six decades but it’s karma.

    Ya know…I so believe in karma. Took a while but justice was done.

    🙂

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  20. Hilarious that you still remember the ears and finally got your payback. That’s something I would do. I’m not a fan of ham–I think it’s going to be pasta for dinner. Andy’s doing eggs Benedict this morning (but with bacon instead of Canadian bacon which is basically ham). The kid is not a fan of milk and now demands dark chocolate (sacrilege!), which meant I couldn’t get him a giant bunny this year; See’s candy only makes them in milk chocolate. He’s getting two smaller dark chocolate bunnies instead. That seems wrong to me, but I guess he can still eat the ears!

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    • Dark chocolate? Gawd! That’s just wrong! Eggs benedict would be wonderful for Easter too. We always had mass in the morning so it would be a noon-ish meal. I like ham in moderation. I’m not a big meat eater but today’s steaks will be fabulous. We got good ones!

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  22. Easter is a holiday that passes unnoticed around our place ~ no ham, no lamb, no family gatherings . . . just Easter chocolate and Easter traffic!

    My mom was like your mom ~ ham with scalloped potatoes and asparagus OR lamb & mint jelly with roasted baby potatoes. Not sure about dessert ~ Thanksgiving was pies, Christmas was plum pudding, but Easter dessert eludes me. Maybe a cake decorated with pastels, bunnies, and chicks?

    We have ants this year too ~ just one at a time, usually spied when it crawls over my arm.

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  23. I was surprised that Passover wasn’t where I expected. I don’t honestly keep good track and I’m not sure how they decide when it is. I wish they’d pick a date or “the first Sunday in April” or something similar. I suspect it had something to do with the time change. I remember time changes on Easter and having to get up and go to early morning services way before reasonable.

    Good luck with the ants. I am pretty sure I know how they get in but I don’t know how to keep them out. I just keep ant bait out all the time and if I see new ants I have new trays to put out before it becomes an issue. Who knew that ants would enjoy dried up cat barf?

    Karma indeed. I always saved my ears for last. Did you have a method for eating your bunny?

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    • I haven’t had a chocolate bunny in decades. I’m not a big candy fan preferring to get my chocolate in mochas or brownies! The holidays are based on moon phases. We have some Jewish friends who have a seder and I was surprised that it didn’t fall in line with Easter this year. I don’t remember time changes as they relate to Easter. Maybe when I was a kid but we do the time change much earlier in the year these days. Ants, ugh. There are better solutions than what we do but I’m always concerned about the cats getting into poison or eating poisoned ants.

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  24. Oh, the smell of ham for Easter….steak, not so endearing. We often had whatever fish dad caught in the lake at the farm the day before – fried catfish or trout.
    Got a giggle over the ants. Cat do love to leave secret souvenirs…or they are annoying ones pointing out/monitoring staff’s cleaning abilities here HAHA
    Hope your Easter is warming in all ways

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