Eggs!

The stars were getting a little wintery for me. I'm ready to see some leaves and grass and flowers and sun. I'm ready for daylight savings time to begin. I want all men's thoughts to turn to love...of me.

Well, not all men. Just a select dozen or so for me to choose from.

Anyway, yeah. Eggs. Green. I'll probably tire of it in a week or so, but I just couldn't look at that dreary gray one more day. I was going for "silver," but you just can't get sparkle out of a background color.

Today was gorgeous outside (by Massachusetts March standards, that is). Sunny and warmish and bright. To me, it felt like the first day of Spring. This, of course, means that we're getting an ice storm overnight and probably 7" of snow sometime in May, but for today, at least, I could labor under the illusion that I will soon be wearing shirtsleeves outside.

It was a great day to take Trooper for a walk, so I did. Poor Skottie just looks at the back door the whole time I have Trooper out on the leash, so tonight, I took the two of them out together. Unfortunately, they're not a very well-coordinated pair. Trooper likes to get a move on (though he's not very fast these days), and Skottie feels the need to sniff every square millimeter before he moves onto his next quadrant.

We didn't go too far, just far enough for the both of them to do their business and get a little bit of night air. I didn't get any great shots of the two of them, because holding a camera while two dogs crisscross each other on different lengthed leashes is a bit difficult. Add in the fact that I could only take pictures when we were under a bright streetlight, and all I got was the above.

At any rate, the walk tuckered them both out, which means they're sleeping comfortably at the foot of the ottoman right now. Well, Trooper is sleeping comfortably. Skottie had to get up once to grab his rope pull and drop it on Trooper's head. He's like that.

Easter started off with a set of Cadbury Creme Eggs and a card from Mom. She usually gets me a giant Russell Stover buttercream egg (so big you have to cut it into portions with a knife), but stores don't seem to carry those anymore.

I gave Mom a framed picture of the grandkids with Trooper, a small basket, and a package of Werther's Originals (which she loves, but never buys for herself).

I then took Trooper out for the aforementioned morning walk, stopping by Chris' house next door to drop off chocolate bunnies for the kids and a second framed picture of them for Susan. I also let Trooper into their house to visit with Susan, because she's the one he loves more than anyone in the world. He couldn't stand up on their slippery wooden kitchen floor, but after he lay down, he got all the attention he could want from his "girlfriend." She petted him and said how beautiful he was and he basked in the glory that is being the Greatest Dog Known to Mankind (or at least to Susankind). I hauled him up off the floor, said goodbye to the Cleary Family Next Door (who were having Easter dinner with Susan's side of the family) and dragged Trooper back home.

Easter dinner for Mom and me was scheduled for Beth's house at 2:00, and since it was only noon by the time I got back inside, we sat around and watched 30 Minute Meals, Everyday Italian and The Barefoot Contessa on the Food Network. It was hard to resist going into the kitchen and whipping up some baked pasta or banana pancakes that were being shown on TV, but a ham dinner was waiting for us, so I got by on an English muffin. And a Peep. You can't have Easter without one Peep.

It was a pretty small crowd at Beth's house this Easter. Sean and Heather were in Maine with Heather's side of the family; Chris and Susan were having their own dinner, and my cousin Shamus rarely shows up during mealtime at family events.

We discussed the fact that nobody seemed to want to do the family events like we used to, and wondered if our family was sort of like The Munsters; thinking that we were perfectly normal where in reality we're scary. We all told Matt (Little Susan's fiancee) that he should get out while he could, but he was too busy playing with a beach ball on the floor with Susan to pay attention.

Dinner was great. I don't care for ham too often, but it's always good at Easter. Mom made Delmonico potatoes and caramel rolls, and we had torte cake and two kinds of pie for dessert. Nobody leaves our family functions hungry.

Casey slept in the sunlight like a cat through most of the dinner, and only woke up in time to have dessert (one would think she'd planned it that way). Uncle Jack said that yesterday, Casey stopped at a flag that's in his house and recited the entire Pledge of Allegiance. This from a child who couldn't string together a full sentence before Christmas. The progress she's making is amazing. I said at Christmas that I expected her to be indistinguishable from kids without disabilities by the time she's seven. Now I think it'll be six. She'll actually have a leg up on the other kids, as she's bilingual (English and ASL), and uses both languages at once. It's adorable when she decides she doesn't want something, because she signs, "No, No, No, No" in rapid succession, but only says the word once.

Jeff had "hidden" eggs in plain sight in the backyard for Casey to find, and we all dutifully went outside to watch her hunt for them. Unfortunately, Casey had grabbed two video boxes and a small umbrella on her way out, and was much too preoccupied pretending that she was renting videos in the rain (or something equally complicated) to bother with finding plastic eggs. Little Susan finally got her interested by asking what color each egg was. Apparently, Casey is a nut for color identification, because when she was asked for each color, she dropped the videos and the umbrella (and, unfortunately, the basket...it's hard to teach a 3-year-old how to multitask) and picked up the egg to inspect it.

We stayed at Beth's longer than usual, but there wasn't anything else to do until my rehearsal at 7, so we sort of lounged around the living room in a food-induced stupor while Casey watched Shrek.

We left, and I signed "Happy Easter" to Casey (I learned the signs last night...kind of like learning a phrase to impress the Japanese embassador), and she said, "Happy Birthday!" I thought I'd gotten it wrong, but Jeff informed me that Casey says "Happy Birthday!" in response to everything fun right now. Considering the words were crystal clear, I was more than happy to sign "Happy Birthday" in response. Apparently there are several different signs for "birthday," and the one I was using was Very Bad and Wrong, because Casey very carefully grabbed my hands and moved them in the correct way for "birthday."

With this kind of progress, I expect she'll end up being the first woman President.

I was exhausted for some reason when we got home. I think it was the dinner; I'm not used to eating such a big meal in the middle of the day. I had enough time to just get comfortable in front of the TV when it was time for me to go to rehearsal.

I grabbed a Code Red Mountain Dew on the way to the theater, hoping the caffeine would wake me up. It did its job well enough; I felt like I really did some decent work tonight. I got no notes beyond a couple of blocking corrections, so either the director and co-director think I'm doing well or else I'm a lost cause.

Tonight was the night that I had my three minutes offstage (really more like a minute and a half) and also The Kiss.

I'll admit I was nervous about kissing someone in front of everybody. I worried that Jude (the woman playing Kay, the ingenue) would be unhappy with her choice in leading men, or that I'd kiss in some identifiably "gay" way or something, but it went well enough. The first time we kissed, it was a mere peck, but I broke her up with, "You can sure tell Kay's got the hots for Peter!" afterwards, and she relaxed and we made out properly the next time. This is Jude's first "real" acting role (whatever that means...she's a dancer, so I imagine she's done the chorus for musicals), so I imagine she was even more nervous than I was.

Our director gave her a note that, since she was playing a fictional character in the play, kissing a real-live person was a novel experience for Kay. I told her to think of how novel it was to make out with a 36-year-old gay man, which probably wasn't the best thing to say, since she couldn't stop giggling whenever we got to that scene afterwards.

After rehearsal was over, she asked me if she kissed "like a girl," and I said that I didn't have enough experience in that area to tell for sure. She told me that she would try to hook me up with her performance group in Cambridge, where I'd have a better shot at kissing a guy than in the suburbs.

I refrained from asking if any of those kissable guys was interested in seeing Duran Duran on Friday.

April 1st seemed so distant when I made that "date dare" with myself back in January. Now I have less than a week to find someone to take along with me.

I hate to resort to using internet chat, but it seems to be my best bet at this point. Between today and Friday, there really isn't a good night to go out to a club or an organizational meeting (if I'd been involved in any sort of organization, that is), and I doubt that I'm going to run across someone at work or on the street to take.

I could ask Bridget (from BTW) if that cute guy at the script reading party is gay, single, and looking, but I'm not at that level of friendliness with Bridget (she's a very nice woman, it's just that I've only met her three times in my entire life), and besides, I don't want her to think that I went to the party just to meet guys.

There is one guy at work who I can ask about single men around town. He's the GLBT liaison for the Consulting Company, and he seems the sort to want to play matchmaker. I'll give him a call tomorrow and subtly work the concert into the conversation (probably by saying something smooth like, "I'm kind of desperate for a date right now...").

Referrals are, of course, always welcome.

Hey, it doesn't hurt to ask.