Today was the day I started using sweetener in my tea again. First, Swistle said she’d just resumed using sweetener, which gave me an automatic stamp of approval in my mind. Second, I made myself a slice of cinnamon toast to accompany my tea and it just seemed overly rigid to purposefully avoid sweetener when I was about to eat bread sprinkled liberally with sugar. Maybe “coated” is more accurate than “sprinkled.” Or “slathered.” Can you slather sugar? (This line of thinking sounds dangerously close to the “why order a Diet Coke if you are eating a burger and fries” argument, but it’s NOT. I would totally order a Diet Coke with a burger and fries because a) I like Diet Coke and b) regular Coke STILL has more calories than Diet, no matter what you eat with it, and fewer calories is fewer calories, if that is something you care about. Boy, I am sure getting indignant over NOTHING, aren’t I.) Back to my non-confrontational tea: I only used half a packet of Sweet’n Low, and it was plenty sweet enough, and made the whole tea-drinking experience much more pleasant.
Of course, I did note that we had allowed the Sweet’n Low supply to dwindle PRECARIOUSLY low; I think there may be four packets remaining. So now I will have to decide if I now add Sweet’n Low to every cup of tea, or just occasional cups. And, if the former, whether I truly need it enough to go to the grocery store or order it from Target, with all the associated frets and risks of either choice.
In other news, my husband opened the bag of Reese’s peanut butter eggs I’d purchased from Costco and discovered that they are MINIATURE. What a huge disappointment! I want a nice, big peanut butter egg. Not a teeny tiny portion-controlled egg. BOO. I count on Costco to provide me with unconscionable amounts of Full Size treats, not stunted little egglets, you know?
Sweet’n Low is one thing. But inferior Reese’s eggs is a whole other kettle of fish… so that’s another item on the list for a Target trip.
Thinking about Reese’s eggs makes me think about Easter, which is something I have been avoiding thinking about because it makes me feel simultaneously anxious and exhausted. Carla is still at an age where holidays are magical! and fun! and, especially since we are stuck inside, I want to do what I can to make even a quarantined Easter seem magical and fun. On the other hand, maybe this is a good chance to put some pennies in the plastic eggs we have, shove some leftover Valentine’s candy and a book Carla’s had for months but never actually read into an Easter basket, maybe make some Easter cupcakes, and call it a day. On the other other hand, what about the full size Reese’s eggs? So now I am wondering if Target has a shortage of Easter supplies or not.
Of course, this is all ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS. I don’t actually need sweetener or normal-size Reese’s eggs OR Easter supplies. There is no reason for me to go to Target and risk my/others’ health for any of these things, even in combination! This is a prime opportunity to Make Do With What We Have!
Well. Ordering Target delivery or doing curbside pickup are still options. And I will have to go to the grocery store at some point, likely before Easter. And there is still time to mull, and fret, and plan.
If you celebrate Easter, especially if you have little kids, what are you planning to do?
Hi! I have big kids – 10,13 and 14 and I was worried about Easter too. Worried may be too strong but I definitely have been thinking about it as a nice distraction aside from constant worrying about if a cough is dry or wet or if my throat is starting to hurt. I waited until we needed several items to justify it and then I did a Target curbside pick up (we are in Southern NJ) and was able to get any and all candy I wanted. I am also going to order some stuff from Dicks (sports store) like slides and shorts and t shirts and then I found the jackpot of 3 presents I tucked away that they never got for Christmas (nice make up sets for the girls and a video game for the boy). So I am pretty excited that Easter is covered and I also have left over Easter egg sets from last year so we are covered. I am saddened that the grandparents will be alone on Easter but I can’t think about it without getting upset so I am trying to not think. Hope all is well!
We usually have a big Egg Hunt with extended family, and I buy a lot of little Easter Gifties (sticker books, noisemakers, bubbles) to hide with the eggs. But this year it’ll just be us—and really, if it weren’t for my younger-than-my-kids niece/nephew, I think we would have already stopped this tradition, so it’s hard to know whether to do it at all. I hadn’t yet bought the little gifties, so it would just be eggs. I don’t know. Maybe we will ALL just participate in what is usually the Adults part of the egg hunt, which is to sit in lawn chairs and eat candy out of literal buckets (one bucket for fruit candies, one for chocolate).
I’d bought one bag/pack each of all the important Easter candies before isolation started: I felt silly and paranoid at the time, but I thought “OH WELL it’s still nice to have this taken care of!” But when I finally ventured out to the grocery store last week, I felt tearily grateful that they had Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs (the CHONK ones not the stunted egglets), because I’d only bought ONE 6-pack of those, and there are SEVEN of us. SEVEN! So I bought two more 6-packs and now I feel okay.
I’d been anxiously avoiding thoughts of Easter… then realized the unknown was causing more anxiety and then decided to google when it was, just now. April 12th. Okay. I’d better learn some basket weaving skills stat because I was letting the 4 year old play with the cheap Easter baskets from last year and she broke them. All. Ugh. Though Target delivery sounds awfully tempting…
My kids are bigger so I am not stressed out about Easter. It just so happens to also be Mini’s birthday. We have been running to the grocery store fairly regularly – we just cannot seem to keep enough food in the house like fruit, milk, and bread- and I do think we will be able to score some candy in time. I cannot shop for candy early because Tank has a 6th sense and can find any hidden treat no matter how well wrapped. Sigh. We are supposed to host Coach’s family but I am now assuming it will just be us. That will work for me since I just got my dining room table ready to start updating my photo albums.
My son is older (actually a full size adult, I suppose) but I always make him a basket with a few treats, books or other things I think he’d enjoy. I have not even started on this yet. And, of course, we always have Easter dinner and most years, have our friends over. Man-Child told The Husband that it would be weird to possibly not having Easter with us. *OOOF* I hadn’t even considered that it could be just the two of us.
I think we will still do our Easter hunt. I usually make up a list of riddles and then the boys have to figure out where I hid the candy. I have some chocolate I got free-with-purchase at Superstore, and if the worst comes to the worst, I can just package that up in smaller bundles (they are large bags of mini-eggs and mini-peanut-butter-eggs). I don’t drink sweetened tea but now I really want cinnamon toast.
I have no idea what to do about Easter. My 12yo learned this year that the magic of these holidays is not actual magic, and so the tired, defeated (just today temporarily furloughed) part of me wants to firmly say Forget It and skip Easter entirely. I’m afraid that would be the exact wrong thing to do.
I started buying for Easter in February this year because that’s how my brain works. And I was very grateful because my 9-year-old had a full-on meltdown when she realized we’d “missed” St. Patrick’s day, and she didn’t get to build a leprechaun catcher (she doesn’t do them at school anymore, and I hate having to be yet another after-bedtime mystical being for a holiday that is meaningless to me, so I conveniently didn’t mention it and it passed unmarked). Missing Easter would be way worse. My big “stock up for two-weeks and then quarantine again” shopping trip, which felt necessary because we were out of milk, eggs, and bread, included Target, and I bought more filler for the Easter baskets and candy to fill their plastic eggs, so we will be able to do our typical basket opening/plastic egg hunting Easter morning. What I did NOT remember was anything for dyeing eggs, including white eggs. We don’t really have eggs to spare for that anyway, but I still think the kids will be disappointed when they realize. We will also not be able to get together with my husband’s family and all their relations/neighborhood friends for more food, and candy, and egg/treat hunting, which may disappoint some people, but I will not be one of them, so. TL,DR: We will be doing Easter up as best we can because I told the kids an animal like the Easter Bunny cannot catch the virus (unlike leprechauns, natch).
I was perusing the Target site for Easter basket stuff before reading this. We plan to do what we’ve done before: fill his basket with mainly candies and add a game/book of some sort and put money in a couple of leftover plastic eggs. I bought our basket candy regulars a few weeks ago, and am planning to order a couple non-candy items. We don’t typically go overboard for the Easter basket, and this year pleasantly follows that trend.