When I think of heaven, I think of dying. Lay me down in a field of flame and heather, Render up my body into the burning heart of God.

Quoting Forrest Gump: My momma always said, "Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get."

Maybe so Forrest, but have you ever sampled a chocolate that was so pleasant, exotic and delicious that even discarding the wrapper that it came in seemed extremely distressful? The next thing you know, what should have been a simple trip to the wastebasket has become a full-blown graveside service hosted by the best funeral home in town and you are way too sad to be dancing the second line because that wonderful treat that you delighted is now destined to your lower bowels for a crappy reincaration.

What in the hell do you do then, Forrest?!...





SIGH!

And that's where I'm at today, boys and girls.

There's a bathroom on the right.

I certainly needed the long weekend, but honestly, I really could use another couple of days off. I actually got up and went to Sunday school, sort of. In lieu of Sunday school the church had an Easter breakfast. I’m not sure who showed up with cheese grits, but I think they spiked them with a tranquilizer because I kept nodding off during the service.

I made bread for the brunch. Once again, thank you, thank you Renae for sharing that awesome no-knead recipe. There wasn’t a crumb of that bread left. Everyone raved about it and I tried to explain how incredibly easy that recipe is and even offered to share the recipe, but I had no takers. I think most people believe that making bread is some laborious time-consuming process, but with that recipe, it’s really not. Man, that recipe is so great. Most of the time I forget all about the step where you let the dough rest on the counter, covered in cling wrap for 15 minutes and instead dump the dough out, fold it once or twice before wrapping it in a tea towel for the final rise. It turns out fine. I really do not believe anybody could mess that recipe up, unless they forgot completely that they were making bread or did something really stupid, like forget to add the water.

Jean’s mom, Rosie arrived from Minnesota yesterday for her yearly visit and somehow somebody (ahem, JEAN…) got the impression that it should be a tradition that I bake lots of bread when Rosie is here. I think that maybe last spring, when Rosie was visiting, I was trying out a lot of different bread recipes and Jean had a new loaf of fresh, hot, homemade bread at her house every other day, because there was no way I could eat all that stuff. It looks like I need to produce a couple of loaves this week in celebration of Rosie. I just wish I could find a use for that buckwheat flour, or perhaps I could use some very sparingly in the bread that I make this week, but I’m afraid it will not rise to the occasion. Har. Har.

You can hear three young men screaming. You can hear one old man laughing.

For some uncertain reason, I have been thinking fondly of ghost stories this morning. WHen I would sleep over at my grandmother's, my youngest Aunt (who is a year and a half older than me) and I would get under a blanket and she would illuminate her face with a flashlight. She would tell me such "gotcha" classics where some disgruntled spirit would haunt their wrongdoers with such chants as "Bloody Bones and Dirty Diapers" and my personal favorite "Where's my Golden Arm?". Along with those she would tell those very questionable true fable stories as "The Crossett Light" and things that happen at The Myrtles.

Even though it was good clean scary fun, I find it strange that my family had this tradition of telling ghost stories. When my grandmother's kids were constipated, she would often sit in the doorway of the outhouse and tell ghost stories to her kids. Was she trying to literary scare the shit out of them? Maybe it was her version of reading the newspaper to them, since there wasn't a light in the outhouse and once the sun went down, it was pitch black out there.

My god, I forgot how dark it was out there. When I was little I was so scared of the dark and scared of my grandmother's Pekingese which looked like snorting ball of tangles with bugged eyes. Thankfully, I didn't spend the night at my grandparent's house that was way out in the country very often and they moved to town to a house with a real bathroom when I was about 4 or 5. I was getting too old to be too scared to get out the bed in that deep darkness and worrying about that stupid dog getting me or falling into outhouse pit. It was very deep hole, or just seemed really so at the time. I was young enough to get away with wetting the bed when my grandparents lived in that house that was located on what seemed like the edge of the earth. The same place where my uncle told me not to go out into the woods because there was savage Indians that lived out there that liked to boil little girls alive and eat them for supper. Heck yeah, I was going to wet the bed. Savage Indians and scary dogs lurcking in the shadows of the blacker than black night. I remember feeling comforted when I get did the occasional sight of my grandmother's apache nose when she lit a cigarette while laying in bed.

I'm so weird.