Just a Fool in the Rain

A lazy, rainy Sunday afternoon with the fam. Some things are free because you could never put a price on them. This is one. A large Sunday brunch of scrambled eggs, sausages, biscuits and fried potatoes and then watching THE LORD OF THE RINGS (which I'd never had enough time to watch all the way through) on DVD. It's 1:30 and I just got dressed. Okay, okay, so the littlest bit is driving us all nuts about cleaning her room...but, aside from that, it's pretty good stuff.

Waking later than we'd expected this morning, due to the time change. Cruelty, indeed, to institute daylight savings time on April Fools night. As Highlander and I had both been oblivious to it and woke up to discover it this morning. Both of us wandering around saying, "They wouldn't POSSIBLY do it on April Fools Day. Would they?" And discovering, that, yes, indeed, they would. The bastards!

In my own world, the only April Fools-y thing I had was my ex's new girlfriend calling me to invite Darren and I (and the kids, since we'll have them) to her parents' Thunder Over Louisville party in a couple weeks. Now, as some of you aren't from River City, let me say that "Thunder" is the kick-off to the festivities leading up to the Kentucky Derby (which is the first Saturday in May and is touted as the fastest two minutes in racing...cute, huh?). It is a rather over-the-top fireworks show and is a favorite event of most of the locals.

However, my ex sat in this very living room less than a week ago, as I tried patiently to remind him how hard I had worked to try to keep things on a friendly keel with him and how difficult and spiteful he'd been to me for the past 11 months. He looked at me and said to me "We can talk about the kids, but we will never be friends. We will never socialize. That's not going to happen." I told him I didn't expect that, but that I had entered into this, hoping that we could be more than civil. That we could remember that we'd cared enough about each other to get married, and hoped that, while I didn't expect we'd be double-dating, we could still be friends.

In any event, his girlfriend said my ex had told her to call me herself, rather than going through him. Probably hard for him to eat crow since it was only a week old. I'm sure the invite only comes because the kids are here, which makes it ring hollower than it would on the heels of that prior conversation. But, that we would be socializing with her parents and friends and kids and my ex (who can barely stand to be in a room with Highlander and me) just doesn't sound like a good time any way you are forced to look at it.

As for the rest of the world, Wikipedia has an entire list of April Fools stuff that happened yesterday. Some of it is rather amusing. (Such as "Kingdom of Loathing claimed to have been shut down, and the site for sale by "site-pimp.com", which also featured a number of humourous fake links, such as "barely paralegal teens" and "XXX hobo on hobo action". )

One other quick note, I'd run across this blog award, thanks to a note on the March 31st post at Mom-101's blog (whose name you may recognize), but it was not in time to participate for March. She was, of course, much more on her game than I am. However, you may trust that I will be participating in April. A blog award where I get to do all the nominations and post the presentation of the award after solely judging all the contestants. Sure, I'd love to play God! Thanks for the invitation! You should all be aware that the judge will accept bribes of all stripes. Email me if you need a mailing address...;)

Lastly, a link that I wish was a (albeit very bad) April Fools joke. Unfortunately, I don't believe that it is. Tony Collett has posted a very sad story of the system utterly failing an abused child. I've tried to find any information that would lead me to believe that this was some sick forward gone bad. But, so far, no luck.

Hope all of you had a largely prank-free day!