Last night I tossed and turned for hours because I was preoccupied.  This morning, in between the many times I pressed the snooze button, I slid right back into the same ruminations.

I’ve been worrying about kindergarten.

Perhaps that doesn’t deserve a “duhn-duhn-duhnnnn.”  Or even an “oooooh…”  But it’s all I’ve been thinking about for days.

Rhys’s preschool is the best, and we’d keep her there for kindergarten if money were no object.  But, of course, money is an object.  Ever since my student loans kicked into repayment, most months end with a fair amount of figurative nail-biting.

Last month, Nate and I made the heart-wrenching decision to have the girls stay with my parents during the week this summer, and having them come home for the weekends.  (Heart-wrenching for us; the girls and the grandparents are thrilled.)  But our empty-nest weekdays are going to leave us with an extra $200 a week. ^[1]  The plan was to pay down the debt from the months that ended in the red, and build up some savings to prevent that from happening in the year ahead.

But I kept thinking about it. $200 a week is a hell of a lot of money, at least for us.  And we could keep that money if Rhys went to public school this year.  Here’s the thing:  We live in a great neighborhood with a great school, but they only offer half-day kindergarten.  And you don’t even get to choose morning or afternoon.  It’s a working parent’s nightmare.

Fortunately, my mother is willing and able to watch Rhys for a few hours a day.  Our desire for financial stability has won.  Pride?  Swallowed.  Plus, Rhys is excited to be going where the big kids go.

Even though the decision has been made, I’m still a bit preoccupied.  I thought filling out all the vairous forms, and gathering the all the various documents we need to prove our residency, would settle my mind.  Not yet.  Maybe making a new budget will help.  But, anyway, that’s what I’ve been up to lately.  Worrying.

It’s gotta end sometime, hopefully soon.  We’ll see.

^[1] Sending them both full-time for the summer would be considerably more, but that’s the figure we’re paying during the school year.

In a lot of ways, I still identify as Catholic.  I wouldn’t say it’s ingrained, but it was a large part of how I was raised.  I never had a falling out with the Church, and when talking about it, I still use the world “we.”  Let’s leave it at that for now.

For us, Easter is the most sacred of holy days.  Because of that, I thought (and still do) that an egg-bearing anthropomorphic rabbit seems to make a mockery of a holiday that deserves its sanctity.  (By contrast, I’ve always thought of Christmas as an anything-goes birthday bash.)  I wasn’t so offended by the Easter Bunny that I wouldn’t take his candy, though.  No kid is that principled.

Now that our little family has abandoned religion, we’ve had to figure out how to celebrate Easter.  Or not.  Easter without religion seems meaningless.  I’m not into the “celebration of spring,” either.  This isn’t the vernal equinox.

For now, I’ve found that egg hunts are a satisfactory celebration.  We went to the annual egg hunt in Stark Park on Saturday, and then later I found myself at the store buying eggs and candy so we could repeat the process at home Sunday morning.  Was it a clever ploy to give them something to do as Nate and I slept in?  Partly.  But searching for things—candy-filled things, no less—is pretty fun.

When I was buying the supplies, I was asked an oddly direct question by the checkout clerk:  “Do you like Easter?”  Oh, not really, I said as I fumbled with the debit machine.  “Yeah, you didn’t seem like you do.”  I am an outwardly pessimistic shopper, apparently.  Or maybe he noticed my dazed look as I was trying to figure out which items were least overpriced. ^[1]  I told him about my two kids, and how it sort of obligated me to participate in the holiday.

The unforeseen honesty of the exchange had two results.  One was that I engaged in uncharacteristic eye contact (for me) when I thanked him, and he told me to have a nice day like he really meant it.  The other was that I realized how much I really, really, really don’t like Easter.  That, more than its religious nature, is why I struggle with how to celebrate the holiday.

Historically, my favorite religious holiday was Holy Thursday.  A few weeks ago I stumbled across a stored painting of the last supper that my mother had bought for me in 1995.  (Not a replication of Leonardo’s [above], but the location & posture of disciples are parallel.)  I pulled it out early last week and displayed it without explanation.  I was somewhat unsure of my reasons, or at least unable to verbalize them.

It deserves to be said that Nate asked me, at the end of the week, whether I brought it out as an April fool’s joke.  Ha.  That sounds like me, but no.

When Thursday rolled around, I decided that we should have a big family dinner.  Then it occurred to me that I was really tired, so we went out to eat.  Before we left the house, I tried to nutshell the last supper for the girls.  There are a number of ways to spin it, but I was going for a “live every day like it’s your last” sentiment.  I don’t think I was particularly successful, since they don’t really understand the context.  Maybe next year.

I made certain to have red wine and bread with dinner that night.  Blasphemous, maybe, but close enough.

Top image credit:  “All of Your Eggs in One Basket” by Flickr user Zach Minster, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 license.

^[1]  CVS, some unit prices in your candy aisle would be great.  kthxbye.