Gearing up for Passover and Easter. Which really just means buying a massive amount of eggs and candy and making sure I have enough small bills for the afikomen. No one wants to pay $20 for a piece of matzah.

It’s going to be all candy in the Easter basket. One year the Easter bunny brought bathing suits and BB had a lot of questions. The last thing these kids need are any more toys, whether or not they agree with me. They don’t.

Last night we read about the artist Augusta Savage. The story mentioned that she didn’t have toys, so she used the clay in her back yard to sculpt animals.

RB was beside herself,

“No toys?”

“No.”

“NO TOYS?!”

“No. You’re very lucky to have so much.”

Meanwhile the other day I recorded an eight minute video of RB playing family with all the shoes in the front entry. There were mamas and daddies and sweeties and a lot of twinsies.

On ski vacation, faced with minimal toys, RB played family with chess pieces. In the car she’ll play family with her fingers.

If you happen to be going by our house, chances are you’ve seen BB wandering around talking to thin air. All proof that despite them acting like they might keel over and die if they don’t get whatever thing just flashed before their eyes, they’ll just as easily declare any rock, acorn or stick to be so precious as to deserve shelter in my house.

I try to stand by my rule of no outside things in the house, but based on the number of rocks along any given windowsill, you can see how that’s working out for me.

Of course this is hard to apply to myself too. I need no new things, just candy. I don’t really need that either, but it turns out BB knows where my stash of chocolate is. I’m not as sneaky as I thought.

Over vacation I noticed that the zipper on my 10-year-old, beloved, pink, ski jacket was pulling away from the material. My heart sank.

I love that jacket. I’m not the most fashionable person on the slopes, but that coat matches my skis.

I emailed Obermeyer and asked them if they could send me something to fix my zippers. They wrote back and said,

“We are not able to fix your jacket, so we are offering to replace it with a new one. Please tell us a desired color so we can narrow down our search.”

What?! For a moment I considered all colors. I already have a red ski jacket from Obermeyer that used to match my old red skis. Now I have pink skis and I’m not planning to get new ones.

There’s no rule my coat has to match my skis, but why pretend I want any other color? They send me eight choices, all very standard variations of the color pink except one.

There is a beautiful, neon pink, zebra jacket with a rainbow zipper. I have never seen a neon pink zebra on the slopes. I would never spend several hundred dollars on a neon pink zebra.

I LOVE my neon pink zebra jacket and I’ve been wearing it everyday since its arrival. Yes I know it’s spring.

So I need no new clothes. My children need no new toys. But I did buy them new bathing suits and I couldn’t resist getting a matching one for myself. Unfortunately not in pink zebra.