So, um, I didn't make it to St. Herman's for Easter after all. Turns out I'm not as young as I used to be. So even after an anticipatory nap, I realized around 11 p.m. that I wasn't really up for a two-and-a-half hour service followed by a feast. I know; I'm a wimp. Christ is risen, and I can't even keep myself awake 'til midnight. The flesh is weak.

Small victories/reasons to celebrate this week:

1) I "graduated" from Traffic School! Got a certificate to prove it. And here I thought I was done with school for a while.

2) I have not yet given up the piano. In fact, I still enjoy it.

3) We retrieved the prodigal cell phone.

Thus ends a two-week saga, dating back to our last outing to the naval base, the last time GrandDad remembers having his cell phone with him. He discovered it was missing four days later when he went to use it to call his baby sister and it wasn't there. We (mostly he) checked everywhere in the house we could think of, all the relevant clothing pockets, both cars -- no cell phone. After a couple of days, he called the phone company to find out whether it had been used since he last saw it, and put a hold on the account so that no one else could use it if they found it.

This was a prudent measure, but it turned out to be a bit of a problem when we discovered that there was a phone answering to his phone's description in the lost-and-found at the base, because we couldn't demonstrate to a moral certainty that the phone was indeed ours. The easiest way to claim a cell phone is to make it ring by calling your own number, but that doesn't work if you've had the account locked down. Hmmm. How else can you demonstrate ownership?

Well, if you wrote down the serial number for the phone in the owner's manual when you bought the phone about a decade ago, and if you found the owner's manual in the back seat of your car a couple of months before you lost the phone and so had it with you when you tried to retrieve your phone, and if, even though you forgot you had written down the number, your granddaughter looks over your shoulder while you are examining the owner's manual and says "'owner information' -- what's that?", and if you find that the something crazy like 20-digit serial number in microscopic type on the inside of the phone's battery case DOES match the one in your own handwriting in the owner's manual, then you can get your phone back. Before the ice cream even has a chance to melt.

4) GrandDad gave the personal audio device at First Pres. a second try, and whether because they upgraded their system this week, or because we were sitting in a different part of the church, or because he was disposed to a good result because another person with hearing trouble had testified that they do in fact help, or some combination, it WORKED. He told the pastor after the service that he appreciated the sermon this week because he could actually hear what was going on.

May is going to be a crowded month around here. Great-grandbaby number one is due next Monday. Next Thursday, we're heading out of town for granddaughter number six's high school choir concert, return schedule TBD based on when the baby actually decides to show up. (Great-grandchildren are an important reason to have a functioning cell phone.) Great-grandbaby number two is due about three weeks later. In between those two blessed events, GrandDad's getting the cataract in his second eye removed, which means multiple trips to the eye doctor and surgicenter and another month's round of eye drops. And we've got trips to the cardiologist, audiologist, and dentist scheduled, just to keep things from getting boring.

And don't even get me started on the garden. We should have a ridiculous amount of free fruit in a few more weeks. But we'll have earned it.