Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 88290 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88290 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
APRIL 2023
Hello, all, and welcome to the April 2023 edition of He said, he said. First off, I will tell you that March was not the snooze fest I was certain it would be. It turned out, which you probably read in one of the newspapers or saw on CNN, that we had an international criminal in Chicago that the marshals, along with the FBI, had to find. They were tipped off by the CIA, and it was all very exciting, but my husband’s team brought him in. Of course, because things happened like this, Sam got caught in the crossfire saving one of his newer guys, and he was shot in the upper thigh.
Let me tell you all that he is fine. He’s back at work already since it’s mid-April at this point, confined to his desk until the end of the month. It’s not a lot different from normal, he’s usually stuck in his office, but the fact that he can’t go out to the field, even if he wanted to, is annoying the crap out of him. The new mayor called Sam at home to say hello when he missed his inaugural ball, thanked him for his service, and told him to stay home and rest because he needed him and his leadership in his city.
It was very nice. Sam growled at me after he put down his phone. He did not like to be told to rest. Since there was little else he could do, I ignored his grumbling and snuggled in next to him on our bed. I kept that in mind when I wanted to murder him two weeks later. Sam ran every day, swam at the gym three days a week, and lifted weights the other two. He was not a sit-around-the-house kind of guy. When he was finally able to get back to at least the swimming, I was very pleased. Any outlet was good.
He was also home to watch me do things I normally did in private. Like get Easter baskets together for the boys. I had to ship them, and ordering them off the internet was not something I did. I knew what they all liked, and they needed to be shopped for.
“Shouldn’t there be more stuff?”
Was he kidding? “Are you kidding?”
“I mean––” He grimaced. “––he’s a grown-up and all.”
“Which, technically, means an Easter basket is not necessary.”
“Yeah, but––”
“Stop,” I warned him. “We both know that I would not let either of my children go without an Easter basket full of things that are terrible for them.”
He grinned at me. “Yeah, I know.”
I packed enormous cookies, purple Peeps, the chicks, not the bunnies, and solid chocolate rabbits in the box with lots of padding. There was also a gift card for GameStop in there, jellybeans, some foil-covered chocolate eggs and Swedish Fish. There was a box for each of my boys, Kola’s, which also included the dark chocolate truffles he loved, Harper’s with the caramel and milk chocolate truffles that were his favorite, and Jake, of course, with all the peanut butter and white chocolate—so disgusting—that he thrived on.
“You realize that white chocolate isn’t chocolate,” Sam pointed out.
“Yes, dear,” I agreed. “But this is for Jake.”
“Can I have pie for Easter?”
God, he was cute. “You can have whatever you want.”
He grunted. “Why aren’t you sealing those up?” he asked as I prepared to carry the first box to my car.
“Because they have to be packed with dry ice,” I explained.
“Dry ice?” He was horrified. “Why?”
“You don’t want it to end up all melted, do you?”
“No,” he grumbled. “You know, did it ever occur to you that other people might want Easter baskets around here?”
Fifteen minutes later, on my way to the packing store, I was on the phone with my daughter and reiterated her father’s comment.
“You realize I’m going to need to put fishing lures in there and cut up Red Vines in small pieces and sprinkle Li Hing Miu powder on them.”
“It’s your fault for having him try it in the first place,” I told her.
Years ago a friend from Hawai’i had made her some, and Sam had tried them and loved them. Now she had to go to Costco, buy a tub of them, sit there with cooking scissors and cut them into two-inch pieces, and then put them in a Ziploc, shake them up and coat the pieces in basically what amounted to flavored salt. Was it good? Yes. Did it take time to do? Oh yes. The fact that she would sit, in front of her TV, in the dorm, and cut up pieces for his Easter basket was the sweetest thing ever.
“Will you be joining us for church on Easter Sunday?”
“Yes, but I’m not going to the Easter Vigil Mass. I can’t do both, that’s a lot of God in a short time period, and I know Nana prefers that I come with her on Sunday morning anyway.”