Peeping
Jennifer Flaten

Here comes Peter Cottontail, hopping down the bunny trail. Why, am I humming this annoying little ear worm? Well, there are several reasons.

Reason number one-someone who shall remain nameless (Grandma) gave the children a stuffed rabbit. This rabbit is dressed in a spiffy blue vest and when you press his lucky rabbit's foot he belts out Here Comes Peter Cottontail for what seems like an eternity, but is really only about 5 minutes.

Naturally, the children adore him and press his foot as often as they can. So, until the rabbit meets with an unfortunate "accident" I hope to rid myself of the tune buzzing in my head by sharing it with you. Come on-admit it, your humming it right now.

Reason number two-Easter is in fact, on its way. Raise your hand if you are thrilled that yet another holiday involving a magical creature who delivers gifts to the children is upon us.

Who doesn't love stumbling around the backyard in the pitch dark, when it is freezing cold, hiding two dozen eggs? Me, that's who! It's damn cold out there! Easter would be so much nicer if it happened in say June!

Let's face it, on Good Friday Mother Nature will give us a gorgeous sunny day with temperatures in the high 60s only to cruelly yank the nice weather away. I expect to wake up on Easter Sunday to a blizzard and wind chill factors of -10.

I could hide the eggs inside but since I never remember where I stuff all the eggs, I don't' want to risk the chance of overlooking an egg.

Trust me once you've experienced an overlooked egg you never want it to happen again. Usually, you discover it, oh around July, when it becomes abundantly clear where the blue sparkled egg with the rainbow stickers was hiding.

Actually, I don't mind Easter. I love coloring the eggs; I don't so much like the children coloring the eggs, only because they usually color themselves and half the kitchen as well. This year I plan of covering the kids and my kitchen in saran wrap prior to the coloring process.

I must admit the expectations for Easter are a lot lower. The kids are happy with a basket stuffed with plastic Easter grass and a toy. Oh and let's not forget the candy-lots of candy-especially Peeps, come to think of it Easter is pretty damn good as far as holidays go.

Easter marks Peep season, or at least it used to. In years past, you could only get the sugary little chicks at Easter time and only in yellow or pink.

You would troll the store aisles impatiently waiting for the first Peeps to hit the shelves-of course, I wouldn't do that! Once Easter was over the Peeps were gone.

To feed their obsession, some people would buy mass quantities of Peeps and horde them like gold-again, not something that I personally ever did.

Unfortunately, due to this insatiable appetite for the squishy little devils, the company began offering them year around.

To me, once the Peeps appeared on the shelves as green Christmas trees or strawberry hearts they lost just a little bit of their tastiness.

Now they offer chocolate covered Peeps, because you know a regular Peep didn't induce a sugar coma quick enough.

Just the other day, I test drove a chocolate covered Peep, ah, it was research, honestly, it was, and I can't believe I am saying this but it was not to my liking. It just isn't a Peep if its chocolate covered. Besides, how can you leave it out to get stale, if encased in a hard chocolate shell?