Abundance and shortage

Funny how you don't enjoy the third piece of chocolate as much as the first..when its the same chocolate?In economics its called the law of diminshing returns...what a great descriptor.

And, if you're surrounded by the stuff, suddenly all desire wanes! I have the cure!!! Need to lose a few kilos? Throw out the celery sticks, no-fat cottage cheese and skinless chicken breasts and wheel in cupboards full of Easter eggs, hot cross buns and over-the-top verboten delicacies, stack them sky-high in your pantry, and in about 30 minutes, you will be craving the simple joys of a crunchy bland refreshing iceberg lettuce leaf! Yes, this is a live testimony from the Killian test-kitchen.

Yes, I am talking about another Easter Sunday. although i try to curb excess by ordering fewer and fewer chocolate eggs from the Bunny every year, there is an optimal number required to make for a decent hunt- and that's not two or three!

So...in an exercise to see in how many creative ways chocolate can be consumed, some eggs were nibbled from the ears down, others from the tail up, some melted over toasted hot cross buns and others dropped into hot milk. All this before the morning church service where the pagan ritual was merrily continued before and after the service with baskets of eggs for the flock.(slightly different bent to the bread and fishes parable!)

We needed all that good cheer to sustain us through another 4 hours at the hospital AGAIN with Daughter1's broken hand! The duty doctor did such a poor job last Thursday that by Saturday the whole thing was falling off. Luckily we saw a very competent lady doctor today who explained in fine detail why a fracture in scaphoied was so complicated and long-term risk if neglected. She took one look at the tomboy and went for the industrial strength plaster cast!

Even though we were all splattered in little white dots from the plaster exercise, it finished just in time for Easter Sunday dinner with my surrogate family in Australia...and a more colourful bunch you couldn't hope for! And yes, another egg hunt for the 20 odd grandkids and mine.

Dinner conversation over wonderful turkey with full trimmings was, as always in this household, very controversial and stimulating, in the wake of a newspaper feature article on the eldest son, and some rather outrageous journalistic vitreole- but that's the nature of politics. I can just marvel at the strength of that family to withstand so much and stick together...and my theory is that its the rituals that keep it together....these regular gatherings of the clan.

Mrs A is my heroine and whenever I am there, I secretly fantasize what my life might have been like if I wasn't the corporate high-flyer out of necessity, but a mother of 6 presiding over my brood and making a happy home for children and friends and grandchildren ...just like her. This is a much greater art and much more complex than any project I have ever undertaken in the world of work...and with much less thanks.

But thank heavens...there was no chocolate for dessert!