my unpoetic life: Easter and an Oil Change

Preface: This post was written on the Monday after Easter, but due to issues with blogspot, I'm just now able to post it! My apologies! Enjoy!

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I have many great memories of my Easters.

I'm the youngest of four children, and when I was a toddler, my mom would special mark Easter eggs for me to find. They contained cheerios instead of the chocolate that my three older siblings got. Lucky me. But really, Easter has always been a fun holiday, a family holiday.

My freshmen year of college, my sister (Mary Catherine) conspired with my other sister (Caroline) to surprise me in a froyo shop while wearing a giant bunny suit. She had told me she couldn't make it to visit us for Easter. And then she showed up, giant bunny tail and all. Naturally, we took some Easter pictures with the Easter bunny before the bunny actually revealed her true identity. Before I knew it was MC, I distinctly remember saying to Caroline "He look! This bunny has the same ring as Mary Catherine." I was clueless. Hands down one of my favorite surprises, ever.

post Easter bunny surprise

I must say though, out of all my Easters, this one might be the most memorable. I drove down to South Carolina to visit my sister for the weekend and we had a great time! It was a very relaxing weekend, but Sunday shook things up just a little bit. But before we jump into that, let me give you a little backstory...

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Flashback to July 2012. It's a sweltering Sunday morning and I'm eating breakfast at an Einsteins in East Texas before driving home from camp. Low and behold, my beloved car tells me to check my oil. And of course, I'm low. You'd be surprised at how few auto stores are open at 8 am on a Sunday morning. This was the beginning of a long struggle with the oil in my car and I personally at this point was not the most knowledgeable on the matter. However, I managed to find an open auto store, buy two quarts of oil, and fill my oil back up to the acceptable level. And I threw one of the quarts in my trunk for good measure.

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Return to Easter weekend 2013. Post church, my car alerted me that I was low on oil. So, being the car-savvy girls that our Dad raised us to be, my sister and I decided to check my oil. Y'all. It was comical. Picture it: my car was parallel parked on Main Street in downtown Greenville and my sister and I were in our Sunday Easter dresses. We popped the hood and I checked the oil. Did I mention it was windy? My sister did me the grand favor of anchoring my dress to make sure there were no *ehem* unexpected surprises for the pedestrians. The oil was very low, so I poured what I had left from last summer into the car. Since it wasn't enough, I decided to get more oil before leaving town.

But right then, we had plans for Easter lunch with some friends. Once I had washed all the grease and oil off of my hands, it was quite the enjoyable lunch! If you're ever in Greenville, go to Smoke on the Water. But don't get Chris for your waiter. He's new and he's a little jittery. But the restaurant was great. Get the chicken salad. Or the pulled pork. Or the macaroni and cheese. Or really just anything.

After lunch we split ways, MC and her friends went back to school and I went to get some oil before heading out of town. I stopped into an AutoZone to get my oil and it was the most fun I've ever had getting oil. A nice old man helped me check out and poured the oil into my car for me and we just chatted and chatted. He told me about taking care of his motorcycle which he drove from South Carolina down to the tip of Argentina and back. I mean really. What a life! Here I was thinking I was just getting oil and I met someone with a great story! It's amazing what you find out about people when you actually talk to people. I don't know how Bob ended back up working at an auto parts store in South Carolina, but he had certainly lived life well.

In short, that was my interesting Easter. I definitely won't forget it! Aside from Easter sunday itself, the rest of the weekend was thoroughly relaxing and enjoyable. MC and I cooked, watched movies, crafted, ran errands, and helped a friend with her bridal portraits. Fun, right?