Happy Easter, friends! I have a new coffee grinder, and the weather will be sunny and sort of mild, and I am trying very hard not to perseverate on how much work I have to do this week. Instead, I'm hoping that today will be an actual holiday: that I will spend time outside, and do a moderate amount of cooking, and enjoy my boys and my crocuses.

I did manage to sleep in slightly this morning, after staying up late watching the Gonzaga-UCLA game, which was a nail biter from first to last and concluded with a heart-stopping buzzer-beater, which you should definitely hunt up online if you didn't see it live last night. Gracious.

I did a bunch of dinner prep yesterday so I am hoping that today's will be low-key. Filling grape leaves is easy but tedious, so I'll rope in the boys to help with that. And I need to make a yogurt panna cotta first thing, so that it has time to set. The entire menu is as follows: a series of small bites--calamari salad with olives, fennel, tomatoes, and lemon; grape leaves stuffed with rice and herbs; feta baked with red onion, a yellow bell pepper, and mint; buckwheat toasts--and then the main event: wood-grilled leg of lamb (boned, butterflied, marinated overnight in yogurt and spices) served with homemade pita and tzatziki (my version will be yogurt mixed with minced cucumber, preserved lemon, mint, and a lot of black pepper) along with grilled lemons. For dessert, we'll have the above-mentioned panna cotta topped with apricots stewed in honey. And I bought some reasonably good Greek red wine to accompany this feast.

I'll try to remember to take some pictures of the party.

One thing I did not do this year was plan an Easter breakfast. No colored eggs, no hot cross buns, no Easter baskets. I just did not have the wherewithal to produce two holiday meals.

Tomorrow, I'll be back in the trenches: a week of hair-on-fire editing, interrupted by various badly timed appointments, and I've got to plan for my last high school class, and work on Frost Place stuff, and try to catch up on obligations to other poets. But everything will get done somehow, and I'm not going to do any of it today. Instead, I'm staying on the Greek bandwagon, pouring libations to the gods, cooking them a good meal, hoping that they'll smile kindly on my household and rescue us from our next pickle.

And welcome back, Persephone, returning again to your mom's house after spending a long winter snuggling in Hades' dark and frowsy love-nest! [Does anyone else think this myth has classic sitcom overtones: controlling mother versus inappropriate son-in-law, with ditzy blond caught in between?]