It's good to see the green, green grass of Walgreen's

Easter isn't pretty in these parts.

Well, to be strictly accurate, the outside looks great. The past couple of days have been in the high 70s and low 80s, so the forsythia, daffodils, and scylla are blooming up a storm. In my neighborhood everyone has cleaned up their yards, even the people next door who, until last week, still had Christmas stuff up.

But indoors? Yikes. Easter ain't pretty.

"Why is this?" you ask. To sum it up in a single sentence: Today I harrowed Hell Target. And Costco. And Walgreen's. And I have discovered the hell that is last minute Easter shopping.

All I wanted to do was get some stuff for my children's baskets. That's all. But Costco had been a wash-out; all they had was huge boxes of Easter candy which would work for an entire Sunday school, but would be a bit much for a family of two children. (No matter how much candy I sneaked.)

So I went to Target. Which was a nightmare of Biblical proportions, to borrow the phraseology of one of my pals. I picked over the picked-over remnants of Easter basket goodies, but I found very little that could actually be considered edible. There were tons of Peeps for the weirdos, perverts, and child-molesters who actually like crunchy sugar-covered luridly purple marshmallow chicks. But where were the solid chocolate rabbits? The normal fruit-flavored jellybeans? The pastel-colored M&Ms? The Cadbury Cream Eggs?

Oh, and where was the green grass for the baskets? For that matter, where were the baskets?

Gone, all gone.

It was so crazy-making that I actually ate some Cadbury Mini Eggs at the store. From one of the half-dozen bags in the display that were ripped open. And I went back for more.

Yes, that's right; your Poppy was prowling around Target eating fistfuls of Cadbury Mini Eggs, scowling at the stupid purple marshmallow chicks, stressing out, and talking to herself.

After about 20 minutes of rummaging around, I managed to find two chocolate rabbits. I also found a box of four Cadbury Cream Eggs tucked away in another random part of the display. And I nabbed a bag of Butterfinger eggs. (I disapprove of Butterfinger eggs, but my children like them, and I needed to buy something.)

So I looked for grass for the baskets. There was no green left: only pink and yellow remained. For green grass, I had to go to Walgreen's.

Hooray! Walgreen's had green grass and they even had pastel M&Ms. So I looked for some plastic eggs to put the M&Ms in.

And this is where I got really weird. And mind you, I'd already been eating store candy from ripped open packages. That was bad, but at this point, I went all Lord of the Flies. There were no plastic eggs on the shelves, and because I hadn't seen any at Costco or Target, I took a package of plastic eggs from what I hope was an abandoned shopping basket at Walgreen's. I bought them and brought them home.

The plastic eggs are filled with treats and distributed in the garden for tomorrow's hunt. The eggs are dyed. The baskets and the candy and the green grass and the little presents are hidden in the basement. I have nothing left to do but blog my shame.

And now, I'm begging. Next year, will one of you more organized types start telling me how many shopping days I have until Easter? Because even with Lenten deprivation, I don't seem to be able to recognize when the Bunny is almost upon me.