Paging T. S. Eliot

I was going to title this "The Cruelest Month", since that is in fact (a) what I had on my mind and (b) just pretentious and semi-literary enough to be one of my titles. I do work very hard on my titles; I like them to be a little bit mysterious but connected somehow so that when you read the piece, you eventually have that sort of "now I get it" feeling.

Ties in with one of my more annoying traits -- I have almost a compulsion to be surprising. Taken to its extreme, we get the almost weekly occurrence of some family member asking me what's for dinner, and me saying something vague and cutesy... because unquestionably, nothing enhances fish sticks quite like a dramatic, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition-style "reveal".

I see I have failed in that endeavor yet again, because quite unsurprisingly, I find myself in the third paragraph without having come within a $5 cab ride of my actual topic. However, before I sink to my hands and knees to try to gather up the skein of thought that lies unraveled around me, allow me to point out: I managed to work the pretentious and semi-literary idea into my title, but at least avoided the most obvious cliche. And in my defense, it turns out that any written material dealing with the subject of April is required under federal law to refer to T.S. Eliot in some manner.

I am actually in most respects a fan of April; as pointed out previously, anything associated with both baseball and the coming of spring can't be all bad. I can't help but wonder, on the other hand, who the genius was who decided it was a good idea to try to fit the beginning of baseball, the tax deadline, and Holy Week all within a few days. The pressure of balancing all those demands simultaneously is enough to induce a blogger to try to create an entire entry out of one barely coherent observation.

Theoretically.

My team (both teams -- the one I follow in the real world, as well as the one I created in the fake one) is doing well enough, thanks for asking. I have found as time passes that it's almost impossible to get another actual baseball fan interested in your fantasy team, let alone a random reader... so probably more than enough said there. I will note only that my guys keep getting hurt, but I can't dump them, because after all they're my guys.

Holy Week is extra services, extra music, extra rehearsals, extra demands on the pastoral spouse. This was all well & good prior to October 14, 1999... but gets a bit tricky when you start to factor in baths, snacks, bedtime, etc.

And taxes... I come from a long family tradition of licking the envelope while the postmaster is trying to padlock the front door of the post office. This is not entirely due to malingering; anyone who has ever done a clergy tax form would probably make an appointment for elective root canal just to get out of it. It's a little better with TurboTax to hold my hand, but still ranks considerably below sweeping and cleaning the garage and vacuuming the cars.

Wait, that's tomorrow.

The only saving grace there is that I haven't yet this month run into one of those misguided individuals who thinks ministers' salaries are tax-free. This has saved my blood pressure from the effects of expounding on a little thing called "self-employment tax". But there again, either you're on the team, and you know the drill -- or you're not, and you don't care.

Monday marks the end of two of those three competing events, and the beginning of our vacation. As a card-carrying pessimist (all of our "Locals" have negative numbers, naturally) I'm sure something else I haven't even foreseen will arrive on our doorstep before too much longer.

As it turns out, I guess I should've called this entry "The Waste Land".......