Butter Lamb

Ladies, gentlemen and friends beyond the binary, I present to you this year’s butter lamb!

As usual, I only see the flaws — I fucked up that one ear a bit. But Bill says it looks great and will be tasty on tomorrow’s dinner rolls, so I’ll take his word for it. (Butter lamb tutorial and origin story here.)

Here’s the nekkid lamb when construction was in progress:

I almost had to drop everything and trek into town when it came time to do the eyes. The eyes are either peppercorns or cloves, and it’s super important to find a pair that match in color and size or the lamb will look psychotic.

I’d forgotten that when we returned home from the flood last November, I went through the pantry and ruthlessly discarded 70% of the spice collection and have slowly been reconstituting it. I couldn’t find whole cloves or peppercorns at first, and I was panicking.

But then I found a bottle of fancy gourmet MIXED peppercorns we received as a holiday gift. There were red ones and green ones and black ones, and I was sorely tempted to make a DEMON lamb with red eyes.

But then I decided it would be cruel to do that to the in-laws, so I went with traditional black.

***

That dilemma reminded me of a story about my little brother. He used to have a pet mouse that was white with black eyes. The poor little rodent died one day while my brother was at school (kindergarten, I think), and my stepfather noticed and rushed out to buy a replacement mouse. He told my mom, sister and me but intended to pass the new mouse off as the original when my brother came home.

Only the mouse stepfather purchased had red eyes. Little bro didn’t say anything about it at first. But when he tried to take the mouse out of its cage to play, it bit him, and when he let go of it, the mouse made its escape.

My brother started wailing and ran to Mom.

“He never bit me before, but this time he had RED DEVIL EYES!” he sobbed, clinging to mom.

Mom looked daggers at my sister and me to stifle the uncontrollable giggles welling up in us both (we were teens, i.e., assholes).

Little bro wouldn’t learn about the deception for many years. We never saw or heard from the mouse again.

For all I know, that mouse is still roaming a golf course in Tampa, though it would be extraordinarily long-lived if it were, like the mouse in The Green Mile. 

The end.

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This year’s edition:

I dropped it off yesterday for my mother-in-law, who is now fully vaccinated but still being careful about gatherings because she’s a kind person who is not an idiot. She’s having Easter dinner with other fully vaccinated friends in her quarantine pod.

When I stopped by, we talked about how this is our second pandemic Easter. Last year, I wore gloves to pick up the sanitized cooler that contained her butter lamb, and I left it and a Cloroxed package of paper towels at the end of her driveway. We waved and shouted “love you!” from a distance before I drove away.

Yesterday, we had an outdoor conversation, and MIL expressed hope that next Easter, we can have the family all together again. I hope so too. But I think my husband will be nostalgic for pandemic-related restrictions on socializing and get-togethers for the rest of his life. He dreads big holidays.

Happy Easter to all who celebrate it!

PS: If you’re wondering what a butter lamb is, there’s an explanation (and tutorial) here.

Butter Lamb Open ThreadPost + Comments (83)