Happy Easter - from Bloody the Blood Drop

Every year I set up a little Easter vignette in the picture window in the living room.

I gather all the appropriate stuffed animals - you know, bunnies, ducks, lambs - from downstairs, and I arrange them in a sweet little pile along with some appropriate Easter books to help set the mood for the holiday.

This year, time got away from me, and I was running behind - digging in the depths of the basement late at night for apparently non-existent rabbits while my two uninterested children watched TV and played on the computer instead of helping me.

As I slogged through piles of plushies previously considered precious, I could feel my spirits drop. Apparently, nobody remembered any of these little guys. Nobody cared about decorating, nobody but me.

I was all set to have a little pity party.

And then I found him. There, at the bottom of the last bin, smiling up at me.

Bloody the Blood Drop. Yep, that's his name. The little plushie that I quite literally paid for in blood. He's a little beanbag in, you guessed it, the shape of a blood drop. He has a belt buckle that boasts "BB," and he wears a very cool black cape with a medical cross on the back.

He was the prize at a Red Cross blood drive at my daughter's elementary school when she was in second grade, and she wanted to win him SO bad. (Who wouldn't, right?) For every sponsor who would give blood, your name was put in a bowl ... and then maybe, just maybe, you - lucky you - would win Bloody the Blood Drop.

But Katie didn't have any sponsors. She comes from squeamish stock - I'll admit I'm not big on blood donating. I do it - I just don't like it. But she begged and pleaded and I finally relented. So her name was placed in the bowl - once.

Usually, my donations are uneventful. But this time I became so nauseous the nurses flipped the gurney I was on so my feet were higher than my head. Lying there, sick and inverted, I heard my daughter's name called; turning my head, I got to see her jump for joy. I figured it was worth it.

I carried Bloody up the stairs. "Do you remember this guy?" I asked my daughter as she sat at her computer. Her  face lit up immediately.

"Bloody the Blood Drop!!" she cried. "I love that guy!'

I might just have to add him to my Easter vignette. You know, somewhere in the back.