emjayne

St. Patty's Day: The Irish are Crazy and Proud of It

On the afternoon of St. Patrick's Day -- an incoming text from M.H. (hosting a dinner later that evening with two Irish men):  "We need a pound of duck or goose blood."

Turns out he wasn't kidding.  As it ended up they couldn't locate the blood, but they did find pigs feet. 

It was a good thing, though, that the men put together lots of other good food, including brisket and cabbage, soda bread, and rutabagas.

I also had my first shot of Jameson.  Whiskey.  Wow. Talk about potent.  I guess if your people are eating pigs feet, though, you're gonna wanna wash it down with Jameson. 

But, like most of our get togethers, it's not the food or the drinks that really make the night.  It's the friends.  The biggest pot of gold in the world couldn't buy better friends.  I get so excited to get together with these people, even when we have to look at pig's feet.

The Coolest Cousins Let You Consume a Bowl Full of Sugar

My two youngest cousins, Spencer and Bennett, had the joy of Christmas exploding in their bodies like a Mexican jumping bean trapped in a little box.  Bennett, on the far left, has had stitches/staples in his face three times over the past three weeks.

"Bennett, what happened to your head the last time you got stitches?" I asked.

He stopped running for a moment and said, "I ran into glass."  Bennett will be four.

The boys took a break from playing with their new air rifles to color with me. You never quite fully appreciate the gift of eyesight until a sugar-hyped four-year-old waves an Nerf air rifle in front of your face, screaming, "How does this work?!" and randomly pulling the trigger.  Anyway, while coloring, they calmly snuck away to get a treat: Lik-A-Maid packets.

I have loved Lik-A-Maid for as long as I can remember.  Pure sugar, flavored cherry and grape, with a ambiguously flavored white candy stick to lick and dip into the sugar.  So when the boys brought the packets back to me with huge smiles on their faces, I could only support their artificially-flavored-refined-sugar adventure.

They poured it into bowls and spent 3-4 minutes dipping in the candy sticks or sucking it off their fingers...

And then Bennett cocked the bowl right up to his face when my head was turned and literally dumped a cup of sugar straight into his stomach.

To me, the most wonderful thing about Christmas is that you can find the kid in you again.  You start to remember that you aren't the tired, jaded, reserved adult you think you are, and that a green mouth once in a while is a perfectly wonderful thing to have.