Thursday, March 17, 2016

Happy St. Patrick's Day from Ciel and the gang!




Wishing all of you the luck of the Irish!

And if you absolutely must read a real post, here's a rerun from 2010. TG has a show this year, so we won't be having our traditional dinner tonight. But we had Reuben sandwiches last night, so at least we got our corned beef and cabbage (in the form of sauerkraut), anyway. And I'll still wear that necklace. 

Me & St. Pat, we got a thing going on...

I love St. Patrick's Day. :)

Every year I wear this:



It's not a shamrock, but I figure a four-leaf clover is close enough. This one I've had since I was born (which makes it *cough* over twenty-one), a gift from my aunts in Sweden (who were really my mother's cousins, but as close to her as sisters, so my brothers and I always called them aunts). They wanted me to have a life full of good luck.

Here's the back:



Isn't that handy? I'll never forget my name as long as I am wearing it.

Seriously, St. Paddy's Day is just about my favorite holiday. Yes, even above Christmas. As much as I love jolly old St. Nick, there is a lot of mom-work involved with that holiday. Not to mention High Expectations from just about everyone.

St. Paddy's Day is laid back. Relaxed. No gift shopping, no unavoidable card & candy & flower shopping (oh, you can send cards if you like, but nobody really expects them, at least nobody I know), no hard-boiling & dyeing eggs, or filling up baskets with fake grass and goodies. No infernal racket & blowing your fingers off with fireworks.

Just good ol' Guinness and a nice New England boiled dinner (corned beef and cabbage, and of course potatoes).



Normally I don't even have to boil that dinner, since the theater god loves to cook. But this year I may have to, if he doesn't get home from work in time to start the corned beef (it takes about three hours at a simmer to do it right). I am assured by both TG and DD (my darling daughter, who inherited her cooking skills from TG--too bad she's not here to step into the breach) that this meal is easy-peasy to produce.

Ha. We shall see about that. Never underestimate my ability to screw up in the kitchen.

Update later. If I haven't burned down the house.

(And if I've had enough Guinness, I may come back and tell you about the time a gunrunner for the IRA tried to recruit TG and me in Dublin. Long story short, we, um, declined his kind invitation to be a part of a noble cause. Even though he did offer us a freezer full of steaks and a possible job connection at the Abbey Theater.)