St. Poser's Day

It's not even funny how exhausted I am right now.  Well I guess it's a little funny because earlier today I was saying to Will:

"Why doesn't EVERYBODY drink in the morning?  It's such a bad idea to flood your body with carbs and poison that it has to metabolize and then slow all your body's processes down by going to sleep.  Here it is 2PM and I'm sober with no hangover!"

It turns out the reason is because when you're drunk in the morning you are pretty useless for the rest of the day.  It's not even 8:30 right now and already I've been practically having to prop my eyelids open with toothpicks for 2 hours.  Luckily Charlotte's favorite game is jumping on me, and Emily's favorite game is having me talk to her unicorns in the voice of Cassie from Dragon Tales, both of which I can do at the same time, while lying down.  But I think any physical damage I saved my body by allowing it to metabolize the beers I drank more quickly I made up for by allowing my 2 year old to stomp me to a pulp because I was too tired to protest.

The day started well though!  A quick weigh-in revealed I am down 1.6 pounds this week, then we turned the girls over to the in-laws and made the (almost equally) quick drive to the Flying Dog Brewery.  It was a very Irish morning, cool and misty.  

At least I assume that's what mornings in Ireland are like.  I WOULDN'T KNOW because my family went to Ireland without me while I was taking Organic Chemistry 2 one summer.  For the second time :-(  It still hurts.

Anyway.

We didn't get there right at 7, but I did still manage to have my first sip of beer before the clock struck 8.

Lucky SOB Irish red ale, brewed with real shamrocks!

I quickly had to get some food in my belly though.  I'm not hardcore enough to chug a whole morning beer on an empty stomach.  I was somewhat worried about what we would find because the ad said they'd be serving a "traditional Irish breakfast".  AGAIN, not having been to Ireland, I wasn't sure what a traditional Irish breakfast was but I suspected it might be similar to the traditional English breakfasts I have encountered, some of which included blood in their ingredient lists.  A quick Google last night led to me shrieking things like "Do you know what suet actually is?!?!?!" and "Oh my God, I didn't think white pudding could be as disgusting as black pudding but it's totally worse!" at Will.  Thank goodness the breakfast we were given this morning was an extremely Americanized version of an Irish breakfast (the foodie in me shudders to hear myself say that, but you have to draw the line somewhere).  

Smoked ham, oven fries and tabasco eggs.  Those Irish love tabasco.

Irish Will

Irish Will + what would appear to be my second beer already, a coffee stout

Then I had to sneak in a real coffee, because I am totally hooked back on caffeine again.  I brought my own Starbucks Via packet from home and mixed it with water from the bar.  It did the job.

I know what I'm getting Will for his next birthday

I was feeling kinda self-conscious carting my big old DSLR around, especially hauling it out to take a picture of my empty Starbucks Via packet in the middle of a crowded tasting room.  But then I saw this guy and I TOTALLY didn't worry about it anymore.

Beer #3, Woody Creek White

Eventually the sun came out, and our brother-in-law + some friends showed up to hang with us.

The newly-emerged sun, and beer #4, another Lucky SOB

I wanted to steal this poster by the bathrooms on behalf of my sister and brother-in-law because it looks just like their new puppy Oz, who is a Daschund-Basset mix!

Except real Oz is much cuter

 There was a freak show group performing during this event, and we gave them wide berth.  I can take drinking high-gravity beers early in the morning, but not while watching people hammer nails up their nostrils.   But right about the time we sat down to enjoy a second plate of breakfast...

Second breakfast, same as the first

...this guy came springing out.

He was part of the freak show act and he ran around alarming people for awhile,  then he and the "ringmaster" started going around collecting tips by letting people staple bills to their bodies.

Yep, those are all stapled on

WHY WOULD SOMEONE WANT TO DO THIS TO ANOTHER HUMAN BEING?  I can't believe what societal pressure will make people do.  Would you ever consider stapling a dollar bill to some guy's stomach or head?  Even if he said it was ok?  But have someone else go first to set the precedent and people were scrambling for a turn.  No matter where we moved to he always seemed to be near us, yelling as the staples went in and slowly trickling blood from cuts that will most likely get infected because money is dirty.  Awful.

We were about done by then anyway, so Will and I left around 11:30 and headed to Common Market since I didn't have corned beef yet for dinner tonight.  They had free coffee to sample and it wasn't in those awful (but I'm sure very environmentally conscious) cardboard cups they usually put out, so I helped myself to a little more caffeine.

When we got home, I had 2 pieces of leftover taco soup pizza for lunch.

We spent the afternoon being LAZY.  I watched Rio with Emily, which was cute.  I actually also did some genealogy research because I was curious to see how much Irish I actually have in my blood.  I know I'm almost 100% UK-descended, but since my maiden name is Irish I have always kind of identified more with Ireland than with anywhere else.  Turns out my great-great-great-great grandfather Edward Dray came over from County Antrim Ireland before the American Revolutionary war.  So what does that make me, 1/64th Irish?  Most Americans can probably say that.  There are most likely some more contributions of Irish blood from others along the way so I may actually be as much as 1/47th Irish or something, but I seriously have to go back almost that many generations in every direction to figure out where my ancestors came from before America.  I'm pretty darn American.  As American as...cottage cheese and jelly?

Just pretend that segue worked for me, will you?

I also had some leftover pieces of apple to snack on this afternoon, but I had to snap the picture while holding a mournfully keening Charlotte, and did you know it's pretty much impossible to snap a picture with a DSLR with your left hand?  What do people who are missing their right hand do?

Take pictures that look like this, I assume

 While the soda bread was in the oven we took a walk around the neighborhood to enjoy the awesome weather.  Warmest St. Patrick's Day ever?

Charlotte stopped to check for cars while she was already in the middle of the road

I think weeping cherries are my favorite flowering tree

A highly appropriate patch of shamrocks turning their faces(?) to the sun

 Charlotte and Emily refused to pose for me in front of the really neat weathered wood retaining wall near the clubhouse in our neighborhood, but suggested instead that I use some random person's car as a backdrop.  Ok then.

They still didn't look at the camera though

When we got home it was dinner time!

Whole wheat soda bread, corned beef, cabbage, potatoes, carrots

Since the soda bread recipe included an acidic liquid (buttermilk) I decided to soak my whole wheat flour to see how it would turn out.  It was interesting...lighter than my previous efforts, but I think I actually like the denser consistency better.  Soaked flour gets very elastic and doughy so it was pretty much impossible to mash the raisins into the dough afterward.  Perhaps it was my Irish ancestors protesting my use of raisins in traditional Irish soda bread.  My ancestors who, it turns out, left Ireland long before the introduction of baking soda and so definitely never made traditional Irish soda bread.  Hmph.   St. Patricks day is ruined for me forever because now I know just how much of a poser I really am (that would be about 63/64ths poser).

I was going to make myself Chocolate Covered Katie's healthy shamrock shake for dessert (which I've made before and LOVED) but we don't have any bananas :-(  Then I gave Emily the last of the chocolate chips for HER dessert, so we didn't really even have anything else that was sweet anyway.  Plus I am far too exhausted to figure out anything else to eat tonight so I am just going to let going to bed early be my evening snack and dessert.  I need it more than food anyway.

So for all of you who are headed out to party now, Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I'll see you tomorrow.  Hopefully late.