Song of praise!

When the dog bites,

When the bee stings,

When I'm feeling sad,

I simply remember my favorite things.....

And then I don't feel so bad!!!!!!!!!!

Eating a big piece of humble pie when I say this but "I LOOOOVE my Urgent Care Center!!"  You see, when I was a naive and idealistic dental student I shunned the concept of a 'doc in a box'. I took the oppositional stand in every debate over the benefits of establishing such a health care facility. I vowed that neither myself nor any member of my family would EVER risk our lives by seeking medical care in such an environment!....then I had kids....

On Thursday we had a glorious 60 degree day. Julia frisked, like a colt let out of the barn, around our yard all afternoon. As she laid down for the night she told me her throat hurt. Assuming it was her allergies, I gave her an Alavert and told her it would probably be better in the morning....it wasn't. Since she had no fever, or any other symptom, I sent her off to school with the advise that it was probably her allergies mixed with a little virus. She walked out of school and climbed in the car with the words, "My throat still isn't better Mom!" We went home and took her temperature. Normal! Clearly a virus so I gave her Motrin for the pain and inflammation and told her to be patient.

This morning I woke to a little girl who had dragged herself to the couch...and was now sporting a 100 degree fever. She has quite a history of Strep. 8 times in 12 months at one point in 2nd grade. Back in the earliest of posts on this blog I told of another time when my stoic little lady even progressed into Scarlet Fever because her Strep had not given her enough pain to warrant a complaint!!!!! Her last bout of Scarlet Fever came just before a scheduled trip to Florida.....we're supposed to be leaving in 6 days?!?!?!?

So off to the Urgent Care we went this morning. Forty minutes later we were walking back in our front door!!! I mean it almost takes that long to just sign in at the Emergency Room and at least that long waiting in the pediatrician's office just to get shown to an exam room. The Urgent Care nurse took her right back and did the Strep swab first thing. While we waited for it to 'bake' they did the usual vitals, registered her health history and insurance information in their system, had the 'doc in the box' check her over and within 2 minutes of him leaving the exam room he was back in with a prescription pad in hand...because OF COURSE it was positive!!!

She's had a veeeery rough day. Fever kept climbing all day [well between doses of Tylenol and Motrin anyhow] and the voice is now officially gone. But she had a couple of doses of antibiotics today so here's hoping the night is uneventful and the morning dawns with our Julia back to her usual sweet self!!

This is the third time I've taken one or the other of the girls there and I've even used their services twice! I really do looooooove my Urgent Care Center. They make this Mom's life so much better with the time they save in her busy routine. Time to enjoy more of my favorite things...

Everyone's Irish Today!!

Guess you could have all placed bets on the fact that I'd manage to get a post up today?!?!? How does the wife of an Irishman named Patrick NOT make a fuss over the feast day of the patron saint of Ireland? But I do have moments when I angst over the attention paid to things Irish. While Patrick and I both share the same cultural and racial identity our daughters live a conundrum. Racially they are Guatemalan/Hispanic/Mayan and culturally they are American/Irish...not your everyday suburban inhabitant to say the least!

There's already a sector of Americans who find it hard to look at my daughters' faces and see "American". Some even visibly start when they hear them speak in their flat mid-western accents...they assume my girls will roll their R's and speak some variation of Spanglish?!?! So imagine the reactions when my two year old Julia would say in her mid-western/Irish accent, "Mommy I'm tirsty!" Or the explaining I had to do to Mari's kindergarten teacher on how very CORRECT she had been on her articles of clothing alphabet project when for the letter G the word GANSEY was written?!?! [Irish word for cardigan sweater used EXTENSIVELY in this house] Then there was the whole 'amadon' incident at the park one day.....well lets suffice it to say that the other mother was not smiling as my four year old piped up  "My Daddy says it is the same as a mu-or-on!" Hey, at least we no longer 'Hoover' our carpets or write with 'Biros' and he has even learned to put his mess in the 'basura' and 'comida'  on his plate!!!

We really do try to balance our three different worlds. As a matter of fact we try to seek out and embrace many different cultures! We've done Chinatown in San Francisco as well as Chicago. We've done Italian, German, and Greek summer festivals. Last Monday we met a group of families formed through international adoption at an Ethiopian restaurant!!!! .....but Irish still seems to predominate in our lives. So.....

We went to our local St. Patrick's Day parade last Saturday!

Our Irish knit GANSIES on and decked out in all things green,

GREEN,

GREEN,

WACKY,

and GREEN!!!

 Julia, Auntie Peggy, and myself cheered and waved flags...

While Alyssa, Mairead, and friend pretended they weren't interested in the candy being thrown....

and Mari and Deirdre marched with their dance school!...and Patrick went to work shaking his head at the antics.

It was a gusty COLD day and one little girl was worn to the bone.

Okay, the big girl was pretty wiped out as well!!!!

But as all good Irish women do.....

I had put the corned beef in the crock pot in the morning so frozen little American/Irish/Guatemalan girls could revive themselves!! I mean look at her savoring the delectable bite of that most enigmatic of St. Patrick's Day foods?!?!? Where else but in America is it no big deal for a child born in Guatemala to eat corned beef on Saturday with the Irish and injera and tibs on Monday with Ethiopians?

So while I may have a moment or two of angst over the favoritism that the Irish part of our triumvirate receives, today we will have a traditional Irish breakfast...

....modified a bit! Usually that plate would sport some fried tomatoes and black pudding, as well as the bangers[sausages], rashers[bacon], eggs, spuds, and beans. Tomatoes are not in season right now and not even the Irishman can stomach black pudding....aka BLOOD sausage, yuck AND gross!!

And for dinner we will fix the TRUE national dish of Ireland!!!

You see, corned beef while delicious is an American phenomenon! It was the closest thing that Irish immigrants could find to their comfort food....Bacon and Cabbage!! Not bacon as in the streaky, smoke cured stuff Americans eat for breakfast but a wet cured pork loin. Took me calling one of my Irish sister-in-laws for help the first time Patrick requested "A nice bit o'boilin' bacon with pandy." [FYI, 'pandy', 'boxty', and 'shpuds' would all be interchangeable words for mashed potatoes!!! ]

As is their custom, my girls will fight for the last banger in the morning and sniff over the simmering pot of Bacon and Cabbage after school clamoring for dinner to be served. They will plaster shamrock tattoos on their cheeks in the morning before school and wear green. They will run to the TV every time they hear Irish music to see "if we know any of the dancers" and they will chortle at their father's tales of growing up on a farm in Ireland. ....Heck, today is St. Patrick's Day and even little girls from Guatemala who live in Chicago are Irish today!!!!!!!!!!! 

FFF- Interview

After an educational career in which I successfully mastered aliphatic compounds and differential maxillofacial pathology, you'd think I'd have no issues with uploading a video from my camera to my blog....but you would be wrong!!! In more hours than I care to admit I think I have finally managed to load an interview I did this afternoon with my daughter Julia...I think...I mean there is no real way to check until after I hit the publish button?!?!? Seriously, this has me FRUSTRATED!!

One time in the past I tried to upload a video. It never was a successful endeavor. So many of my Blogger buddies and Facebook friends post them with such frequency that I feel there must be some tutorial out in the nether world of the internet but where??  I have two new, state of the art computers that upload my pictures in the blink of an eye yet a video takes the same time it took to make shrimp tacos, eat said tacos, make a bowl of popcorn, eat said popcorn. Then there was the eternity it took for Blogger to upload it from my video file on my computer. A kind Etsy friend once gave me a suggestion to get my pictures uploaded onto my site which worked wonders. Any kind Blogger friends have a suggestion on how to post videos sometime this decade?

Camera shy Mari asked to be interviewed for tomorrow's post!!! It may be months before that request is repeated so I'd love to jump on her interest...but the thought of waiting through another Blogger upload ....I'd rather crack open a Calculus textbook ..or cook fried liver...or scrub the grout in my bathroom!

  To see more FFF posts check out Nora's blog here.

Confirmation Time

As we head into Lent I think it appropriate to jump this post ahead of a few others waiting. On Monday night two more of the cousins embraced their adult role in the church!

Mairead Eileen had my first cousin Eileen as her sponsor and took Caoimhe as her confirmation name. Caoimhe, not one of the top 10 saint's names for sure! As a matter of fact, Cecilia was the clear 'winner' in this years confirmation name choice for girls in our parish. Mairead decided to keep with the 'theme' of having names taken from the Irish language. Why, when she has spent her whole life explaining how to pronounce her first name??  She's that thoughtful of a girl, that's why!! Caoimhe is pronounce kee-vee...just like it's spelled, right (:  So Mairead [Irish for Margaret and pronounced like 'parade' but with an M] shared her confirmation with......

Andrew McAllister who had Uncle Peter as his sponsor and took....PETER as his confirmation name! The Drewster was leaning toward the current trend of just reaffirming you baptism name but had an 'a hah' moment when it came time to select a sponsor and decided it was his honor to share a name with THE favorite uncle in the family (:

I'm a little less than inspired to prose tonight. Thought I'd let the pictures speak for themselves....

Mari felt a little left out as she is one of the '97 triplets but her December birthday puts her a grade behind Andrew and Mairead so she came to check out what she's in for next year!

The godparents there for him at another sacrament of initiation!!

 Playing with my camera while waiting for the festivities to commence...do not know why some of the above are looking out of focus here on Blogger?!?!? They aren't like that in my photo album on my PC. Have had a frustrating week trying to re-sync all my old and new computer files so I guess I've got to go trouble shoot another problem now!

2nd Post for today- My Laptop....

 Ummm, yeah, not so much when there are teenagers in the house!!

Ding, dong, dash!

That would be what I'm doing to the few of you left reading my woefully neglected blog. The drugs for my aching back have had limited success...meaning I will be scheduling some tests to see if it is a problem in my spinal column ):

Meanwhile, I've slowly merged files from the old hard drive and the new. Guess what tonight's post features? ANOTHER BIRTHDAY!?!?!? One of the greatest joys of being from a large family is the fact that your special anniversary is never forgotten. I say this because the birthday boy tends to work quietly in the back ground of our family. He's not one to push into pictures or pat himself on the back for deeds well done. There is a risk that his big day falling in the midst of the winter doldrums could be over looked...but not in our family!!

Even Grandma came over for the celebration!!

Wouldn't you if you knew these were the birthday 'cakes'?!?!?

But in all seriousness, dearest Uncle Peter, you are truly 'the rock' upon which this family is built! 

We don't celebrate your labors and support to any where near the extent it deserves. You have always been our 'knight in shining armor' in moments of crisis and our biggest sideline cheerleader in moments of great achievements. Frazzled parents bow in gratitude for the respites you provided...the 'camp outs' in Uncle Peter's backyard tent and the hotel swim parties that gave us 'nights off'. The chocolate fix you provide every week for our Family Night desserts and the homework fixes when Math and Science

problems stump both children and parents alike. 

Most of all for the Herculean task you now shoulder in caring for our aging parents. 

Happy Birthday to you and MANY, MANY, MANY MORE!!!!

Beyond Belated Birthday Post

Well a funny thing happened on my way to taking my Mom to the Emergency Room today. She had taken a fall and thought it best to be checked out. Then, being a typical 83 year old, in the time it took for me to drive from my house to hers she changed her mind!! The sore hand had improved enough to make the stubborn Irishwoman decide "it would heal without the addition of a hospital bill". I was so NOT amused. Should not have gotten to me but I ended up in tears....because I have been gritting my way through a nasty bout of sciatica for almost a month now and this was the straw that broke my back...well NOT LITERALLY but dang near.

So guess who made that trip to Immediate Care???? Yep, time for this stubborn daughter of a stubborn Irishwoman to admit the obvious. My yoga, chiropractor visits, and diet changes had not done one darn thing!! The IC doctor did the finger wag lecture. My pride in not having missed a single meeting, day of work, or home life obligations was my undoing apparently. Seems I may have a bulging disc...MAY HAVE...but needs scans to check first...and that disc just might have irritated the nerves...and then my "pushing through the pain" may have pushed them beyond irritated to darn angry and inflamed!! I am now ordered to bed with steroid and narcotic companions.

So how does this explain the title of the post? In my good old Catholic guilt at feeling angry at my Mom, it dawned on me that her birthday dinner celebration was one of the February posts that were missed because my the computer virus episode! Considering it was back on February 9th, I'd consider this a very belated post!!

Grandma and the girls. 

 Per her request the whole group of us descended on my house for leg of lamb...not much left on the bone by the end of the night!!!

 

Nature vs. nurture?? When it comes to leg of lamb dinner there's no question!!

Happy Belated Birthday Mom!! 

My new companions have arrived and I expect my mood will improve so if you want to change your mind again about getting that hand checked out just give me a call. I'll have Peggy come right over to get you....bed rest, remember?!?!?