Gettin' Jiggy

It's almost March 1st.  You know what that means.  This Irish girl gets jiggy.  No, not jiggly (damn auto correct!), JIGGY!  I get my Irish on.  I get a little crazy for all things green and blarneyful.  I start with the leprechaun sightings, get out the pot and fill it with those gold chocolate coins, and make sudden detours through McDonald's for a shamrock shake.  I look at cuts of corned beef at the butcher shoppe, contemplate new soda bread recipes, and make potato soup with leeks like Aileen, my old neighbor straight off the boat from Galway, taught me.  Then, I crank the Irish Rovers, The Pogues, and my man Van Morrison and get really jiggy!  C'mon, it only comes round once a year...give it to me or better yet, join me.  That's the beauty of the Irish, we are willing to share our holiday.  You can be an honorary Irishman for the day on March 17th.  We don't mind. We'll even give you a green Guinness and call you Paddy b'gosh and b'gorrah!


Here's my little Irish laddy way back when...wonder if I could still get him to dye his hair green at 14?

Funny Valentine

I bought a bag of candy hearts yesterday.  I couldn't resist!  It's the first time I've seen them written in Spanish.  How cool is that?  Joseph (8th grade) just finished his first Spanish class in school, so he is translating them for me.  It's funny, I took Spanish in 8th grade too.  I can still sing "La Cucaracha" (The Cockroach Song), well, at least the first verse anyway.  I just googled the translation, however, and it seems my teacher took a little liberty with it way back when.  According to Wikipedia, the majority of the song known today was written during the Mexican Revolution, a period of great political upheaval.  It goes like this:

Spanish	English
La cucaracha, la cucaracha,	The cockroach, the cockroach,
ya no puede caminar	can't walk anymore
porque le falta, porque no tiene	because it doesn't have, because it's lacking
marihuana pa' fumar.	marijuana to smoke.

Now, I distinctly remember being taught the last line of that first verse as "gasolina pa' fumar". The story, as told to the class of '78 went that the cockroach couldn't walk anymore because he spilled a can of gas and it burned his leg.  Now 30 years later, I find out that the poor bug just ran out of pot and couldn't get high!  He stumbled on the road because he lost his buzz?   I think I'm going to teach Joseph the song too.  The lyrics certainly seem harmless now.  What with the pop and rap lyrics that my kids hear all the time.  We'll have our laugh for the day.  Now that's a funny valentine!  Es divertido!