Me, in front of the Guinness Brewery, Dublin, Ireland, May 2004.
No one should cry on St. Patrick's Day. I mean, really. It's like the perfect holiday: beer drinking is encouraged, as well as hearty, heavy food. Gravy is involved. Gravy! What can go wrong on a day where gravy is crucial? And yet, I found myself in the Kroger parking lot, tears welling up like a dork.
Enough.
Let's go shopping.
I bought potatoes, gravy, onions, cream, butter, beef sausage, Guinness, and this cute little shamrock plant. Seriously. How fresh and springy is this? Who could be sad?
I came home, savored a Guinness. Or two. Or four. In glasses I bought in Dublin, right after my tour of the brewery, and brought carefully home in my carry-on luggage.
I boiled some potatoes and whipped them with cream and butter. Fried some sausage and onion in more butter (this was not a point-friendly meal!). Layered the potatoes and gravy with onions and sausage, and baked it all until the top was golden and the gravy was bubbling through.
Mmmmm. Feeds the soul. Unlike German food, which for me, feeds the blood - Irish food feeds my soul. There is something so earthy and simple and pure about it. I am 1/8 Irish - my great grandmother's name was Carnahan. And my mom's birthday is today, and though she is German and English, she is honorary Irish because of that.
I ate it while watching a feature on Ireland on the Travel Channel. There it was: Belfast, Dublin, Cork, the Guinness brewery - all the places I lived and breathed in those first fiery days with Lyme disease. The countryside. The "coconut bush" - Rosanne, did we ever find out what those are called? I think it's Broom Bush. And, yes, it was hard to watch. Who besides me feels panic rising when watching a show about Ireland? Yeah, no one, that's who. I can't help it. Ireland is the last link to life as I always knew it, the second before it all fell away.
How about some ice cream to feel better?
Maybe some Mint Chocolate Cookie Ben & Jerry's. Combined with Dancing with the Stars. And that, my friends, wraps up St. Patrick's Day 2008.
4 comments:
you look happy in front of that building... i wonder why? hee hee
yummmm... mint chocolate chip.
nice shamrocks by the way.
I can so relate! I get sad about a lot of my last moment of wellness triggers.
Your dinner looked yummy!!
Michelle
my mouth is watering...
Thankfully, I don't going into crying jags often. My depression/whatever manifests as anger or anxiety. I nearly broke down tonight, though, while making dinner because the whole chicken I bought at the store had a broken leg and back. There I was inspecting this chicken for bruises to make sure the "injuries" were post-mortem and not pre. I just couldn't eat a chicken that had been tortured before it was killed.
I'm serious.
I felt so sorry for that chicken, I hated that it was broken, even if it was after it had been slaughtered.
Does Lyme make me this insane or am I just naturally screwy? Jeez.
I'm grieve, too, for how I was before this crap. I think it's okay to grieve our health and vitality. As long as it doesn't paralyze us, and you obviously aren't paralyzed by your emotional pain. I'm glad you can keep making yourself find things to lift your spirits.
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