Top o' the mornin' to ya

There's a definite hierarchy to holidays. The top tier is Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter. The big ones. You don't have to go to work, and you still get paid but the Post Office doesn't deliver any mail. Right behind those are Halloween, Valentine's Day, Father's Day, important celebrations, to be sure, but not the kind of thing a kid gets herself worked up about weeks in advance. Beyond those are the holidays-in-name-only that I got off when I worked for the County, Flag Day, Arbor Day, St Swithin's Day, etc.

By all rights, Saint Patrick's Day belongs in the bottom tier, but Lily promoted it right to the top. I don't know what it is, but she's been asking about it for weeks. She woke up, wished us a "Top o' the mornin'!" and was generally as excited about it as every conversation since Valentine's Day had led us to believe.

I liked Gaelic Culture a lot when I was growing up, and I've found a lot of geeks do. It's different enough to be exotic, but not so much to be inaccessible. Part of was my lifelong interest in mythology and another part of it is my love of the works of Roger Zelazny, who drew on the myths to write some of his best known books.

(Another component is that I really like the color green. Not that I wear it all the time or anything, but I like seeing it around. It's just kind of a low level of happiness. It's kind of like baseball for me. I never really followed baseball, but I lived in Philly for a while and still have a level of goodwill towards the Phillies. I still listen to the Philadelphia NPR station and they would report the scores for the previous night's games during my morning commute and it would make me vaguely happy if I heard the Phillies won. Seeing people in green is like that. Just a small amount of happiness, but the cumulative effect is pretty impressive on Saint Patrick's Day.)

On Saturday, we went to Bethlehem's second annual Parade of Shamrocks.  We got there early and I took a couple pictures of Lily, but she's going through a phase where she either turns away or makes a face whenever she notices a camera on her. It's like photographing Bart Simpson.

If you're thinking, "It looks like she's pooping," that's not an accident. She described this as her "pooping face" and this picture is definitely coming out on prom night.

The parade itself was a bit underwhelming. There were just a bunch of things that didn't seem to belong in a Saint Patrick's Day parade. I can almost forgive the three dozen or so cars plugging Kelly's used cars, because there's at least the nominal connection between Kelly (Green) and Saint Patrick's Day, but random people walking their dogs? What was that about?! And they weren't even Irish Setters.

And, yeah, local businesses are an important part of padding out a local parade, but when a segment concludes with a car plugging fire extinguisher training and a garbage truck, I think it's safe to say that your Saint Patrick's Day parade has lost sight of the reason for the season.

Those are my sneakers in the picture, and and they're as Irish as anything else in the shot.

Lily liked it, though and we stopped for some shamrock shakes, so I call the day a success!

That was our Saturday. On Sunday, I spent a couple hours helping my elderly grandmother with her shopping. She told a bunch of boring stories and complained about everything. It's probably what this blog sounds like if you read it out loud.