St. Pattys Day story

The good news is that I will no longer burden this blog and my readers with my stresses of house hunting or any of those benign and boring moving details. We got the house and we sign our lease April 2.

Happy St. Patricks Day. I feel so obligated to drink but cannot afford to so Mike and I will stay home tonight and eat corned beef and talk with his parents about the move. (They don't think it's boring.)

My first memorable experience with corned beef occurred at age 15. I worked at an icecream/italian ice (it was called italian ice there not water ice!) shop with another fifteen old named Joanne with no supervision whatsoever and many a joints were smoked in the bathroom. It was fun. Anyhow, we became friends by default and she was pretty cool now that I think of her.

So we met up at her house on St. Patty's Day and two or three of her girl friends joined us and I recall her parents weren't home but her crazy smelly mean old aunt was. I can't recall where the beer came from nor what brand for that matter. (I imagine it was either a. really cheap shit or b. some form of Bud because what other brands do a bunch of fifteen year old girls know? Well, besides Colt 45. Ick)

Joanne was a beach and boardwalk gal and what 15 year old boardwalk gal doesn't own a blindingly neon beer funnel? I know I never did. The amount of alcohol consumption was alarming. Shirts were changed more than twice due to funnel spillage and many heads were bumped falling off the bed. Five girls in an incredibly tiny room, one beer funnel, five hours, two cases of beer. Yikes. Vomiting ensued. Old man aunt would pop in and in her smokers man voice yell, "Are you girls drinking!" Five responses all in perfect timing, "No, Aunt Marge" like a bunch of grammar school children saying good morning to their teacher.

So after we all vomited many many times, miraculously, we felt great. More drinking followed. How do I link this to corn beef. When five fifteen year old girls emerge from a tiny room after several hours of drinking, vomiting, and more drinking, you don't want them in your kitchen. They'll eat your shoes if they're not tied to your feet.

There it was, a beautiful corned beef. I had never recalled trying it before but the girls started picking at it with their hands and I thought it looked like fun; the way you could just peel it off and pick at it like string cheese. Damn it tasted good. So....we ate the whole thing. And got in a world of trouble for it. How were we supposed to know it took five hours to make and Joanne's dad had been looking forward to it all month?

Woops.