"I don't read Us, I read a magazine for paranoids called Them." - Bruce Vilanch

I bought Jen Lancaster’s Bitter is the New Black last night. I read her blog from time to time and think it’s pretty cool she got a book deal, and wanted to support her. Plus, Gina bought it yesterday too and told me it was entertaining. Which it was. In the beginning I was a bit distracted by the blogginess of it – you know, all those silly expressions we all use, and weird sentence structure, and capital letters – but now I am completely into it and am thoroughly loving it. I stayed up way too late last night, stuffing chips and dip into my mouth (Gina, I’m sorry, the Helluva Good onion dip didn’t do it for me, I am back to the B&L), and reading. I couldn’t stay awake long enough to finish it but I hated to come back from my lunch hour today – I wanted to keep reading. So, you know, it’s good. Go buy it. It’s a paperback, so it’s cheap, and who knows who will get the next book deal? I vote for Blackbird or Badger.

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H planned to take all three boys downtown to the St Patrick’s Day parade this morning. He hasn’t been feeling very well, but he likes to do this each year – it’s been eons since he and I both marched in the parade (he with his band and me with the ceili group), but I think sometimes he misses it. It’s hard to be just normal when you’ve been an Irish rock star. And H’s cousin’s daughter does step dancing and her school of dance is marching, so, you know, support and all. But honestly, all three boys? In that mayhem of drunken college students and Kelly-green-wearing idiots? I am not nearly brave enough. H says his family will be there, and they will help him. I am not so sure about this plan. Some drunk will puke on the baby, and if you hear about a three-year-old getting flattened by a parade float? That’ll be Segundo.

The big family St Pat’s party is Friday night. Fifty or sixty of the closest family, friends, and neighbors, crammed into H’s aunt’s little house. There will be corned beef and potatoes aplenty, and green Smiley cookies, and all manner of disgusting green food, and lots of maudlin Irish music complete with some Godawful, nausea-inducing rendition of “Danny Boy,” and probably “The Fields of Athenrye,”and then the dancing shall begin – the Keel Row, the Walls of Limerick, and the Seige of Ennis. Very sweaty, very crowded, and most of us really have no freaking clue what we are doing. Not to mention being drunk.

I do know what I am doing, in the dancing regard, but you did not hear that from me. My days of ceili dancing in a crowded bar among roaring drunken Irishmen are OVER. Aerobically, I don't think I could make it through a four-hand reel now if my life depended on it.

I always want to wear orange to this event, but then I was raised by wolves.

H and the new band's lead singer will debut several new (non-Irish) songs that evening as well. Very exciting.

You know, sometimes I wonder if my mother didn’t have some Irish in her somewhere.
I mean, look at those “Danny Boy” lyrics:
“And if you come, when all the flowers are dying,
And I am dead, as dead I well may be.”
I mean, really?
As dead I well may be?

No, no, you go do your thing, oh Danny Boy, and I will just stay here, but I’ll be DEAD when you get back, you see if I’m not, and that’ll serve you right!

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So I cruised around the bookstore for a while last night, listening to some high school guitar ensemble render the Beatles didactic. Then some awful, skinny, Ben-Folds-sounding teenager covered “Baba O’Riley” and he was truly awful, but the drummer was decent and the bass player, a Thom Yorke lookalike, was really decent. Oh good, now I am trolling for bass players for H in bookstores, among sixteen-year-old boys.

So here’s my list, in no particular order, of books that I must check out/read (scribbled on a little piece of paper found in my purse, bearing the name “Martha” and a phone number. No, I have no freaking clue who Martha is, or why I should have her phone number in my purse):

The Kindness of Strangers - Katrina Kittle
Dinner with Anna Karenina - Gloria Goldreich [This looks like a companion volume to The Jane Austen Book Club, of sorts.]
New Mecca - Sandra Dallas
I’m Not Myself These Days - Josh Kilmer-Powell
Cocktails for Three - Madeleine Wickham [This is Sophie Kinsella.]
The Ha-Ha - Dave King
Snobs - Julian Fellowes

If I ever have enough cash to pay my library fines, I can just request most of these from the library. In the meantime, I am enjoying Bitter, finishing Shadow Man, and yes, yes, all right already (Andrea, Badger, and Leslie, I’m talking to you) I am going to read Curious Incident NEXT. I swear.