Low-Key St. Patrick's Day

 

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Or as they say, La Fheile Padraig sona duit! That should have some accents in there, but I'm totally lazy about putting accents into my written Irish. DuoLingo doesn't seem to care - it just tells me that I missed an accent or two, but it never deducts any points. Also, I don't know what Fheile means, because the Irish word for saint is "naomh," but they never say La Naomh Padraig sona duit. The literal translation is "day saint (?) Patrick happy to you." Irish syntax is like nothing I've ever seen before, coming from a Romance language background where everything is basically the same as English except that the adjectives come after the noun instead of before it. 

I was going to meet the Rosary Ladies at the one Irish pub remaining in town, but the weather isn't good so they decided to go earlier than I could join them, and then it was so crazy there (as I suspected) that they ended up going to an Italian restaurant instead. I wore my Kelly green hat, and Travalon and I went to the Nau-Ti-Gal for dinner. They were serving corned beef and cabbage, but I got salmon because that's what we actually ate in Ireland, like every stinking meal until I was actually sick of salmon. Didn't think that was possible! I asked if I could get a boiled potato instead of French fries (honestly, in Ireland I often got both with meals), but they said they couldn't do that. They also had cheap green beer or Guinness on tap, but we got a local beer, Leaping Lemur from Hillsboro Brewing Company. There wasn't any live music at the Nau-Ti-Gal this year, but they did play one Irish song before going back to 80's music, and someone came by and gave us each a strand of gold beads. Then I wore my hat and beads to Night Prayer. So a very low-key St. Patrick's Day, and for the second year in a row I didn't get to Mass. I like to go and celebrate the anniversary of my baptism. When I tell people that, they are horrified: "You weren't baptized for two and a half months?? That's a long time to be a pagan!" Hey, maybe that's why I'm such a bad Catholic!

Famous Hat