Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Girl and I are both wearing our $5 Irish t-shirts from Tar-get today. Even though my last name is now LaBrecque and it’s truly lovely — I married into that French-Canadian name and can’t claim any roots there. Nope. I’m English and Irish. My mother’s people came from Ireland in 1692 and landed in Charleston. They came as indentured servants. (Her cousin, who has now passed, spent years researching this and putting together a book–it’s very cool.)

This evening we’re joining two other families for a dinner of corned beef, cabbage, potatoes and carrots. My contribution is a couple of Irish cheeses, Killians, Harps, and dessert. I made this dessert last year and it was apparently a hit because our hostess requested it again this year. Sinfully easy and pretty tasty, I pulled it off the Internet from MasterCook. I’m taking two over.

Bailey’s Chocolate Mousse Pie

6 oz Ready Crust (chocolate or graham)
1 env unflavored gelatine
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 c milk
3/4 c Bailey’s Irish Cream
6 oz semisweet choc chips
2 c frozen whipped topping
Chocolate-dipped strawberries (optional)
Whipped cream

In saucepan, sprinkle unflavored gelatine over milk. Let stand about 1 min. Stir over low heat til gelatine is dissolved, about 5 mins. Add chocolate and continue cooking, stirring constantly until choc is melted. Stir in vanilla. Remove from heat and stir occasionally. Add Bailey’s about 5 mins later. When mixture mounds when dropped from a spoon, stir in whipped topping. Turn into crust. Chill at least 4 hours. Garnish with chocolate-dipped strawberries, if you like, and whipped cream.

This Irish blessing hung in my mother’s kitchen for years:
May the road rise to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face.
And rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the hollow of His hand.

And this wasn’t in her kitchen, but I figure it’s always useful to have an Irish curse on hand:
May those who love us love us.
And those that don’t love us,
May God turn their hearts.
And if He doesn’t turn their hearts,
May he turn their ankles,
So we’ll know them by their limping.

:P

I’m not sure if I’m supposed to blog this…but what the heck!

I’m in the awful place of feeling as if I can’t write my way out of a paper bag. Every word is hard to come by and feels awkward. This is not a new phenomena and I know I’m not the only writer that goes through this — of course the others perhaps don’t share it with the world via cyberspace. :doze:

I’m going to do the only thing that I know to do — I’m going to tell that nagging, hateful, insidious voice in my head that alternately whispers and shouts that I’m making a total hash of this…I’m going to tell it to shut-up…and I’m going to keep writing forward.

I AM NOT going to put back on my pajamas and watch The Constant Gardener or crawl back into bed and re-read Loretta Chase’s Lord of Scoundrels…because then I slip further behind, but more importantly, then that malicious voice has won.

In the words of Winston Churchill, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.”

This too shall pass.

A visit to the ENT yesterday and we’ve got The Girl lined up to lose her tonsils and adenoids at the end of the month. She wasn’t a particularly happy camper when she realized she’ll spend Spring Break recovering and therefore won’t miss an additional week of school. Yes, she can thank the evil mommy for that. :P

The latest craze in plastic surgery is…HTG, I kid you not…virginity restoration. Nose job? Boob job? Tummy tuck? Liposuction? Add one more option to the menu. Can you imagine the conversations?

Two Friends Shopping:

“I was thinking I wanted to give Jack something special for a wedding gift when we tie the knot next month. Didn’t you have that virginity restoration done a couple of months ago?”

“Oh, girl! That’s perfect. You’ve got to see my surgeon, Dr. Stitchittight. He does fabulous work.”

-OR-

Cocktail Party:

“Hi. This is my husband Harry. He specializes in hymenal repair. Next month he’s running a bogo — buy one, get one free. Come in and bring a friend.”

I could go on but I’ll do us all a favor and stop. :hehe: Just sleep better tonight knowing that for 2-5 grand a pop (bad pun fully intended) you can sing right along with Madonna, Like a virgin, for the very first time….

1. If you are in a hotel room and have put lotion on your hands and can’t unscrew the screw top on your mini-bottle of merlot/cab blend travel wine (travel wine being the only acceptable reason for wine with a screw top), don’t despair. A mini-pad works like a charm. Pull off the adhesive backing and wrap it around the top portion of the screw top. (Don’t wrap it too far down or you’ll just have a bottle of wine decked out in a mini-pad.) Voila. Pour and enjoy. Not particularly elegant, but very effective.

2. On a warm day when you’ve worked up a sweat doing yard work, a Girl Scout thin mint along with an ice cold beer is wonderful. And if your husband says you’re embarrassing him guzzling a beer from the bottle in the front yard of your suburban neighborhood, pleasantly invite him to join you in a little spring yard clean-up.

Okay, so maybe I exaggerated a little and these aren’t necessarily secrets to a full and happy life, but they sure do feel good for about fifteen minutes.

Back from chaperoning The Girl’s choir group to North Carolina. Really a great trip. Nice group of kids and adults (other chaperones/conductor/accompanist).

High point of the trip: Listening to the performance. Lovely.

Second high point of the trip: The Westin’s heavanly bed.

Low point of the trip: Mall shopping with 6 girls to keep up with.

THEM:
“Can we go to the Loius Vuitton shop? I want to see what new purses they have in.”
“I want to go to Hollister!”
“I need to go to the Apple store, so they can look at my ipod.”
“But American Eagle is this way.”
“Oh, I just have to go in this shop….”
“Can we go to Loius Vuitton now?”
“How much is that book bag? Only $80. That’s not bad.”
Squeal. “Oh, I just love Steve Madden shoes.”
“Starbucks is down at that end.”

ME:
“What time is the bus picking us up?”

Yesterday, we cut the museum visit short and one of my little shopaholic charges came up with the following:

“Mrs. LaBrecque, do you think since we’re leaving early we can stop at the outlet mall on the way home?”

“Only if they stop the bus on a bridge first…so I can jump.”

This evening, me, The Girl, and Loretta Chase are gonna catch a bus for Charlotte…along with 33 other kids and only a handful of adults. :O Girl is part of a professional children’s choir and they’re traveling to Charlotte for a performance tomorrow. I’m chaperoning. Let me take a moment to be a proud Mama and say that this group is amazing. They sing in English, Latin, Italian, French, Gaelic, and Creole and it’s just beautiful.

Loretta Chase? She’s coming along in the form of her latest release — Lord Perfect. She’s one of my absolutely favorite writers — oh, to be able to write like her. Lord of Scoundrels — Brilliant. It couldn’t possibly be better timing for her newest novel to be out. Four to five hours on a bus? Prime reading time. :) Can’t think of a better travel companion than Loretta Chase. I’m also taking along two partials that I’m critiquing for a workshop and my own wip, but I’ll save those for the trip back. :hehe:

Excerpt from TAKE JOY: A WRITER’S GUIDE TO LOVING THE CRAFT by Jane Yolen:

Anthony Burgess once said that the dream seldom survives the first paragraph.
And Edith Wharton, quoting an old French proverb, worte, “I dream of an eagle, I give birth to a hummingbird.”
All writing is about that gap — no, that chasm — between expectation and final product. A veritable Grand Canyon, it is the very thing that induces writer’s block.
I say that we writers should just expect that disappointment, not be surprised by it. Expect it, sidestep it, move on.