St. Patrick's Day Fail.

On Sunday, my brother picked me up at 10 and we drove more than five hours to Illinois for a funeral. We were there long enough for the wake, dinner after and the morning service. Then we turned around and drove home again - to try to beat the next snow storm hitting the Midwest. It was a lot of time in the car, but the last time I took a road trip with just my brother was…well…never. So there's that.

I got home just in time for dinner (thanks again to my mother-in-law for staying with Miss B for the day and starting dinner). The boys had their first day back at school after "spring" break.

When I came in the door, my mother-in-law said, "I'm just going to run out to the store, I tried to get Lucky Charms earlier and they were all out."

"What?" I said. "Why do we need Lucky Charms for dinner?"

"Well," she said, "I guess Monkey told John he was the only one in the class who didn't have them for breakfast and he wanted me to get some for him."

And what we have here is a game of "telephone" gone horribly wrong.

As it turns out, Monkey explained that it wasn't anything about cereal, he was the only one in his class who did not get a visit from a troublesome Leprechaun.

Sigh. Really?

I just cannot keep up with the moms here. They are so much better at everything than I am.

I was already feeling overwhelmed by all of the people who seemed to dedicate an entire weekend to celebrating St. Patrick's Day in a drunken-stooper, and keep in mind I was gone for 24 hours of it. On Saturday morning, they began an exodus through our neighborhood to the nearby Irish Pub. The party started Saturday morning and went into the late hours on Monday night. That's a lot of drunk people wandering around our neighborhood. It was enough to make me not want to drink again. Ever.

But then, to find out I was supposed to orchestrate the antics of a Leprechaun too? What has happened to this holiday while we were out of the country? Apparently, if you don't have kids you are supposed to drink all weekend. And if you do have kids, you have to spend your weekend concocting a Leprechaun Trap. I guess I vaguely remember seeing a few posts last year on Facebook - about said Leprechaun Traps. And I even remember thinking they were cute and clever and how those kids were lucky to have such fun parents. But that was before I knew I was expected to be a similarly fun parent.

So I asked him, "Do you REALLY believe in Leprechauns?"

He got a goofy grin and shook his head no.

"Good, how about I buy you a box of Lucky Charms tomorrow when I go to the store and we call it even," I said, stealing John's original idea.

He gave me the thumbs up and we now have a box of Lucky Charms in our cupboard. And there is still half of a shamrock-shaped cake leftover - but that was complements of Grandma Sue, of course.

Metaphor Moments.

Sometimes, life crashes a lesson over my head, and it's just too good not to blog about it.

While I've declared the move officially over, that doesn't mean I actually know where everything is, or that we have everything put away in the right place. And that gets frustrating. Our basement is a disaster, and it's just too cold right now to go down there and do anything about it.

I spent the morning being frustrated about not being able to find some important books. I knew I needed to go for a run, I know that after I work out, I feel better and can deal with frustrating situations much better.

Ever since the last snow storm and cold snap, I've been running inside. I've found a community center where I can buy a track pass to use their indoor track. It's small, 11 laps equal one mile so it's hard not to feel like a hamster on a wheel, but it's a human temperature and I don't have to risk life and limb watching out for ice (and cars.) I can only get there a couple of times a week when the kids are in school, and this week was spring break so the indoor track was out of the question.

But over this last week, it warmed up. A warm-up in Minnesota after that much snow means a lot of standing puddles of muddy, ookey-gross water. But we were on day four of the defrost, so the sidewalks were sort of even dry. It was just too nice not to try, so I ventured out for a run. I managed ok for awhile, but eventually, I got stuck waiting for a stoplight to change at a busy intersection.

If you are from Minnesota, you can probably guess what happened next. A car sped up to make the light, sending a tidal wave wall of muddy, ookey-gross water all over me. Sigh. I spent the rest of my run thinking about how much I miss running at the Chateau de La Hulpe, and how it really hasn't been easy to re-adapt to Minnesota. And cars rushing through intersections splashing water all over me don't help much.

But, by nature (whether a curse or a blessing depends on the moment) I can't help but find the silver lining in just about anything. And the silver lining here was that it was warm enough to have puddles and melting snow. Sigh.

Today, it was time to venture out again. The sidewalks are pretty dry, and today was just a little colder so the melting snow has momentarily stopped melting. I had great expectations for a good run. Any Minnesotan attempting to run during the spring, knows they have to be good at dodging two things: icy patches and puddles. Today, there was more ice than puddles. About three blocks from home, I ran myself right into a huge patch of ice, made more dangerous by being melting snow that had refrozen into a slick solid smooth stretch of ice. I had been going too fast to realize that there was no good way out, or around it -- no grassy edge or snow chunks to jump onto to keep going. I was able to slow carefully to a stop, but my legs slipped right out from under me and I promptly fell on my ass.

I sat there for a minute, assessing the damage. And I cried. I didn't care who saw me (no one did), I just needed to cry. I let myself cry for two minutes and it made me feel better. And then I tried to figure out how to get up. It was just like that preview from the movie Frozen where the reindeer gets stuck on the pond and can't get up. But I eventually got up on my own. I could have limped myself home and called it a day. But anyone who knows me knows I'm too stubborn to ever do that. So I ran it off and by the time I got home I already had the silver linings figured out. I could have been hurt a lot worse than the giant bruise that is sure to form on my bum. And I had myself a new blog entry to write.

Spring is coming and I'm just going to keep running.

Oh, and as a side note, John found all of my missing books for me.