St. Patty’s Day and random chickens

(EEEK! ROUND 2 STARTED TONIGHT AT 12 AM CST! VOTE HERE!!!)

Zoomboy has been looking forward to St. Patrick’s Day for WEEKS. He painted a little pressboard chest all gold, and put jewel stickers all over it, with some shamrocks on the side, and then filled it with fake gold and little shamrock shaped emeralds made of paste. He bought one of those $.99 sun-visors and covered IT in shamrock foamy stickers too! He found (God knows how!) his shamrock dog that we bought last year right AFTER St. Patrick’s day, and made us buy a St. Patrick’s Day garland and some decorations for the mantle, and he set a leprechaun trap and EVERYTHING.

Well, last night, the leprechaun ALMOST got caught. He got away with the bait (the fake gold from the chest) but left green shirts and small toys for everybody! (Well, Big T got an iTunes card, for which he was extremely grateful.)

This morning, Zoomboy put on his shirt with a GREAT deal of enthusiasm, donned his hat, grabbed his stuffed dog and his green bakugan, and said, “Look at me! Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!”

Goddess love him– I couldn’t love him more if he was made of gold and gave angel lessons instead of the odd-duck sort. He really is the bestest duck on the Emerald Isle, isn’t he?

Anyway, his sister awoke long after he had gone to school, and proceeded to talk my ear off about how now we didn’t have to worry about having enough money to buy toys because the LEPRECHAUN would do it for us! I pointed out that the leprechaun only did that once a year, but her wonder was TRULY astounding. It occurred to me then that Santa Claus is sort of a given, right? And the Easter Bunny–even if you’re a practicing Christian and not a pagan (I mean, it’s a pagan celebration anyway, right?) sort of comes out of left field, but they go with it. But leprechauns only visit certain houses–the ones with the parents in them who will buy green stickers and fake gold and allow children to build leprechaun traps in the living room that mom trips over six times during the course of March 16th and then keep them until the morning of March 17th.

You know, the ones with the suckers.

So her wonder really was well placed. Some random elf came by her house and convinced mom and dad to part with their gold so we could have one more thing on the floor on which to step at tHree in the morning. Magic IS real! And so worth it! I listened to her tell every adult she met today about that damned leprechaun, and each time, the adult looked at me with, “Toys? Really? Like the Happy Meal fairy isn’t going to bankrupt me as it is? Jesus, lady, what’s WRONG with you?”

*evil chuckle* Well, the list is long and distinguished, but I don’t think letting the leprechaun show up this morning is on it!

And that brings us to my last Squish story for today. Many of you have heard about the random troop of turkeys (real turkeys, the kind that shit on your lawn) who wander around my neighborhood, but this neck of the woods isn’t the ONLY suburb in the immediate area with a weird fowl situation.

I’d practically forgotten about what wanders the streets of nearby Fair Oaks until we were driving through the little main street today, and Squish said, “Mom, why did the chicken cross the road?”

Now (for obvious reasons) my stock reply to this one is, “Because it was stapled to the turkey!”

“No!” Squish replied, irritated. “No, mom–there’s a chicken RIGHT THERE! Why did it cross the road?”

“Oh!” I said, light dawning. “Because it lives in Fair Oaks.”

“Okay,” Squish said, thinking. “Will it meet up with the turkey later?”

“Only if it crosses a LOT of roads.”

“Okay. We’ll see it later.”

I doubt it, but I didn’t tell Squish that!

And thank you all once again for DU BWAHA! RIGHT HERE!!!