5-6 April

WEEKEND DIARIES

Busy hands. It's about time their activity was transferred out of doors.

If only she had been wearing a helmet before she scraped the driveway with her face...

A moment.

Beers.

Another weekend, come and gone, just like that! I don't mind the swiftly passing days, though, as each one brings us that much closer to true springtime weather. And though the yard is mud, mud, mud, and the temperatures are ungenerously hovering below what could be considered warm, Spring is definitely in the air. The hostas are starting to poke through the soft earth and the kids spent Sunday afternoon digging around and transplanting little periwinkle vines into pots. Because it's nearly impossible to kill periwinkle.

Saturday the kids went for their Easter haircuts. At two plus years of age, it was actually Veronica's first. For all of my amazing contributions to the familial gene pool, great hair was not one of them. I was bald and shockingly big headed as a newborn and for quite some time beyond that.  Anyway, she did really well until about five minutes in, when she proclaimed, with calm authority, "All done." When the stylist kept cutting, Veronica, straight faced and utterly serious repeated, "All done." The stylist quickly wrapped things up, and Veronica looked absolutely adorable until two hours later when she fell in the driveway and floor burned all the skin off of her upper lip and nose. Poor girl!

What else? After Mass on Sunday, husband tried out for man of the year by keeping the kids busy so I could nap as long as I wanted, making steaks for dinner, and picking up some special beers. For me he grabbed a couple bottles of Zywiec Porter. If you like dark, rich, strong beers you should definitely try it, or it's cousin, Okocim Porter. 

Drinking the Polish beer took me back seven years. I was in Krakow for a monthlong academic seminar, and one afternoon I was to give a presentation on part of Centesimus Annus to a group of fellow participants and a quite prestigious academic. At lunch I made the mistake of ordering a beer, the porter, which turned out to be so huge and so strong. And of course I drank the whole thing before running back into the classroom (I used to be either really cool or really stupid, I'm not sure which...) to give my presentation. It went ok. I think. I don't really remember that part very clearly. Public speaking usually causes me low level terror, though, and that time I wasn't even nervous... So, Polish porter for the win?