Mom, You Made the Blog!**

(**My mom loves making the blog!)

So have I ever mentioned that I am Croatian?

Yeah, I know - the Irish name throws ya off, but one glance at my olive skin and it's pretty clear that there's a little bit o'somethin' else in this blood.

I get it from my mom - along with my pear-shaped body, oily-but-easily-tannable-skin, and struggle to maintain muscle tone.

Su-weet.

Anycellulitdimples, I was never really raised with any sort of emphasis on my cultural ethnic background. If I had any identity at all, it was as a Chicagoan and daughter of Bridgeport parents - one of which was a Chicago cop.

Come to think of it - neither of my parents was all that big on schooling us on the roots and branches of our family tree. I mean, I knew some basic stories about my grandparents, but when it comes to actual country and culture of origin, my knowledge amounts to "my dad's irish and my mom's croatian."

(By the way, this was always a treat in grammer school, where it was only cool to be Irish - and most kids were- and anything other than that was considered "weird." And since I was never one to want to stick out and hated when the kids made fun of me when I said the word "Croatian," I usually stuck to the Irish title.)

However, as I've aged, I have become increasingly interested in know more about where my mother's family came from (Croatia) and more about the culture itself - well, aside from my one-word knowledge of the Croatian translation for "shut up your mouth," which my mother's ingrained in us at an early age.

And which I still use with regularity.

So last week, when my brother-in-law told us he was taking my mom to Croatian festival, naturally I wanted to take part.

Turns out, this annual festival's 2010 theme was "Carnival," and it was encouraged to come in costume - of which I did not.

But Patrick made my mom and him costumes - toucans!

Because when you think of Croatia, the first thing you associate with it is toucans, is it not?


Getting ready


No toucan is complete without the head-gear.

And she's ready!!

If she turned her head to the side, you'd see she had a beak coming out the top of her forehead. Me, on the other hand - well, that's just my regular nose.

So two toucans walk into a bar....stop me if you heard it.....

Me and my costume-less date, ready to get our food on.

Toucans gotta eat too, right? Weird, but I had no idea swiss cheese, salami, and corned beef was a Croatian appetizer, but hey - what do I know?

Uh, Patrick?.....nevermind.





Ah, there we go - there's that beak!

Me and the moms.

So basically, we watched a REALLY long play that was spoken all in Croatian, and apparently was funny given the laughs of all the Croatian-speaking people around us (sorry, I didn't have any decent pics of this theatre production). And after what seemed like a really long time (and in my food-hunger-feed me world, two hours is LOOOOONG), we feasted on veggies, mostaccoli, and fried chicken.

Wait - what?!?!

Who knew fried chicken was a Croatian delicacy?

After dinner, dessert and some Croatian beers, Cheese and I had our fill of the evening so we packed it up and headed home.

Okay, I'm out of steam right now - that's my story - that's all I got.