Being 1/4 Irish, I feel it necessary to over-celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. Okay, not over-celebrate, but certainly celebrate. I wear green, shamrock earrings, shamrock socks, and the celebration usually involves beer — green or simply a good hefeweizen. Today will be no different! I am celebrating the day with two friends, both of whom have been laid off in this recession environment, and we’re doing brunch at an Irish pub local to me. I live in the neighborhood where the New York City St. Patrick’s Day parade will end today, sometime between 4-5:30 tonight. Last year I returned at about 9pm after a taping of the Colbert Report in west Midtown to find all of my friends gathered at an Irish pub on the Upper East Side, dancing with a bunch of cops and firemen from Nassau County. We shouted over the music and the din, trying to ask our friends why there were so many people in uniform getting completely plastered at this St. Patrick’s Day celebration — and why were they from Nassau County? Apparently they’d been part of the parade that had ended up in our neighborhood. I have to wonder about the pubs in this area on St. Patrick’s Day — how much of a killing do they make simply from the parade crowd charging through the Upper East Side, demanding green libation at 5pm? I wonder.

Before I meet my friends for brunch, though, I’ve lots to do, including hopefully hitting up the gym for a bit — preventative measures, you understand — and cleaning this apartment, or perhaps attempting to clean it. It’s so filled with boxes and moved things it’s becoming progressively harder to function, but it’s Tuesday — we move Saturday. It’s fast approaching! I look around and think, “Clean? BAH.” But the neat freak trapped inside of me is silently moaning. A little. Though packing and labeling boxes does appease her. (She’d prefer I color-code the labels on the boxes by room — kitchen, living room, bedroom, closet — but she can’t have it all!)

On Friday my mother and I are taking a trip to IKEA — IKEA, the store of dreams! Or the Place Where Grown-Up Dreams of Cheap Furnishings Become Reality. I am inordinately happy about going to IKEA. Bryan knows that I have a… shall we call it an obsession with IKEA? I love functional and simple, and that is all of IKEA. Everything there is both functional and simple — sometimes a little crazily European while also being simple and functional, too, which is fun. I am a big lover of all things European, especially design, so IKEA is even more exciting for that. I never thought, growing up, that I’d ever find a store more exhilarating to be in than a toy store like Toys ‘R’ Us, but I have, and it is filled with furnishings. That to me is more evidence of the fact that I’ve grown up than other things in my life. (I still play video games and wear T-shirts with funny slogans and seriously enjoy Cartoon Network.) Going to IKEA to furnish our first [real] apartment as a married couple — and being giddily enthusiastic about it? Yeah, that’s pretty grown up on the scale of things. (Is there a scale of things somewhere?) I don’t know whether this is a good development, or a really frightening one…