It was a bit chilly this morning. Last night was still quite warm when we went to bed, so the window was wide open. I imagine it got its coldest around 4 AM, but now, at 6:30, I had to pee and that's what woke me up enough to be aware of it. I still had my personal body warmer, Susie, but my comforter had gone back into the Robinson's box and was sitting in its summer home in the attic somewhere.

Thanks to global warming, I'd been able to get by for most of the week since Congress decided to save energy by turning back the clocks so that gas could go up above three bucks again. But last night had gotten a bit cooler than the last few.

We'd had a few weeks of global cooling a month or two ago and our oranges would be three or four times as much this year. I just wished they'd elect Al Gore president so we could go back to the way things had been since the planet first cooled off — pleasant temperatures for all with no variations, year after year.

Today was St. Patrick's Day. The one day of the year we got to see Uncle Milton. Because Uncle Milton was IRISH. And we were his celebration, and had been, as long as I can remember.

I think Mom's Great Great Grandmother was born in Ireland. It was always said that she's the one I got the reddish tint in my hair from. Uncle Milton got the full inheritance. His head was covered with fiery red hair and his white skin was almost hidden behind freckles. He was over six feet tall and could eat like a pig and never gain an ounce. His body was still thin as a rail, like an adolescent boy who's just gone through his first growth spurt. If Uncle Milton was an animal, he'd be a giraffe.

I'm sure he saw his fair share of giraffes. Uncle Milton was a veterinarian par excellence. His specialty was fixing up exotic animals with rare diseases. He worked for some animal conservation group and was always flying to Africa or Borneo or somewhere else exotic. He always joked that it was OK for a lion to eat a gnu, but let one stub his toe and he'd be off on the next plane. And let some native or hunter be involved with it and they'd take a whole planeload of conservationists over.

Uncle Milton was Mom's baby brother, and she always looked after him like a mother hen each March 17 when he came to visit us, clucking about how thin he was, forcing food down his throat at every opportunity. It was the one day of the year the animals had to survive by themselves so he could spend the day with us. I guess most would consider him an eligible bachelor. He had a job, some money in the bank and no wives — past or present.

He always brought presents for me and Tiffany with an Irish theme. When I was around four, he gave me a stuffed Bear named Paddy. Paddy had a green ribbon around his neck and had a place of honor on my top shelf. Most years since then, it had been a button. Paddy was covered with them, everything from "Kiss Me, I'm Irish" to a huge four leaf clover. Oh, and his head was covered by a green beanie that I'd felt like a fool wearing last year when he gave it to me. Because I had to wear each present for the rest of the day or he'd be heartbroken.

Mom and Dad had already gone to the airport to pick him up. There was a pancake house near the airport that served green pancake syrup every St. Paddy's Day, and they'd made it a point to have breakfast on the way back from the airport every year for the past ten. They took their time, and more likely than not, Mom and Dad would have to drag him away when he and someone else would start trading stories to prove how Irish they were. When they got home, Uncle Milton would spend the rest of the day spinning tales of his adventures.

Of course, when Tiff and I were younger, we believed every word of it. His encounters with unicorns, the pot of gold he almost had when the leprechaun just got away from him, the time he out-drank a whole village of Irishmen, drinking Irish whiskey by the bucket while they stuck to their green beer.

Evidently he was satisfied with the green beer these days. For the past few years, Dad would become an honorary Irishman and the two of them would down pitcher after pitcher of the stuff as the rest of us drank green Coke at the pizza parlor around the corner. We spent a lot of quarters playing video games each year as Uncle Milton and Dad sang their songs and made toasts to each of us and everyone else in the place. Around 10:00, Mom would drag my father, then my uncle out to the car as they sang songs and waved to the crowd, then drive us all home and drag Dad into the bedroom and Uncle Milton into the living room, where the couch was already made up for him to sleep it off. The next morning, it would be back to the pancake house where both of them would drink plenty of coffee and then Uncle Milton would catch a plane around noon or 1:00, flying off to the next sick animal, not to be seen for another year. This year the following day was a Sunday, so I knew most of us would spend that day recovering.

We got up and got going and at 8:30, Doug and Dougie came over. The three of us made breakfast as our men sat at the table. We had pancakes, bacon and sausage. I took care of the pancakes while Susie cooked the meat. Tiffany dumped a whole bag of M&Ms in a bowl and was picking out the green ones, poking a few of them into each cooked pancake before putting them on the table. We figured that would have to do since we didn't have any green syrup. Dougie did try to make some green orange juice, but the combination of green food coloring and orange juice created a bluish, blackish purple.

Tiffany had turned domestic since she and Doug became a couple, something I never thought I'd live to see. She wasn't any Betty Crocker or Martha Stewart, but she was working on it. It was all new to her and Doug, and he was grateful for anything she did to show she cared for him. They were both seniors in high school but were discovering each other and themselves like they were still freshmen. I never thought I'd say this about my sister, but she was cute, the way she was discovering being in love.

Doug had never had a girl look at him before, much less spend time with him. I guess it was love at first sight the first time he laid eyes on Tiffany.

Tiff had been so busy satisfying all the hunks in school that she hardly knew he existed. They both claimed it was fate that she'd been grounded and all the jocks were doing the party thing last Halloween when she called him as a last resort. Dougie and I had both done our share of prodding to get either of them to do what each of them wanted but was too shy to ask for. My most recent act was to convince Doug to take her down from the pedestal once in a while and put her on her back. That seemed to be working out just fine.

We all sat at the table, Dougie and I practically on top of each other, as were Doug and Tiffany across from us. Susie was alone, her normal cheery self, but I wondered if it bothered her to be without someone of her own. She'd trained most of the guys in school not to ask her out, primarily as a defensive act when her mother's boyfriend was still around.

Speaking of the asshole, he showed up in town a few weeks ago and was now in jail for skipping bail, awaiting trial for drugs. Suzie's mother finished her latest rehab and had been let out on her own recognizance until for her own trial for allowing her children to be in the drug dealing, drug using, putting out for Mom's boyfriend environment she'd put them through for the past few years. I guess she decided she wasn't interested in spending a few years in jail and disappeared. Nobody had seen her for the last month and we didn't expect to. Susie and Vicky seemed more relieved than bothered when she took off.

Tiffany sniffed and Doug pulled her in a bit closer.