Monkling's Blog

A couple of years ago, I spoke about today – Epiphany, 3 King’s Day, the 12th Day of Christmas. Yeah, it’s all pretty much the same thing, those 3 titles. Anyhow, I spoke about La Befana, the witch who brings gifts to the little Italian boys & girls in Italy.

Last year, when we were in Rome visiting Stephen during the Christmas season, I was determined to find my own Befana. I searched all the stores we went into. I finally found my Befana in Christmas Village. I was so happy that I had a Befana all my own. Maybe she would bring me some extra gifts. Alas, that was not to be. This is my Befana:

Now although it does look like La Befana, apparently the vendors ripped off the dumb tourists. It is not a real one. It is a Halloween witch. This was discovered on Christmas when I showed it to my brother. For the first time, I thought to look at the little tag on it. That is when I made the horrific discovery about being ripped off. Damn street vendors! They sold me an ordinary Halloween witch, not an authentic Befana. No wonder I didn’t get any gifts today!

Arancini are Rice Balls. I mentioned them once before but I had never made them. Until this week. Since Arancini are a family thing, I decided it’s time for me to see whether or not I could handle making them. As it turns out, I can:

I also found out why my family does not make them too often. Making rice balls involved scooping up the rice with your hands, making an indentation in it and filling it with a meatball/mozzarella mixture. This is what they look like on the inside:

Did I mention picking up the rice? I would have taken a photo of my hands during the process except that I couldn’t very well hold a camera when my hands were covered with rice. Naturally, the phone also decided to ring while I was making them. And not just once. (Sure I could have ignored the phone but I didn’t. )

After you stuff the rice balls, you dip them in egg, coat them with bread crumbs & fry them. I’m sorry but I cannot post the recipe. It is a family secret. If I were to post in great detail about how they are made, I would be disowned.

I just can’t help it. Any time I think of Teddy Roosevelt, all I can think of is Arsenic & Old Lace & the guy running up the stairs with a sword yelling, “Charge!”

Why was I thinking about Teddy today? Well you see, it was a warm, rain-free day today. Frank & I decided to go exploring. We had often driven along Northern Blvd. in Long Island and have seen a sign that said, “Historic Site.” Today we followed the signs.

As it turns out, Teddy apparently used to live on Long Island. Yep, he had a summer house at Sagamore Hill.

First we hit this trail behind the house. We walked through the woods,trying to watch out for large tree roots hidden beneath the leaves where they lurked, trying to grab your ankles & make you trip. We came out into a clearing and saw this:

As we walked across the bridge, I wondered out loud how strong the bridge was and how deep the water was. On the other side of the bridge, we were looking out into a bay fed by the Long Island Sound:

This is the house where Teddy lived:

Coming back from the trails, we entered the house by the back door. Frank told me to go in first because he wanted to come in after me and yell out, “Honey, I’m home!”

Is anyone still reading this? Although I can’t see why you would when there hasn’t been anything here to read in a month.

An entire month has gone by?? How did that happen?

I am going to try to get back into the blogging groove. Not promising anything, mind you. But I’m gonna try. We’ll see how that goes.

I wish I could say I’ve been doing some really exciting things around here and I’ve been so busy and that’s why there hasn’t been much blogging going on. Unfortunately, if I said that, I’d be lying.

Nope. Nothing much new going on. Frank is still working in the same place. Darling Daughter is still in college. Steve is still in Rome. Old, smelly dog is still old, smelly, and shedding like crazy. Seriously. Every day I sweep up enough dog fur to make an entire Chihuahua.

Let me see… has anything interesting or unusual happened lately? No, I don’t think so. Unless you count the truck that stopped outside my house the other morning. It was trash day. I decided to throw out some stuff like, oh, the playpen from when my kids were little. (Which Theresa saw and said, “You’re throwing out my old playpen?!?!” Uh, yeah. Why? Did you plan on using it?)

So getting back to the truck, some guy gets out of the truck and takes the 20+ year old playpen and throws it in the back of his truck. Then he take a cocktail table I threw out. It’s only the frame, mind you. It’s missing the top. Thus the ‘throwing out’ part on my end. He puts it on top of the truck and drives off. He does not tie it or anything. Just sort of flings it up there. That’s not an accident waiting to happen!

It seems I’ve rambled on enough for one night. If there are a million typos in this post, oh well. Deal with it. I’ll fix it tomorrow when I am more wide awake.

Since last year’s Apple Festival worked out so well, I have decided to go with year 2. I also got braver and decided to invite more people. If I have 12 or so people here, I’m not quite sure how the game is going to work but I guess I’ll figure something out.

I’ve already started buying supplies. I have hard apple cider and apple chips. I have the all important ingredient for making my apple rugelach & the mini caramel apple cheesecakes – apple butter. I still need to buy ingredients for my apple sangria. Oh, and apples. Yeah, it would be a good idea to have some apples since it is an apple festival.

For some reason, when I mention that there will be apple games, the first thing everyone thinks of is bobbing for apples. I had to make it clear that there will be no bobbing. Nor will there be dressing up in apple costumes.

On the other hand, too bad we don’t live out in Kentucky or we could have target practice with apples like I did a few years back when I was out visiting my friend & we went to her parents’ house. Now that would be fun. “Come out back. We’re gonna make apple sauce. Here’s a rifle.”

No, I do not own a laptop. I have, however, used one on occasion. Like when we were away & I used Frank’s.

He has a work laptop. It is 9 years old. Because it is a work laptop, it has all sorts of security on it and you can’t load whatever you want on it. Plus… it’s old. Really old. It was time for him to get a new one.

Well we jumped ship. We got an Apple. After briefly playing with it, I am trying to remember why we ever went with Windows. Our very first computer was an Apple. Then I remembered. Oh, yeah. Work. Stupid work.

Now about the laptops. Laptops in general. They have touchpads. I hate touchpads. Truly hate them. Far as I know, it is impossible to click and drag with one hand. You hit it accidentally when you’re typing. They get in the way.

This was driven home quite strongly tonight when I was playing with Frank’s new Apple. I found myself clicking and dragging stuff that I didn’t even click. I tell you, the thing is possessed by demons. Programs would open that I didn’t open. I lost the Downloads folder someplace. Things moved on their own.

I have decided that touchpads & I just don’t get along. And that’s fine because I don’t own a laptop and I’m not likely to need one anytime soon. But I can tell you, if I do get one, I will have to rip the touchpad right out of it.

On our 1/3 cross country road trip, we had exactly 2 nice days. Those were the first 2 days during our drive through Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia ending in the very beginning of Kentucky. Oh, and let me tell you! The drive was pure pleasure. Not only did we not hit any traffic but the speed limit was 70. I really like driving 70 mph!

But then the rains came. And stayed. It rained for the entire time we were visiting my friend and it rained for the entire trip home. The rain also apparently followed us home because it started raining tonight and it’s supposed to continue tomorrow.

There was a bright spot, though. Actually several. While in Kentucky, every time we had to get out of the car to go someplace, the rain stopped. We did not get rained on while going to Moonlite BBQ or the bookstore.

The biggest parting of the waters was truly amazing. One of the things we really wanted to do on this trip, the highlight we had been planning on, was to go out on my friends’ boat. We would bring a bottle of champagne and toast the launching of our new company. I brought a bottle of really good Long Island champagne for the occasion.

That morning it was raining. We decided to take a chance and got into the car. It rained for the hour & a half drive all the way to the lake. Then it stopped. We had time for a 3 hour tour. (It was about 3 hours but I didn’t make the Gilligan connection until speaking to my friend this afternoon.) We rode around the lake. We had lunch in the lodge. We toasted. We saw herons. We went back to the dock and covered up the boat. As we got back in the car, it started raining again & continued to rain on the entire drive back home. It cleared up just for us to be able to do our boat champagne toast.

I also discovered hot tubs. Lou had told me to pack the bathing suits. I forgot. Then I said, “Well what’s the big deal about a hot tub?” Well we managed to wrangle some suitable clothing and tried out the hot tub. Oh, man!! I am in love. The rain held out for us to be able to use it 3 nights out of the 4 we were there. I want to buy one and put it in the middle of my living room.

I haven’t kept y’all up with our trip. That’s because… uh, well we were busy having fun in Kentucky. And then, on the road back, Internet access wasn’t so great. But finally I am here with some more stories about our 1/3 cross country trip.

On Wednesday we took a ride out to a bookstore because Frank wanted to pick up a book about programming for the iPhone. As we’re getting out of the car, a man is getting out of his and walking just ahead of us into the bookstore. He’s dressed in a brown robe. He holds the door for us and Frank asks him what order he belongs to. We chat for a few minutes, mentioning that our son is in the seminary.

It turns out he is visiting his family who live in the exact same town that our friends live in, exactly where we are visiting. We go our separate ways.

That’s when Lou starts saying, “I can’t believe it! I’m with Monkling and I see a monk!”

I tried explaining to her that he’s not a monk, that he is either a priest or a brother and a Franciscan Missionary of the Eternal Word and his brown robe is Franciscan. She wouldn’t hear any of it.

“No. He is wearing a brown monk’s robe. He is a monk!” She got the biggest kick out of it.

It was a pretty big coincidence, though, that he was there visiting his family at the exact same time I was there visiting my friend and that we ran into him in a store. And that town in Kentucky isn’t all that huge so there’s a pretty good chance Lou knows his family.

On Monday we made it into Kentucky. Our first stop was in Berea to visit Gin.  I’ve been waiting to meet Gin in person for the longest time! Since I am not on my computer, I can’t look up the url to Gin’s website but I think I have it in my sidebar here. Y’all need to take a look at it because her stuff is amazing. Her house is like an art gallery – filled with both her works and the works of her artisan friends. Baskets woven into pieces of art, paper sculptures… and I am so mad at myself for forgetting to bring the cable for my camera because there should be photos here. I’ll just have to post them after I get home. 

After way too short a visit, we hopped into the car to head to Western Kentucky to spend a few days with our friends who are also our new business partners. I love being out here. Not only is it just great getting to spent time with Lou & Bill but it’s just so pretty out here. 

I am kinda disappointed in the weather, though. We can’t go out to Lou’s parents’ house to shoot today because it’s raining. It had better not rain tomorrow. We have plans to go out on their boat. 

The rain did not ruin yesterday, though. We did get to eat at the best BBQ place on earth: Moonlite in Owensboro. I tried mutton. It was way better than I thought it would be. I’m not quite sure why I thought it wouldn’t be good. Maybe it’s just something about the word ‘mutton’ but it was real good.