Monkling’s Blog

The answer to that would be no. In spite of studying Italian in junior high school, high school and attempting to learn it on my own, all I can manage is maybe being able to converse with a three year old. Not only that, but it is the only subject I ever failed in my entire life.

You would think the fact that all 4 grandparents were born in Italy would mean someone in the family would be capable of speaking Italian but no. There’s not one single person who can speak it. Theresa is going to take it next semester so maybe that will motivate me to try learning it again. Currently I have… (looking at bookshelves) 7 assorted books that are supposed to help me learn it. I also have a set of CDs. It seems I haven’t absorbed terribly much from them.

Why do I want to learn it? Well for one thing, I don’t like defeat and it bothers me that I seem to be incapable of learning it. Another reason is that we plan on going to Italy for our 25th wedding anniversary. That means if I want to at least understand what’s being said, I have 2 years to get some basic vocabulary down.

Then there’s the third reason. I just found a really delicious looking recipe that I want to make. Except the recipe is in Italian. I know just enough Italian to get the general idea but not the details. I’m going to translate the damn thing if it takes me a week to do it! Maybe I’ll be able to figure it out by Easter and make it for dessert.

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#1 - Tonight there’s a new episode of Ghost Whisperer!

#2 - No one warned me that during the whole pre-menopause stuff, your hormones are totally screwed up and you feel like you belong in a rubber room.

#3 - Did anyone notice that in the poll, sfingi won by a longshot? Okay, fine. What really happened is my sister admitted it was sfingi and not zeppole and then some evil person hacked into the poll database and changed the numbers.

What is the St. Joseph's pastry with the cannoli cream called?

• sfingi
• Who cares, as long as I get some.
• zeppoli
• I have no idea.

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#4 - I love Netflix. And what insane, warped TV station shows an entire series from the beginning and then drops it after the third season, goes back to season one and forgets all about season 4??? Yeah, well good thing they have season 4 on DVD and now Profiler is at the top of my queue.

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In the newspaper this weekend, there was an article about a device called the Mosquito that shop owners are buying to discourage gangs of teens from hanging out by their stores. The way it works is by emitting a high frequency sound that teens supposedly find annoying; so annoying that they will flee from the sound. Sounds sort of like a dog whistle, doesn’t it?

I don’t know much about sound frequencies, other than the fact that there are some on the high end that I can’t hear with my right ear. I discovered that during my brief stint of working for a pediatrician. One day I was playing around with the little machine that tests hearing, learning how to operate it. I was standing there listening, moving the dial when I said, “Uh, something’s wrong with the machine. I don’t hear anything.” My co-worker told me to switch it to the other ear and, sure enough, it wasn’t the machine that was broken but my right ear. My only disappointment in that is that my hearing loss is in the high frequency end and not the low. I keep thinking if the sounds I couldn’t hear were bass, I’d be much happier. Then I couldn’t hear the sonic blasts from teens driving past with their radios blaring but that’s a story for another day.

Getting back to the Mosquito, we decided to test it. The claim is that your ability to hear high frequency sounds diminishes when you get into your mid twenties. Since I discovered that article on the weekend, I just happened to have my own under twenty test-teen handy. I did a Google search to see if there was an mp3 file of this sound somewhere on the Internet. I found several. I played the first one & was able to hear it (Click on the little blue arrow to play the mp3 files):

I wondered if my hearing had suddenly improved so I called Frank in to see if he could hear it. He did. Theresa wandered in wanting to know what the heck we were doing. I told her about my experiment and we found another website with the sound:

This time none of us could hear it. As a result of this experiment, I have come to a conclusion. There are only 2 possible reasons why our experiment failed - either Frank & I are immature and have the hearing of teenagers or Theresa is so mature that she cannot hear what other teenagers hear.

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Bruce Goldish is going to be playing at Googie’s Lounge above The Living Room on Sunday, April 1 at 7:30 pm.

154 Ludlow (btwn Stanton & Rivington)
New York City NY
212-533-7235

I’d insert a little map of where that is except the easiest way to do that would be to grab it out of MS Streets & Trips and I don’t want Bill Gates coming after me for copyright infringement (is that the right word?).

Since I like sticking pictures into my blog, I decided to put this one here. Here’s Bruce with his traveling companion:

And, uh, he is not in a hotel room with the dog because he’d never do such a thing. He would never, ever sneak a dog into a hotel that doesn’t allow dogs.

In other news, I’m expecting a package today so I’m trying to figure out how to get my UPS guy on video without him seeing me. I can pretty much guarantee that if I do get him on video, he won’t throw my package today. Maybe I should practice by taking some shots of passing school buses.

It seems I was half right. He did toss the package but he took 2 steps into the gate, just far enough to be out of camera range. I’m sorry but ya’ll won’t get to see him today.

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Today we are going to talk about UPS or, more specifically, my UPS man. As previously noted in yesterday’s blog entry, I do not like shopping. I do, however, love online shopping. Yes, let’s just be honest here and admit to loving every single aspect of the Internet but that’s another day’s blog. Let’s get back to online shopping and my UPS man. If you buy a lot of stuff online, you get to see the UPS guy a lot. Sure, sometimes it’s the FedEx man or an item is shipped out by Priority Mail but I’m guessing 85% of my orders ship through UPS.

What is my point, you ask? Well I have a bit of a problem with my UPS guy. He doesn’t like opening the gate and walking up the three little steps where he can gently place my package by the front door. No. His preferred method is to fling the package from the curb and hope that it lands somewhere within 20 feet of the front door. On occasion, he likes to mix things up a bit and try to scare the crap out of me by actually hitting the door with the package. Imagine sitting at your desk in a completely quiet house, typing away, minding your own business when suddenly you hear this loud crash outside. Another thing he sometimes does, just to keep people guessing is honk his truck’s horn as he pulls up in front of the house. I’m not quite sure what the point of that is. Maybe he expects me to run out to him so he doesn’t even have to leave his truck?

In case anyone is thinking, “Maybe one time your big, ferocious dog was out and now the UPS guy’s afraid to come in the gate,” the answer to that would be, “No.” He does this with everyone on the block, especially the horn honking. Your next question is going to be, “Why don’t I talk to him or file a complaint?” Because there is just no way I am capable of saying to him, “Could you please not throw my packages around,” without sounding nasty. Trust me. It’s just not possible. That’s why I married Frank. He’s in charge of talking nice to people.

But this isn’t really about filing a complaint and getting someone in trouble. The question is, why did this guy become a UPS delivery man in the first place if he hates delivering packages? Does he secretly yearn to drive one of the UPS planes but they won’t let him because he’s psychotic so they put him in a truck instead? Is he a super hero and has to get through his route fast so that he can run off and save people? Maybe he’s a frustrated baseball player who never made it to the big league. I think next time I’m expecting a package, I’ll have to try to secretly capture him on video and upload it. Then maybe we can solve the secret of his true identity.

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I know my thousands of readers must be so disappointed that there was no blog entry yesterday. I decided to take this Sunday as a day of rest. Okay, I’m lying. That’s not really why there’s no entry. I was just busy doing fun stuff all day. Darn! I lied again. Good thing I didn’t give up lying for Lent. Well most of it was fun, except for the shopping part. I don’t like shopping but Theresa put it like this, “Mom, if we don’t go out to buy some new jeans, you will have to deal with the fact that my new hobby will be mooning people since every pair I own is too big and falls off.” I’m not sure if that’s exactly how she worded it but obviously we needed to do some serious shopping.

Once Theresa was all set and ready to go back to the dorm, we went over to Church to pretend it was St. Patrick’s Day. Our parish was having a little Irish concert. We have 2 really good choirs - an adult one & a children’s one. We also have a lot of musical talent in our parish, not just on the singing end but with instruments as well so I’m pretty sure the music we heard is not typical of most parishes. One part I found especially fun was when our Polish priest sang an Irish lullaby. Our parish organist said to him, “You’re the only one I am not giving the microphone to.” Fr. Luke has a great voice and is a very enthusiastic singer.

After all that activity, I was too tired to cook so we went over to Outback Steakhouse. I was informed last year by an Australian friend that the menu is not a reflection of what actual Australian restaurants serve but we’ll still pretend it is authentic.

And now, to make up for not having posted anything yesterday, I give you muffins:

Not only that, but I will post the recipe.

• 1 1/3 cup oatmeal (I used the quick cooking kind)
• 1 1/3 cup yogurt (the original recipe uses buttermilk but I had plain low fat yogurt in the house, used that, & loved how they came out.)
• 1 1/3 cup flour (I’ve been using King Arthur’s white whole wheat flour because it just sounds so healthy. It’s very close to regular flour & the girls have no clue I’m using whole wheat.)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 egg (I’ve used egg substitutes to cut down on the calories & there’s no noticeable difference in taste.)
• 1/2 cup oil (I cut the oil down from the original 2/3 cup)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon (I added the vanilla & cinnamon)
• 2/3 cup brown sugar (that’s from the original recipe but I use 1/3 cup of turbinado sugar & 1/3 cup of Spenda to lower the calories)
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans (The original recipe didn’t call for that but pecans just make everything taste good. I don’t use them all the time but I do like throwing them in once in a while.)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. And of course you want to use the paper muffin liners because it’s so much easier. The original directions tell you to soak the oats in the buttermilk for 30 minutes. What I do is throw in all the liquid ingredients for the 30 minute soak and I also toss in the turbinado sugar so that it will have some time to dissolve. Otherwise I’m imagining it might not dissolve completely and someone will bit into it and crack a tooth. In another bowl, mix all the dry ingredients. After the oats have finished soaking, add the dry ingredients to the wet ones, mix until just moistened & spoon into the muffin tins. Bake for 20 minutes.

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First I have to say that I did not want to go on this retreat. I didn’t want to give up an entire Saturday to go someplace where there were going to be questions about faith & deep stuff like that. I’m too shallow. But my friend, Dolores, was going to give a talk and my curiosity won out. “What was she going to talk about? Would I need to hold up little cue cards for the audience as she did her talk so people would know when to laugh or clap?” Besides, who wouldn’t want to get up at 7 a.m. on a dreary Saturday morning?

When we arrived, the first thing I noticed was a little Church that seemed to have been built on a swamp or something:

I still have no idea why that Church was sunken into the ground. Of course, considering that the room we were in was originally a stable, who knows what sort of building the Church was intended to be when it was built.

When we walked in, I was glad to see that I recognized most of the people there, if not from having spoken to them, at least by name or face. This was good because I don’t do particularly well with strangers. Strange people, yeah. Strangers, no.

Dolores did really well. Her voice didn’t sound too nervous and you could barely notice her trembling. Seriously, she really did a wonderful job.

We were broken up into groups of 6. I was with Frank (of course), 2 new people & 2 women I’ve known since our kids first started school together. Yeah, there’s the stranger factor but this was good because it was only 2 and they were nice. Well it was good until they got to the questions part. We just won’t talk about that here.

Sometime after lunch we had recess. We were told there was water if we followed a path out back. We did find water - in the form of mud. Lots of gooey, sticky mud that there was no way around; only through.

There were no signs indicating which way to walk when we came to a couple of forks but we managed to find our way to the water. We were supposed to be thinking on things like, “Have I changed?” and stuff like that but it ended up being more of a social hour. Okay, social 20 minutes. Then we almost had a tragedy:

Maybe Nelson heard something that disturbed him during the talks & meditations. Only he can know the reasons why he felt compelled to jump. But Dan talked him down. Either that or Dan was trying to help push him off the cliff.

After our walk through the woods, it turned out that Frank had carried a hitchhiker. There was a spider on him. I thought when they asked what did you bring back with you, he should have said that. We also brought back mud and goose dung on our shoes but I guess that’s not one of the answers they’d be looking for, either.

The day turned out to be a lot of fun. It was good talking to people I haven’t seen in ages. It was nice finding out the names of some people I have know for years. It was even nice getting to meet new people.

On a serious note, the theme was basically about seeing Jesus in the ordinary. There was some discussion about who do you see Jesus in or in what situations and also about when do others see Him in you. I feel like this - I mostly work from home. My contact with others is pretty limited. My life doesn’t really have any affect on anyone. But then I got to thinking. It’s easier seeing how others affect your life. It’s difficult if not impossible to know how you touch the lives of others. Except in those rare instances when someone says something to you, you generally just go about your life doing whatever you do. You’re not usually particularly aware of how your actions or how the way you live your life affects others. In my case, I am aware of how the bad things I do affect others but I’m sure not aware of anything in just the simple, ordinary things. Maybe it would be a good thing to be more aware of both sides - the good & the ordinary as well as the bad.

And no one better tell Msgr. that I’m sitting here blogging when I’m supposed to be doing the bulletin.

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Today I found out I have magical powers. Simply by my mere presence, computers tremble and do what they’re supposed to do. Boss Lady Gloria said something was wrong with Outlook. It wasn’t alerting her properly when she had appointments. The reminders were off by hours. “Here, let me show you,” she said as she set an appointment to go off in 15 minutes. Guess what? It went off in 15 minutes. “How did you do that? What did you do?” asked the amazed Gloria. I told her I didn’t do anything. Larry said don’t ever say that; I’m to take credit for anything I possibly can, whether I fixed something or not.

Chef Larry seems to have some magic powers of his own or maybe just ESP. I totally forgot to tell him that it’s Lent so I can’t eat meat. Being psychic, he made shrimp for lunch.

After work, it was off to the vet with Lumpy…. uh, I mean Nicky. It seems the old guy has a thyroid problem so we had to get some blood tests done. But that’s not the interesting part. While we waiting in the vet’s office, other pets came in. Pets I had never thought anyone would bother taking to a vet. One was a turtle. It wasn’t a huge turtle. Maybe 4″. Okay, I guess that is big compared to those tiny things we used to buy as kids from the hobby shop on 18th Avenue.

The other pet was a lizard named E.T. A woman & her teenage son came in with the lizard. The boy carried it in wrapped in a blanket in a box the size of a shoe box. I didn’t catch the name of what sort of lizard it was because I was busy trying to make sure the kitten in the cage didn’t grab Nicky’s tail. His tail was constantly wagging & the kitten thought it was one of those toys and he kept sticking his little paw out through the bars of the cage trying to swipe at his tail.

Darn! I was just thinking I wish I had some photos of the lizard or the cat trying to grab Nicky’s tail. I keep forgetting that my new cell phone has a camera. I really need to stay aware of all photo opportunities from now on. Maybe I’ll get some good ones tomorrow.

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Now that Theresa’s away at college, I try to stay signed on to AIM as much as possible. It’s a pretty decent way to communicate quickly, especially when she’s in class & should be paying attention to other things - like the teacher. If anyone has kids who use AIM a lot, you may have noticed they sometimes stick in quotes from online conversations they’ve had. Theresa has quoted friends before but, for the first time ever, she quoted me.

“Ma, you’re not funny, especially if you say you’re funny.”

Moving on to other news events of the day, I have to share this story. My brother in-law had some sort of heart procedure done today & while in recovery, was told not to cough or laugh. So he doesn’t laugh but he does attempt to get Janet to laugh. There he is with all the EKG leads & stuff so he takes the nurse call button and says, “I’m gonna blow us up!” Yes, we are all nuts and he’s fine.

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I know ya’ll are getting sick of me harping on my lack of a Nashville trip this weekend but what fun would I be if I didn’t drag out the whining? (Did I mention we’re going in April & that we got a refund so we didn’t even lose anything. Do you want to smack me yet?)

Yesterday we took off for Atlantic City. How could we resist the lure of a free room at the Tropicana? The last few times we’ve gone, I’ve lost but even with losing, I figure we’re still ahead with getting a free room. Plus I just like that place. It’s like a little village in Havana:

It was a bit too chilly to walk on the Boardwalk so we were forced to just eat and gamble. I think the universe felt guilty that I missed out on my weekend away so it rewarded me & I won. Frank, on the other hand, didn’t. Between the 2 of us, I think we probably came ahead by $50 but I’m happy. I like winning.

The view from our window:

Hey, what do you expect for free - an ocean view? I did wonder if those spotlights would shine into our room all night but we were good. It was nice & dark.

The only bad thing was last night when we were trying to find a sports bar where they were airing the Islander’s game. All they had on was basketball. On the other hand, the Islanders lost so maybe that was a good thing.

On our trips to Atlantic City, we’ve always passed this exit that had a sign saying, “Batsto Village.” My family has always slurred their “P’s” in Italian so for my entire life, I thought the word for crazy was battzo which made that sign pretty interesting. (Ask my dad how to say “pizza“. He doesn’t eat pizza. He eats “beat-za“.) The real word for crazy is “pazzo” but I still wanted to know what this Crazy Village was all about. This afternoon, we decided to take a detour & check it out. Problem was, once you got off the exit, there was no indication of where, exactly, this Batsto Village was. It turns out, it’s within a park so, on our next trip, we will have to check it out. Don’t worry. You’ll be along for the ride.

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