Monkling’s Blog

Being an education major apparently means you get to do some cool reports. Theresa had to take a couple of field trips to places that would be good to take children to; educational type places like science museums. On Saturday, I joined her on one of her trips. We went to the Queens County Farm Museum. It’s the only existing fully functioning farm in New York City. One of the coolest things is, admission is free, as long as there isn’t a special event going on.

Now for those of you who grew up on a farm or out in the wilderness someplace, you probably won’t get this but we think the whole farm thing is extremely cool. “Oh, look!! There’s a dog!”

Okay, yes we have seen dogs before. We even have one. But ours doesn’t wear a blue bandanna. And this dog may not look terribly scary to you but these guys were keeping a close eye on him:

Then there was the bored goat. He didn’t pay any attention to the dog. He didn’t pay any attention to anyone unless you happened to have some food for him. (They sell food that you can feed to the animals. Most kids get a big kick out of that.)

Since it’s still early, they don’t have a terribly huge crowd of animals yet. The horses don’t arrive until May. I seem to recall there being pigs there, as well. I guess the horses and the pigs go down south for the winter. We did discover a cow hanging out with her friends:

Tell me that look doesn’t say, “Yeah, that’s right. I’m friends with poultry. You have a problem with that?? Don’t you even think of messing with them or I’ll stomp on you.” I did notice, despite her arrogant attitude, she shunned the poor rooster who was having a bad hair day.

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Theresa had a story to share with us before heading back to her dorm tonight. A few days ago, a girl fell asleep in the lounge of one of the dorm buildings. She was “inappropriately touched” while she slept, woke up and chased the guy off. The college issued a warning to everyone to be careful, lock your doors, keep an eye out for anything suspicious.

The really amusing part of the warning was the description of the guy: “Blue pants & white shirt”

That was the entire description, word for word.

Theresa shares my warped sense of humor. Darling Daughter gave some accusing looks to 2 of her male friends who happened to be wearing the same attire as the offender. One of them had walked through that lounge 15 minutes earlier and saw the girl sleeping there. Naturally my daughter had to give her friend a hard time. “If you had been there 15 minutes later, you could have saved her.”

Well I suppose finding the humor in it is a whole lot better than living in fear, eh?

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Yesterday we went off to Herricks Community Center minus half the expected crowd, to see Fiddler on the Roof. (For anyone in the NY area who might be interested in attending a performance, the Herricks Community Players put on 2 plays a year so check out their website.)

It helps knowing people in high places. We had seats in the second row, center. Now I know you may be thinking the second row might be too close; that we were in danger of getting spit on. Ah, but no. The orchestra saved us by providing a buffer between us and the actors. I do think they need to do a better job with their musicians, though. They should only have ugly ones. If you stick a good looking clarinet player directly in front of a 19 year old, it can be distracting.

The performance was great & it was a lot of fun except I was terribly disappointed that I couldn’t take photos. I think that’s just plain mean so I didn’t listen to them. No one’s going to tell me I can’t take a picture of Fiddler on the Roof:

Yeah, that’s right. I walk on the edge. Let them come and get me!

Oops. I just realized my sister reads my blog. Uh, Janet, you didn’t miss anything. Really. It was horrible. I just said it was good because I lie a lot. Spending the day in the hospital was probably a lot more fun. Don’t you believe me??

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Today’s plan was this:
5 p.m. - go out to dinner with Frank, Theresa, Janet, Jim & Mike
8 p.m. - go see Fiddler on the Roof with the above mentioned people
8:15 p.m. - distract Dolores while she’s up on stage singing and dancing

That was before The Phone Call. I was on the phone with Deb discussing next weekend’s plans when the annoying ’someone else is calling you’ beep came. I didn’t look to see who it was. “Oh, that’s probably my sister calling about today’s plans. I’ll call her back.”

After I hung up with Debbie, I looked at the Caller ID & didn’t recognize the number but, based on the area code, thought it might be my brother. Close. It was my brother in-law.

Jim: “Guess where your sister is.”
Me: “Oh, I know this one! The hospital.”
Jim: “She has kidney stones.”
Me: “So what else is new? She usually shoots those suckers out with no problem. Tell her to take some drugs and get her butt out of there.”
Jim: “No can do. This time she has one the size of a grapefruit. They are handcuffing her to the hospital bed and forcing her to stay overnight.”
Me: “Fine. I’ll just have to scalp your tickets for $200 apiece.”

Okay, maybe the conversation wasn’t quite like that but we’re talking about someone who decided to pull the same stunt on the night of her rehearsal dinner. My sister really needs to get her timing down a bit better.

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Sadly I have discovered that I did not invent the term ‘blog surfing.’ Not that there are a whole lot of references to that phrase but I did find it in a blog that dated back a few years. And here I thought I would become famous or something.

It’s been cold, rainy and otherwise boring here with nothing to do but stay indoors and clean a bit. (No mopping, except left-handed, with the Swiffer WetJet®. I learned my lesson.) Naturally, I require frequent breaks. During those breaks, I have been either playing with my new camera or blog surfing.

Let me tell ya, there are a lot of really strange blogs out there! Stranger than anything you’ll ever find here. I’ve used that blogger redirect link because, although WordPress also has one, it’s much slower.

One thing I’ve learned about blogs is about a third of them are business or technology related, a third are sort of like mine only much more boring and a third are in other languages. For today’s entertainment, I decided to see if I could tell what language these were written in and what they mean:

Χτυπάει το τηλέφωνο στο σχολείο (Greek)
Choose the telescope and ogle

tras haber solucionado ciertos temas de deudas con el técnico (Spanish)
we have the solution to certain types of fears by scaring them with technology

En lång dröm om ett eget café (Swedish)
I long for a drum filled with egret coffee

we moesten 5 fotoos maken van een persoon die je toegewezen kreeg (Norwegian)
we mostly made 5 photos of the van for the person who’s a toboggan kook

Sono passati gia 2 anni da quando al salone di Tokyo (Italian)
it’s been past 2 years when the salmon came from Tokyo

elon que vous serez riche ou pauvre, puissant ou misérable (French)
it is good to be rich and powerful, otherwise you are miserable

Инструмент для выбивания знаков на металлах (Russian)
nonpayment will result in shakes and meanness

Netztechnikunternehmen soll jetzt noch im ersten Quartal (German)
many naked fishermen stole jets in the night in the eastern quarter

Hey, I told you it was a slow news day. Be grateful I’m not posting dozens of photos of my bamboo plant taken at 50 different angles with 108 different settings.

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I entered into a new hobby a few months ago - doing online surveys. Initially I signed up on 35,349 different survey websites but I have since weeded out the ones that aren’t quite as profitable. There are 5 of them that I now consider worth spending the time on. So far I’ve earned $80 which isn’t exactly going to pay off that new camera but it’s not bad for sitting here answering questions.

The fun thing about it (besides the cash) is it’s like a little power trip. My opinion matters! I am important! No, I do not like that new product!

I do, however, have a few issues with some of the questions. I have no idea who comes up with these questions but they need to get a better grip on reality. I’m sorry but I just can’t picture walking into a car dealership and saying, “I want you to show me a new car that is going to make me feel confident.” Do people really experience emotions when they get into a car? I suppose there are some people who may look for a car they consider exciting to drive or that will be viewed as a status symbol but not me. I just want one that won’t crush like an accordion if someone rear ends me and won’t decide to break down halfway through a 9 hour trip.

Other fun surveys are ones that ask about employment. If you say you are self employed, then you must have other people who work for you. They do not give you an option of saying you have zero number of employees. It’s just not allowed.

How about make-up? Those who know me personally know I can’t be bothered with it. I think it’s annoying. Picture me viewing a potential new eye liner and answering questions. Do you think using this eye liner will make you feel: a) dependable; b) happy; c) nervous; d) important. Uh, none of the above? They don’t have ‘it will make me feel like a raccoon’ as one of their options.

I also found out that my kids, because they dorm, are no longer considered part of our household. In order for them to be considered part of the family, they have to live here for 9 or more months. Did you notice their criteria is equal to how long a typical pregnancy is? No matter that we still support them financially or that Theresa is home every weekend. Sorry, they’re out.

Well now that I found out I have two rooms all to myself since they no longer live here, I think I’ll go upstairs and turn their rooms into a hobby room and an exercise room…

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Today is Mom’s birthday. She would have been 70. It’s hard to imagine her at 70; to imagine what she might have looked like today. This is her on her 16th birthday:

This past Easter, my sister and youngest brother were talking when they called me over. My sister asked me, “Did Mom use the phrase impatient virgin?” I had forgotten all about that but I confirmed that she did indeed use that phrase. I don’t recall hearing it used ever since. At the time, I didn’t think anything of her saying that but now, looking back, it seems a bit uncharacteristic. I wouldn’t exactly say Mom was a prude but pretty close to it so, when we recalled her saying that, we thought it was pretty funny.

Later in life, Mom started getting a little uh… cranky. We have no idea if it was due to depression, the brain tumor or both but she did come out with some pretty funny stuff. One day she came home from the local drug store ranting about the pharmacist. He told her to “Have a good one.”

“What is that supposed to mean? “ Each time she went in there, he would say that until she finally snapped back at him saying, “Have a good what?”

I wonder what it was like when she got up to heaven. Somehow I imagine it may have gone like this:

Ma: Couldn’t you have waited another week to take me? I’m missing my 45th wedding anniversary now.
St. Peter: Marie, think of what a wonderful celebration you’ll be able to have here with us.
Ma: But my children and grandchildren aren’t here. How can I have a party without them?
St. Peter: You do have some grandchildren here, already. And your parents, your in-laws. I’m sure you’ll have a very good time here.
Ma: My mother in-law is here? And you can’t tell me Marion made it up here!
St. Peter: You’re holding up the line. Just go on in and enjoy yourself. Welcome to heaven. Have a good one.
Ma: Have a good what?

Happy Birthday, Mom!

And if my little brother wanders on here, Happy Birthday, Paul. Have some Junior Mints.

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I came across an old journal of mine and found something in it that is just way too funny to keep to myself. For almost 4 years, in the late 1970s/early 1980s I worked for a doctor on the Upper East Side.

He was a wonderful boss and doctor - maybe half the time. The other half, well let’s just say he was troubled and didn’t come in to work. I swear the man had some sort of book with excuses in it that he could refer to when he called the office to say he wouldn’t be in. This is just a mere fraction of the stuff he used to tell us. (I was young, I was going out all the time so it’s amazing I even kept this good of a record.)

April - he threw his back out
- his father had a heart attack
- he was up all night because someone in the building was murdered & the cops were questioning everyone

May - He was out dancing the previous night & hurt his leg
- he slipped in the shower & hurt his arm
- a close friend committed suicide & he had to make all the arrangements
- he was subpoenaed & had to talk to a lawyer
- he had the flu

June - He had to do his taxes
- had meningitis (& recovered amazingly fast)
- for 2 weeks the office too messy w/ construction so he didn’t come in

Sept. - He fell asleep and lapsed into a coma (that’s one of my favorites)

Oct. - He had migraine headaches

Nov. - He broke his tooth & needed emergency surgery
- he overslept (guess he never thought to come in late)
- the stereo fell on his foot
- he moved and nothing was unpacked
- something came up with his ex-wife & he had to go out of town

Dec. - He had a rare thyroid disease (he said it was so rare that you couldn’t even look it up in any medical book)

I just counted (gee, I’m not in the least bit compulsive) and there are only 19 excuses listed here but it does give you a pretty good idea of what we had to deal with. Now doesn’t that sound like fun? Feel free to borrow any of these. I’m sure he won’t mind.

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Since I’ve only been doing this for a couple of months, I’ve been wondering about a few things. Do I have to post a brand new note and tell people if I edit old notes or do stuff like add pictures (like when I added some photos to the 2 entires from the 14th & 15th of Nashville stuff)?

Ya see, now part of me says, “Hey, it’s my blog and I can do whatever I want,” while the other half says, “Oh, but if I don’t tell people, they will miss important things like that outstanding photo taken at the Grand Olde Opry.”

Then I was blog surfing and came across someone saying they never re-read any entries so there are typos & stuff. I’d have a freaking heart attack if it’s not perfect. I am just way too obsessive to not go back and check for spelling errors and typos. Yes, and you are all laughing at me thinking, “This is perfect??” Okay, not perfect but I don’t want to do any really stupid things like say pubic instead of public.

What about this posting every single day thing I have going? Sure the 5 people who read this every day will like that but isn’t it inconsiderate of me for those who only read it once a week? Who wants to read 7 posts? I suppose it could be worse, though. It could be 7 posts saying stuff like, “Today I went to the store. Yesterday I went for a walk…”

All right, I do believe it’s time for me to go off to bed. And if that damn dog wakes me up at 4:30 a.m. again, he’s going to be heading home to Jesus a lot sooner than he thinks.

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Subtitled, “My husband is the sweetest man to ever walk the face of the earth.”

I started the conversation like this: “Honey, do you remember the pictures I took of Steve’s graduation from high school? I had my new, really good digital camera, we had front row seats and all the photos came out like crap?” This was true. Stephen got all sorts of awards & kept popping up on stage like a jack in the box. Unfortunately, the pictures came out so dark & grainy, I could have drawn them better. (Keep in mind, when I draw people, they are stick figures.)

We were off to a good start. He did recall this. I explained that part of the problem is an insufficient flash and the inability to adjust any settings on those little automatic camera. I could just picture him on the other end of the phone, pretending he has a clue what I’m talking about, nodding knowingly. Next I hit him with this line, “I am really lusting after a good SLR digital camera.”

He laughed. This was good. Then I told him I had done some research and I found a camera that got good reviews. I’d be able to use my old zoom lens with it, the one he bought me as a birthday gift when we were dating. He said okay, buy it.

“Don’t you want to know how much it is?”
“If you want it, we should get it.”
“But it’s a lot.”
“How much?” When I told him the price, he did not have the expected heart attack. He said that’s not so bad.

I will be stalking my psychotic UPS guy for the rest of the week. If he dares to toss that package, I may shoot him. (Luckily I do not own a gun.) Then I have to learn how to use the thing before Steve’s graduation. I have less than 3 weeks.

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