Monkling’s Blog

There is a huge debate going on around here. Okay, not really huge. Just semi-big. There are good, valid points on both sides. No, this is not some local political debate. It doesn’t even involve more than 1 person. This debate is taking place inside my head. Naturally that got me to wondering something - just how odd am I or does everyone argue with themselves?

This is all about the boring, never-ending topic of my arm and the tendinitis & involves all sorts of questions. Should I go back to the doctor? If I do, what doctor do I go to? I don’t like my primary doctor. Should I just go straight to a specialist? What happens when the specialist asks who referred me? (Uh, the yellow pages?) Don’t worry. I am not throwing these questions out for any of you to answer. It is simply to illustrate the current battle.

Going back to my initial wonderings (Spell check is saying that word is wrong but I don’t care. It’s my blog and if I want to make up words, I will and no stinkin’ spell check is going to stop me!) how many people argue with themselves? What happens when one side wins out but then it turns out the wrong side won? Do you stop talking to yourself? If you stop talking to yourself, is that a good thing?

Ah, yes, people. Welcome to my brain. And here’s an interesting question for you. If my thinking is this twisted under normal conditions, can you even begin to imagine how bad it would be if I drank a few mojitos and then blogged?

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We interrupt this blog to bring you the following close-to-useless information. Anyone who knows me, knows I cannot just leave well enough alone. Oh, no. If there is any fiddling around to do, I will do it. No way was I going to accept WordPress simply as it came. Thus the 25 million plugins, some of which I will explain in this new, exciting blog post.

Sometimes the comments left on my blog are funnier than anything I come up with. Because of that, I installed 2 comment related plugins. One (seen in the sidebar where it says “Posts with unread comments“) shows you all the new comments since your last visit. It uses cookies so if you have them blocked for my site, it won’t work. And why would you want them blocked for my site, anyway? Unless you know I am obtaining all sorts of information from your cookies like all of your deepest, darkest secrets. Anyhow, if you click on the number in parenthesis, it will take you directly to the first unread comment in that thread.

The other comment related plugin involves that little box near the bottom of the comment form (Notify me of followup comments via e-mail). If you have that checked, you will receive any follow-up comments to that thread in email. That means you can read all the comments from the comfort of your very own email program without going all the way back to my blog.

Then there’s that “register” link. Since I am the all powerful Supreme Ruler of the blog, I’m always logged in and I really have no idea what happens if you register. I suspect all it does is allows you to comment without filling out all the other info into the form every single time.

This ends our blog public service announcement for today. We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog entry - which will follow sometime today…

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Last week (or maybe the week before or the month before, for all I know with my memory!) there seemed to be this trend on a lot of blogs with the bloggers questioning whether or not their blogs were boring. All of a sudden there was this rash of self-doubt. Someone used the word “mundane” and I had replied that, in my opinion, the point of a blog was to let others into our lives and that this included those mundane moments.

Then we were watching Heroes last night. Don’t worry. This is not a spoiler. At the end of the episode, one character used that same word, mundane, and I feel compelled to quote what he said here:

So much struggle for meaning, for purpose and in the end we find it only in each other; our shared experience of the fantastic and the mundane; the simple human need to find a kindred, to connect and to know in our hearts that we are not alone.

That just made me think of the whole blog experience. It seems a perfect description of why we blog. Well and then there’s me who has the added purpose of being a wise ass with an audience.

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Yes, I like to make up words like “miss-seen.” There is probably a real word to describe that concept but I’m ignorant and too lazy to look up the right word.

Moving on… I remember reading something that said people don’t read things word for word. I believe there was even an email going around on that topic - words totally misspelled but the email was still readable, supposedly proving this point.

What no one mentioned is the flip side of that - making mistakes, seeing words that aren’t there. I thought of that this morning when I was out at the supermarket. I was standing in line at the register and looking at the magazines there. I had to do a double take because I could swear one of them said “Fat Ass.” I was thinking okay, that seems odd to have on the front cover of a magazine. Then I realized it actually said “Fat $$$.” Somehow, in my warped brain, I turned the last 2 dollar signs into ‘S’s and added an ‘A’ in front.

While we’re on the topic of magazine covers, I want to know why there are at least 5 woman’s magazines that come out once a month and every single month there’s something about the secrets to weight loss. How can they find that much to talk about on the exact same subject? That means (getting calculator…) there are at least 60 different weight loss tips & secrets every year.

Maybe that explains why so many people are overweight. All those magazines are doling out secrets & diet tips one at a time and the only way you can lose weight is to buy up every single copy of every single magazine until you have all the secrets. By the way, did you notice that right next to any talk about dieting, there is always a huge photo of some really fattening dessert?

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I’m not sure if I can summon up anything funny today to write about but I promised myself to write something in this blog every single day so here I am, anyway.

This morning I attended the funeral Mass for a young man from our parish. Billy was a year younger than Steve and his younger brother was a classmate of Theresa’s. The Church was absolutely packed. I saw so many of the parents that I used to see all the time when the kids were in grammar school. And the kids - so many of them; kids I haven’t seen since they were little. Sitting directly in front of me was a boy who lost his own brother in a hit & run several years ago. This had to be one of the most difficult funerals I ever attended.

Those of you who pray - please remember Billy’s family in your prayers.

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That was the original plan. I can’t even remember the last time we saw a movie in a real, live, actual movie theater. Then Frank had the idea, “Why don’t we go into the city to see it at the Ziegfeld?” It’s not one of those old movie theaters chopped into 20 little ones. This place is like ya’ll remember back when we were kids going to the movies.

Well alrighty, that sounds like fun. And since we never took Theresa out for dinner for her birthday, we should do that, too. Our tradition is that the kids can pick where they want to eat for their birthday & Theresa’s birthday sorta got delayed with all the graduation stuff. It was decided we’d drive in, have Thai for dinner and go to the movies. We had driven in 2 weeks ago (the 14 wives incident) and traffic wasn’t too bad. Sundays are usually a decent day to drive in the city.

Ah, famous last words. It took us longer to drive up from 34th Street to 54th Street than the entire trip to the city. Oops, someone forgot (I won’t mention any names except it begins with an “F”) that there was some sort of march. And street fairs. Not just 1 street fair but 2 that we had to pass. If only I had taken my camera, I could have done a cool little video so you could all feel like you were there with us.

Finally we get up to 54th but all the parking garages are backed up. We’re driving around. It’s 5 p.m. We’re thinking no way are we going to be able to eat dinner and get to the movie theater before the 6:30 show. Wait! A parking spot!! It’s only 3 avenues down from where we need to be. (For those of you unfamiliar with NYC, the avenues are about 5 times the length of the streets.)

We can walk. No problem. We park and start walking to the Thai restaurant. It starts raining. Hard. We walk, in the rain, through one of the street fairs, smelling the food cooking. We try not to drool too much and finally make it to the restaurant.

I’m chatting away, telling the kids how Frank & I went to this restaurant years & years ago with Dave & Stephanie; how that was the very first time I met Stephanie face to face. I pause. “Come to think of it, it was raining that day, too. Pouring. Maybe there’s something about this restaurant and rain.”

We did make it to the movie on time. I don’t care that the reviews say Spiderman 3 wasn’t so good. I liked it. I like stories about superheros. Okay, it may not have been quite as good as the first 2 but it wasn’t awful, either. And what is with the people in the balcony who were talking through the entire movie? Why do people pay to go see a movie and then talk through it??

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What happens when you put 11 adults (or almost/mostly adults) and 3 children in a room by themselves? Among other things, there was the Wizard of Oz impression. My 2 year old nephew was wandering around the table and my brother wanted him to sit down so he says to him, “You better sit down or the man behind the curtain is going to yell at you.” There are some curtains up in the restaurant in front of little brick alcoves. My son decides to go behind the curtains and peer out. It took the kids about 15 seconds before yelling out, “That’s Stephen!” I guess Steve isn’t all that scary.

Do you recall how parents, when feeding a kid sitting in a high chair who refuses to eat, take the spoon with the food and pretend it’s an airplane? We did have some of that. Only not parents feeding kids. My sister in-law had her son on her lap so my brother decides to feed her that way. Then my father decides to try that with his wife. Neither were terribly successful.

Then there was this:

My brother turned the boys into pirates.

All this has me wondering - do all families do this sort of thing or are we just all very strange? (Somehow I’m guessing it’s the later of the 2.)

This all took place at Luigi’s, where Frank & I go for dinner just about every month. As we were leaving, we told our waiter, “Now you see why we usually just come alone!”

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Only a psychopath would do the strange things I do. Why was I compelled, after over a year of putting up with a broken CD writer, to suddenly replace the thing at the height of allergy season? It hasn’t worked for ages & I have to decide to replace the stupid thing when I’m already sneezing my head off from all the pollen outside? Yeah, as I said - psychotic.

I don’t know how many of you have ever opened up your computer but picture this: Go out of town for a year. Then come home and look at the dust under your bed. Well double that and that’s what ends up inside the computer. I have no idea how so much dust gets in there. You’d think the little fan on the back would blow any dust out.

I took apart an older computer, pulled out the CD drive and then opened this baby up. I had forgotten just how bad it gets in there. Oh, and you can’t just vacuum out the dust. No, that would be too easy. If you try to stick an electrical appliance in there, you can cause a short. Instead you have to blow it out.

I enjoy playing with those little cans of air. It’s sorta fun on a small scale. But when you blow out a couple of years worth of dust… well then you get big clumps of dust flying all around the room. You will breath in half of this which, of course, will make you sneeze. You wonder to yourself, “If I sneeze into the computer while it’s opened, will I electrocute myself?”

I am happy to report that I did not electrocute myself, my nose did not go flying off my face, even though it felt like it might and I now have a CD drive that works.

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It’s been a strange day of laughs and sadness. It started off pretty awful. When I went to Church this morning, I found out a classmate of my kids had died. He was only 21, a year younger than Steve. We know the family. I hung out with his mom back in the days when the kids were young. Feel sick every time I think about it.

Then there was “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” I want to know who replaced my son. The boy who was here this afternoon not only mowed the lawn but raked and weeded. He was out there for hours. The place looked awful before. I can’t do much without my right arm working right and Frank works late so…. things were a mess until Steve got out there.

And let’s not forget the phone call as Theresa’s packing up the car in between finals. “Mom, do you think the fish will be okay if I put them in the car for a couple of hours?” Uh, no. She needed the dorm room empty before the last final so this was a problem. Luckily, I am so brilliant and quick thinking that I came up with a solution. “Okay, it’s not hot out. Park the car in the shade, leave the windows open a bit and they should live.” There are now 2 fish in my dining room. Hmmm… maybe that wasn’t so brilliant of me.

Steve and his friends always offer entertainment. He left to go meet his friends. One of them was picking him up so he figured he’d start walking towards the boy’s house. About 5 minutes later, I hear a horn honking. Then Mike walks in the house looking for Steve. “Uh, he was on his way to your house.” As I walk Mike to the door, their other friend drives off in Mike’s car, leaving him here. Sometimes I swear I live in a sitcom.

Ah, well, Theresa will be home from Church soon and we have the last 2 episodes of Gilmore Girls to catch up with. We always watch that together.

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Nineteen years ago today, Darling Daughter made her appearance. It’s strange realizing so much time has passed. I can still remember lying in the hospital bed with the nursery just opposite, hearing people saying in amazed voices, “Look at that baby with all the hair.”

Here she is on her first birthday:

Now, here I am with just 1 year left before I no longer am the mother of teenagers. Right now she’s packing up the dorm room. Tonight she’ll be home after her first year of college.

There is one problem with having older kids. Suddenly you have no clue what the heck to buy them as gifts. I still can’t quite figure out how I ended up with a daughter so completely opposite me, far as the whole fashion/ make-up stuff goes. I wouldn’t even dream of attempting to buy her clothes. It was so much easier when you could just go into a store and buy some toys. I think I’ll go off to the store and maybe buy a toy, just for fun.

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