Monkling’s Blog

My sister came home yesterday. Don’t think you guys are off the hook about praying, though. There’s always a risk of something not quite going right. Janet said it will be my fault if there are any complications; that it will be because I didn’t pray hard enough so ya’ll will have to help me avoid getting in trouble. (Being the oldest of 4, I’m used to getting blamed for everything.)

I think she misses her roommate, though. I bet Janet was up all night, unable to fall asleep without the droning of the woman in the next bed. I will refer to the roommate as Bag Lady. This is because she had enough bags to be checking into some fancy hotel in the city. I’m not quite sure what was in all those bags aside from the hospital gowns she stashed away. I guess Bag Lady was concerned they’d run out of gowns.

Bag Lady also was annoyed that there was no refrigerator in the room and kept telling real and imaginary people that she needs to eat 3 bananas a day, must have 3 pillows, cranberry juice and ginger ale. I wonder if she tried calling up room service.

Don’t tell Janet but it’s my fault about the roommate. I put a call in to the hospital and said, “Find the craziest person you have there and make sure you put her in with my sister.”

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That is what a clock is supposed to sound like, isn’t it? Ah, but then you never meet the Holiday Musical Clock. Theresa received this as a gift from one of her students. It’s uh… interesting. It takes something like 30 AA batteries to power it up. (Okay, it only takes 3 but any other clock I saw never took more than 2.)

Then there are instructions in case you can’t figure out how to set a clock with hands. Hey, maybe you’ve only set digital clocks for the last 20 years and can’t figure out how to turn that little thing on the back. The instructions caution about making sure you set it properly. Otherwise you won’t hear the right song on every hour. Yep, this clock plays a different Christmas song every hour.

At first I was concerned that I’d forget to pull the batteries out and this thing would be going all through the night. Luckily it’s quite sophisticated and comes with a light sensor. When it’s dark, the clock doesn’t chime. Uh, I mean play music. I’m trying to think of who might like something like this. I think I should wrap it and give it to someone. Or I could run a special Christmas contest and give it way, along with that watch.

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Theresa teaches religious ed. to a second grade class in our parish on Sunday mornings so she generally comes home every weekend. This morning was the last class before Christmas break and they always have a little Christmas party. There was some doubt, however, about whether or not she’d make it home for the party.

It started on Friday when I got a phone call. “Mom, my battery is dead.” Under normal circumstances, that’s something easily fixed and without need of parental supervision. Ah, but in this family, nothing is ever done easily. She was with her friends and they popped open the hood so that someone could give her a jump. Only there was no battery under the hood. Theresa pulled out the little car manual and saw that the battery is in the trunk by the spare tire. Okay, no big deal. Except that they couldn’t the trunk opened. It would pop open the normal way. The key was stuck in the ignition and they couldn’t get it out to open the trunk manually. Guess who had to drive over with the spare key.

I still can’t figure out why the trunk wouldn’t open, nor why the key wouldn’t release from the ignition but it definitely was stuck in there. My best guess is it has something to do with the security system that comes installed with the car. In any case, we got the trunk opened, got a jump & all was well, including being able to remove the key.

Last night I got another phone call. “Mom, I can’t find my car keys.”
“Do you want me to drive out there?”
“No. I need to find them. My room key is on there.”

So we wait, looking at the clock, wondering how late it will be if and when she does find the keys. Luckily, at 10 we got a phone call saying she found them & was on her way home. It was all good from there. We spent the rest of the evening drinking hot apple cider (yes, with rum), listening to Christmas music and working on these:

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Last night we took a little tour of the Bronx. No, it was not to see more Christmas lights on Pelham Parkway. It was not a planned tour. It happened like this. After visiting MIL at the nursing home, we needed to stop by Frank’s sister’s apartment. We’ve only been there a handful of times. For the 23 years we’ve been married, we’ve been to their apartment maybe 3 or 4 times because usually we see his sister and her husband at their parents’ house.

The problem wasn’t in driving there. We had our trusty GPS to help us with that, even though she wanted us to turn the wrong way down a one way street. She isn’t too smart. When you’re in an area with a lot of apartments, parking can be limited. We couldn’t find a spot close to the building so we drove around a bit and finally found one.

“I think we’re pretty close to the building,” Frank says. He’s good with that sort of thing so I believed him. “I think we walk this way,” he then said and off we went. We’re approaching a large intersection. There is no large intersection near the apartment. We backtrack. We turn down another street that looks familiar. After walking a bit (did I mention it was cold out?) we see a church in the distance and we know the building is across the street from it.

As we near the church, we see a street sign. It was the block we parked on. We were indeed parked close to the building. At least it would have been close if we hadn’t walked 4 blocks out of our way before looping back around.

On a completely different topic, you know how sometimes you can’t sleep and you’re lying there in bed with weird dreams like sugarplums gone bad, dancing in your head? I’m strange enough to actually share with Frank the odd things that come into my mind. He’ll just politely listen to me, look at me like I might have a second head growing out someplace & laugh. I told him he can never say being married to me is boring and at least I keep him entertained.

He’s also good at humoring me. Last night at 11:30 pm. we hear, “BROOOM, BRRRROOOOM!!” followed by, “THUMP, THUMP.” Ah, the kid next door is home. I turned to Frank and said, “I know what I want for Christmas! Will you please get me a shotgun?”

“Okay,” he agreed. Somehow I suspect there won’t really be a shotgun under the tree for me.

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I’m not sure if they still call sections of the hospital ‘wards’ but I don’t care. I’m using it in my title, anyway.

I just heard from Jim, my brother in-law and I now don’t feel bad about the fact that I won’t be getting in to the city to visit my sister in the hospital. There are no rooms available so Janet’s still hanging out in recovery. Odds are that I wouldn’t be able to see her even if I did make the trek all the way into Manhattan.

What I did find amusing is something Jim said, “No matter what hospital your sister is in, she always ends up with a wacko in the next bed.” Unfortunately, he didn’t have time to elaborate but, as you know, it seems that is a family tradition - on both sides. It’s like there’s this message tattooed on the foreheads of anyone I’m related to that says, “Please make sure I have someone psychotic next to me at all times.”

Since the time my sister was 12 and diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, we’ve had interesting hospital adventures. One that sticks out in my mind is an older man a few rooms down who kept repeating over and over again, “Open the door. Open the door, please.” I couldn’t figure out what door he wanted opened since the door to his room was always opened.

I’m sure I’ll have a few amusing hospital stories coming up since Janet’s going to be there for about a week. I’ll be sure to share every detail with you. Don’t worry, though. I will not be posting any hospital pictures.

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I haven’t received a hospital update yet. Instead of staring at the phone, I’ve been keeping myself amused with other things. I’m good at not thinking about things. Instead I’ve been watching the sleet. I wrapped Christmas presents at the kitchen table, watching the nice icy mess outside, thinking, “Oh, yeah. This is what happened back in March. It was a sleet storm that caused me to hurt my elbow.”

Then I avoided doing Christmas cards as I debated whether or not I should do something about the icy sidewalk. Would it be better to shovel off some of that slush and put salt down? Should I leave it alone? Did I really want to go out there? If we had moved like we were supposed to, last year, I wouldn’t have a sidewalk to clear.

Since I had to put shoes on to get the mail in, I figured I might as well shovel a bit. I’m not sure yet whether or not that was a mistake.

Now I’m off to sit by the window and watch the UPS man throw the packages I expect to be delivered today. One is a new blender to replace the one I burnt out. It’s glass. This should be interesting.

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My sister is having surgery tomorrow at noon. Fairly major surgery. So if anyone out there is the praying sort, I’d appreciate some prayers. Of course the worst part is she’ll be in the hospital for a week. An entire week. With no Internet access.

I probably won’t get out to see her because she’s going into the city for this & I need to be around here in case of anything. We’re all looking after my nephew and, although it’s not officially my day until Monday, I’m on back-up. It’ll ease her mind more knowing I’m here than having me sit there while she’s drugged up, not even knowing I’m visiting. Or wondering if I’m going to mess with any of those tubes & things. Or storing up stories to write about on my blog about her…

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No, there wasn’t a break-in. They took the entire store. It’s gone. Vanished. I went out this morning, planning to stop in this Vietnamese grocery store nearby. There are certain specialized things that you can’t pick up in the supermarket. Stuff like adzuki beans and mung beans and miso.

I thought the hardest part of the trip would be finding a parking spot close to the store. Instead, finding the actual store was the tricky part. It’s no longer there. In it’s place is yet another Indian restaurant because having one Indian restaurant per block clearly isn’t enough.

Do you want to know what this means? It means I will have to haul my lazy butt to Flushing. (Yes there is an area in Queens with that name.) Now while I can find anything I would need there, I hate going there. There’s a lot of traffic, it’s impossible to find a place to park and I don’t like dealing with Kamikaze pedestrians. Oh, the trials of city living.

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Let me ask you something: How many men want electric razors for Christmas? Is this high on their list of really cool Christmas presents? I can remember from pretty far back, those commercials with Santa using an electric razor as a sled so this seems to be a big Christmas item, at least to the companies that make electric razors. “Give you man something he’ll use every day!”

I have to wonder what that says about a couple’s relationship if they’re giving each other personal grooming items as gifts. Does the man who receives an electric razor also get one of those nifty clippers to remove nose and ear hair? What message does that give a person if they receive a razor as a gift? “You are very hairy and that old razor just isn’t quite cutting it so here’s a nice new razor. I even had it engraved so you’ll think about me every time you use it.”

On the other hand, I guess it’s better than receiving a can of deodorant for a present.

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I just uploaded short audio clips so you can check out the music that goes with those obscure artists & titles. They’re about 30 seconds apiece and not high quality. If I went with higher quality or longer clips, it would take really long to load, especially for some people who do not have DSL or cable.

Each song is sort of next to the artist & title. And yes, I know adding the clips totally threw off my nice formatting on that post but hey, nothing is ever perfect.

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