Monkling's Blog

An hour later and I’d have missed a day of blogging. I was feeling lazy today. I wasn’t going to bother writing anything here. I keep thinking about all the errands I have to do this week and it makes me tired just thinking about it. But then… I went downstairs to get the 39,498th load of wash out of the dryer today. That’s when it hit me. I had to get on here and tell the world about my magic tablecloth.

Yes, that’s right. I have a magic tablecloth. I’ve owned it for years. I’m pretty certain it was on my table years and years ago when the kids were still small and I had some of the HWs here for dinner when Jer was visiting NY. I’m pretty sure I remember a certain male writer getting sauce on the tablecloth. You’d never know it. I’m tellin’ ya, this tablecloth has had wine, coffee, everything spilled on it. It always comes clean. It’s magical.

Pretty soon I’m going to start running around the house like – wasn’t there some rendition of Jack & the Beanstalk where he was singing about magic beans? Yeah, that’ll be me, running, twirling with my magical tablecloth singing about it. It’ll look sort of like Julie Andrews singing the Sound of Music up on the hilltop.

Now aren’t y’all so glad I decided to blog today after all?

Tonight we were driving over to the Bronx on our weekend nursing home trip when I spotted someone driving an Audi with a license plate that had a small RX on it, much like those MD plates you see. I turned to Frank.

“What does that mean? Is he a pharmacist?”

“I don’t know.” That is Frank’s usual answer to just about anything I ask him. Hey, can I help it if I ask deep, probing questions? “I never saw plates with RX on it before.”

“Why would you need to designate a pharmacist? In case there’s a Viagra emergency? Watch out! I need to park illegally and run into that building to save a man’s pride!”

Then I got to thinking, which we all know, is a dangerous thing. Why do they still give out MD plates, anyway? I can see back in the old days when they made house calls. No one does that now. Who care that the person driving that car is a doctor? I say we do away with that altogether.

Or is it like, “Is there a doctor in the house?!?!” Maybe a policeman has an emergency and runs out in traffic, scanning license plates, hoping to see an MD drive by.

Ditto with the government plates. I’m sorry but just because you work for the government, that shouldn’t mean you get to park illegally. I’m paying your salary. Why should you get treated better than me when you are technically my employee? If I were rich enough to have a maid, would she park in the driveway while I park 5 blocks away and walk to my house in the rain? I think not.

Alrightly, I hereby declare that no one gets special license plates unless you are handicapped. That is the only reason I will allow.

No, I am not cursing. For those of you who are not Italian and have the horribly bad luck not to live someplace where you are able to buy good Italian food, this is focaccia:

This is a necessity if you want to make authentic panini. I’m sorry but those sandwiches on plain old white bread or rolls just aren’t panini. You have to have the focaccia bread.

I am currently on another quest, much like my pizzelle quest. I want to find the prefect recipe. This batch I made today came out pretty good, especially when you cut it and made a sandwich with pancetta, mozarella & roasted peppers. It was, however, too crunchy. Well I did get to put that new bridge to the test, like I wanted to.

This will be a continuing experiment. Next time I think we will add some milk to the dough to make it a bit softer. This just tasted like thick pizza dough with some extra virgin olive oil & some herbs on top. Not that that’s a bad thing. But still – not what I envisioned.

Between the pizzelle testing and the focaccia experiments, I’m going to end up being one of those chunky Italian grandmothers.

It is a very sad day here in Monklingland. I have suffered a loss. We had become so close, so comfortable together. We had been together for years and years. Alas, last night, I had to say good bye. Imagine the tearing of the very fabric of our relationship. Yes, last night my favorite pair of jeans had a rip beyond repair and I had to throw them out.

There is a fate even worse than tossing out a favorite pair of jeans. It is the realization that I am now down to exactly 2 pairs of jeans. This means I am required to go out shopping for clothes. I despise clothes shopping. Oh, the pain, the tragedy of it all…

Yes, it’s true – I can actually chew on the right side of my mouth. Oh, sure, it may not seem like that big of a deal to you but let me tell ya, after dealing with a loose implant and then a temporary bridge more unsteady than London’s, for months and months and months, this is cause for celebration.

I should have cooked something incredibly crunchy for dinner but unfortunately, did not have the forethought to do so. Pulled BBQ beef isn’t much of a challenge for the new teeth. (At this very minute, there’s a brisket cooking in beer.) I’m thinking tomorrow I will have to make up for that. Any suggestions for tomorrow night’s dinner? What can I cook that is amazingly good and crunchy?

On a totally different topic, did you know they make wooden molding that’s already white so you don’t have to paint it? The contractor put molding up by the closet door. After he’s all done with everything, I’m going to have to paint the ceiling and the walls but he just saved me from having to paint the moldings. Now wasn’t that thoughtful of him?

I found out that I’m not a greedy, materialistic person & that, although having money would be nice, I really don’t give too much of a rat’s ass about it when it all comes down to what’s important.

I think we all have a knack for fooling ourselves so, although I’ve always felt that this was true, I don’t think anyone honestly knows what they’d do or how they’d react in a given situation until they are actually in the situation.

The details aren’t important. Let’s just say that the trip to the elder care lawyer today was both enlightening and discouraging. And that if we were different, we’d probably have come away from the meeting feeling quite happy with the possibilities offered to us. But we’re not so… oh, well.

The good news is we did get to Cozymel’s for an early dinner. We took Mel (Frank’s sister) to Cozymel. Good Mexican food & beer always make things look good.

In other news, I had what I consider a highly amusing conversation with my daughter yesterday. Last night was when she’d get to find out who her Little was (sorority stuff) so she was out with one of her friends buying stuff for the big night and talking to me on her cellphone while shopping. She’s telling me about this guy and her friend is overhearing our conversation.

I hear an incredulous voice in the background saying, “Are you talking to your mother??” Theresa says yes. Then I hear, “That is so inappropriate!”

What? You mean not all nearly 20 year old daughters tell their mothers about guys they think are hot?

I’m simply a figment of your imaginations. Okay, the truth is I’m not supposed to be here. I’m supposed to be out to dinner with Frank at Cozymel’s. The problem is we sort of never got there and it was entirely my fault.

Frank was home today and after the contractor was done for the day, we took a little trip out to BJ’s for a few things. Then the plan was to go over to Cozymel’s for dinner. I was directing Frank. “Okay, make a left up there. Then we’ll see the park on our left and a cemetery on our right. Make another left & we’ll be right there.” Well yeah, that would have worked if we had been on the street I thought we were on. By the time we both realized we weren’t, we were closer to home than to the restaurant so we just came home.

And speaking of contractors & all that, we now have a closet with a door and everything:

Yes, it’s not your computer monitor. The photo is a little crooked. And that was taken before I had a beer with dinner! Do ya see those plants way in the back? Those are my baby tomatoes.

Okay, I need to put step by step instructions here for my father because he got lost. Dad, if you are reading this, drop that mouse & get Angela to help you!

Yesterday, this was the conversation…

Dad: “I went to your website and didn’t see anything. Then I clicked the button but all I saw was something about you getting plastered.”

Me: “Uh, the Haiti photos are all right there on the main page of my blog. If you saw the picture of the broken wall, you must have been on my blog.”

Dad: “There was hardly anything on the main page and I clicked some link and only saw your post about the wall.”

Me: “You didn’t see Stephen jumping off the waterfall?”

Dad: “No.”

Me: “How could you not see it? Didn’t you scroll down? All the Haiti picture are right on the first page.”

I told him next time he needed his wife to help him. He probably won’t listen because he never listens to me. But that won’t stop me from trying to explain anyway.

Here is the deal. My website, the monkling.com thing – that’s only the doorway. There’s nothing there. You need to click on the blog button. Once you do that, DO NOT CLICK ANY LINKS! If you click on a link, you will only see that one post. You want to scroll down. If you get lost and accidentily click a link, then click on the title up near the top where it says, “Monkling’s Blog.”

Okay, now that I’ve stopped him from looking further into anything, he won’t know about the comments so we can say stuff about him there. He’ll never know…

I’m practicing my Italian.

Last night we went to the Easter Vigil, which I always love. I enjoyed that Mass so much that I didn’t even feel sad looking at Stephen, thinking this is his last vigil at our Church. It’s entertaining watching my son up there because he’s always looking around, making sure everyone is doing what they’re supposed to be doing – like checking the book that the altar server has to see that it’s on the correct page. It just amuses me.

The Easter bunny made a stop to our house. You’d think that with having kids in their twenties (or almost in their twenties) that he’d skip our house but nope. He was here:

The little bunnies move so there were races this morning across the kitchen table. And I don’t think you can see it but there’s a teeny little Etch-o-Sketch in one of those eggs. If Steve hadn’t needed to run off to Church again to play the organ at the 11:45 Mass, I’d have made the kids do an Easter egg hunt, too, because I’m immature like that. Or fun, depending on how you look at it.

We’re off to dinner at Luigi’s in a few minutes. We may get a guest or 2 stopping by later for dessert but, if not, we’ll just be forced to eat this all ourselves:

That would be a shame, eh?

Or so I’ve been told. You see, it’s like this. Today’s a little bit of a busy day. I’m trying to get the plaster dust out of my house. Frank & the kids are going over to the nursing home to see his mom while I cook dinner. Then we’ll be off to the Easter Vigil tonight. All that means I wasn’t too pleased when the doorbell rang. Not unless it was going to the Publisher’s Clearing House man with a multi-million dollar check. I knew it wouldn’t be anyone I wanted to see because everyone else is just as busy.

Frank went to answer the door while I held the dog. Before the wall went down, we used to just put him in the dining room and close the door. We can no longer do that so I had to stop what I was doing to hold back Killer. I could hear Frank talking. I could hear someone else talking. It wasn’t anyone we knew. It had to be someone selling something.

Now unlike me, Frank is Mr. Niceguy. Any time anyone comes to the door selling something, he’ll buy it. He doesn’t have a mean bone in his body. I, on the other hand, do. If I tell someone we’re not interested and they continue to yap away trying to convince us that we are indeed interested, I will just firmly repeat, “We are not interested,” & I will close the door in their face. This is what I did when Frank was taking too long to get rid of the pest.

I then heard, “Mom, that was so mean.” Oh, well, I think it was more mean of those kids to interrupt us to try and sell us a subscription to a newspaper we don’t want and to not take no for an answer. So there. Yeah, that’s right. No one messes with me.

HA! Theresa just said to me, “Is it okay if I leave all this stuff on the dining room table while we go out?” I said yes. “Good. I didn’t want to just leave it without asking you. I’m not messing with you. I saw what you did with those kids!”