Monkling’s Blog

They’re doing maintenance on my server & moving everything to a newer data center.

This move will begin Friday, March 21st, at 9 PM PDT, and is expected to last up to 12 hours, until Saturday, March 22nd, 9 AM PDT.

That means my blog will be down, my email will be down, the HW board will be down… basically my entire life. They claim it’ll take 12 hours but, so far, it’s always been way longer.

I am going to try to remember to stay signed on to AIM in case anyone needs me. Even if I’m not signed on, I can receive anything sent when I do sign on. No one should even need to ask me what my screen name is.

If someone IMs me and I don’t reply but it doesn’t show me as idle, it means one of my kids may be on my computer. If they reply without my permission, they know I will chop their fingers off so they won’t dare respond.

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This afternoon we went to the 3 p.m. service at Church. I wanted to get there early. I knew it would be packed but someone didn’t listen to me (I won’t mention his name but it’s that guy I’m married to). That meant we ended up sitting 5 rows back instead of our usual 2nd row. Now if I were tall, I wouldn’t care but with being short & all, I like being able to see. This is especially true when my boy is doing one of the readings. But then they decided to be a bunch of wimps and sit during the long gospel reading so I was able to see him. Yep, it all worked out fine today.

After the service, we waited for Steve to get off the cassock and everything so we hung out & were talking to our friends. Steve comes out. We’re still talking. Then our pastor walks over to us and asks me if we’ll be here a few more minutes. I said we could be so I was ordered not to leave the Church.

I do our parish website. It’s volunteer so I figured he had something for me. One really good thing about our pastor is he makes people feel appreciated for their work. He doesn’t take anyone for granted & he knows I spend a lot of time on the website.

Now that’s all good. Except that when he came back and gave me my gift, it’s a box of chocolate. Now don’t get me wrong. I love chocolate. Anyone who knows me knows that. But it’s Good Friday. I can’t eat them today. I have to wait until it’s Saturday. It’s sitting in the kitchen. I can hear it whispering. All those little pieces of candy that want to become one with my stomach. Guess who is planning on staying up until midnight.

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A first and a last. Tonight was the first time I was at Holy Thursday Mass all by myself. Okay, fine. I wasn’t exactly by myself but Stephen was waaaayyyy on the other side with the altar servers and deacons. It was the first time neither Frank nor Theresa was there with me.

It was also the last time I’ll get to see Steve at that Mass. Next year he’ll be in Rome. He’ll be there until he’s ordained so this was the last time he’d be at our parish for Holy Thursday Mass.

That was getting me a little sad, the idea of him not being here anymore, of him being away for 5 years. I tried to distract myself. For the first time ever (yet another first!) there was not one single pew whisperer anywhere near me. There were no cute little kids to focus on. Nothing to distract me at all - until they got to the feet washing part.

Flashback time. When Theresa was about 3, our bishop came to our parish Church to say Mass one weekday. I went with her to the Mass. As everyone walked out of the Church, the bishop greeted everyone. He said, “Hello Princess,” to Theresa, prompting her to hide behind me. What was funny is that’s what I’ve always called her.

Okay fast forward to about 14 years later. Theresa is now 17 (I may be off by a year but that’s not important). Our pastor asked if she would be one of the uh… washees. (Yes I made that word up.) When we got to the Church that Holy Thursday, we found out that the bishop who called her princess, now our retired bishop, was the one celebrating the Mass and doing the foot washing.

At that time Steve lived in the diocesan seminary. They hadn’t shipped him off to D.C. yet and the retired bishop lived there in the house (aka seminary) so he knew Steve.

So that’s what was going through my mind, thankfully taking my mind off the other stuff.

Okay, I need to find some sort of snack to eat because tomorrow is another fasting day. I’m getting hungry just thinking about it.

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No, not spam email, silly! We haven’t even had email for 70 years. No, I mean this Spam:

Yep, that wonderful canned meat has hit it’s 70th anniversary. Or would that be birthday? I’m not sure anyone actually gave birth to Spam so I’m guessing we’ll just go with anniversary here.

I was just deleting spam emails and spam blog posts when it suddenly hit me that I could swear I remembered reading something somewhere about Spam turning 70. Since my brain holds information about as well as a colander, I did a Google search and, sure enough, I did remember correctly. That fact alone, that I remembered something right, deserves recognition.

I can’t say I ever personally tasted Spam. I’m not even sure I ever saw it live and up close. I’m pretty sure I’ve only seen the can. Nevertheless, this anniversary cannot go by quietly. No, let the entire blog community celebrate canned meat! Y’all need to go buy some for Easter dinner now!

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I’m guessing not too many of you will be traveling to Haiti so I’m posting a couple more pictures. The sunset and the waterfalls were some of the really beautiful photos I stole from Steve (or whichever young man took those photos). There is also, as you probably know, the darker side - garbage all over the sides of the road, houses that are little more than shacks & dirt roads.

The boys… uh, I mean young men, arrived in Port-au-Prince where they spent the night at a hostel and then flew to a different area where the orphanage was located. (Not quite clear on exactly where they ended up.) This is the plane they took & a shot of the orphanage:





The boys has a lot of fun with the kids. And no, their faces don’t really look like that. I feel like I’m handling undercover work, what with hiding the identities & all. Well except for Steve. I don’t have to hide him.




Stephen is used to being swarmed by young kids. That happens when ever we get together with my brother & sister in-law and her side of the family. There are 6 boys all ranging from a few months to 8 who all view Steve as their playmate.

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Steve said that while they were in Haiti, they ate a lot of goat meat & that it was really good. So good that they almost forgot on Friday that they couldn’t eat meat.

I wonder if this guy is next week’s dinner (sorry, Jer):




Stephen said one of the boys took them up to a rooftop to view the sunset.




“He said it was a beautiful view from up there. What he didn’t tell us is we had to jump from one rooftop to another to get to where the good view was.” Yet another thing I’m glad I was clueless about.




Here I was, thinking the biggest danger was him getting kidnapped & shot or catching malaria. It never occurred to me that what I really needed to be concerned about was him breaking something.

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I didn’t get to talk to Steve too much about his trip to Haiti but I did manage to copy a bunch of his photos onto my computer before he ran out of here. The group of seminarians spent most of the week helping at an orphanage. They did get some leisure time which included swimming. There was 1 slight problem. In order to swim, they had to climb down this waterfall:

Stephen said the climb down was a bit tricky because the rocks were covered in nice, slimy moss. The boys then jumped about 40 feet into the water.

I have no idea how one of them managed to climb down while retaining his grip on the video camera.

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Remember how I said we were getting a wall taken down? This week, the demolition work started. This is the closet I’m losing:

And this is where the opening is going to be:

I knew breaking up the wall was going to be a bit messy and it was. There was a nice coating of plaster dust in the living room and dining room when this wall started going down:

Okay, I don’t want to hear any wise guys say, “Gee how could you tell the plaster dust from the normal dust?”

Both kids were home for the weekend, although they missed each other. Steve came home late Friday night and was already gone by Saturday night when Theresa got home from her Florida trip. Both kids were a little surprised to walk in the front door and see this:

They knew there would be a hole. They just didn’t picture it quite like this. Here’s the view from the dining room:

Years ago, when my father sold his house, we got possession of his dolly. Yeah, you can tell it’s about 100 years old:

We thought we’d put the piano on it so that it would be easier to move around during the work. We had done that once before. What I forgot is that the last time it took 4 of us - 3 to lift the piano up high enough for the 4th person to slip the dolly underneath. Without that crucial 4th person, this didn’t happen.

Stephen decided to use the dolly as a skateboard. He steps on it, balances himself and then grabs my arm, wanting me to walk so that I’ll be pulling him. I walked a couple of steps and then walked away. He then grabbed onto Frank.

“What do you think your father is? A mule?”

“No. Mules can’t reproduce.” Don’t you just hate smart ass kids who immediately come up with snappy answers?

More - The reason Steve came home: Our parish is building a new Church. The current Church, the only one we have ever known, was built as a gym for the parish school and the original Church was a tiny building. The congregation outgrew the little Church so they turned the gym into a Church.

Over the years, our congregation has grown even more and our pastor decided it was time to have a real Church. Construction has been going on for several months and yesterday, one of our axillary bishops came here to say the 9 a.m. Mass and then bless the cornerstone of the new Church.

Stephen wanted to be here for the ceremony. Also, the bishop who was here was the rector at the diocesan seminary, where Steve lived for 2 years before they sent him to D.C. (That was before he was made bishop - no, not Steve, the rector.)

When Steve was getting ready for Mass yesterday morning, he realized he didn’t bring any clothes, which isn’t a big deal because he has some clothes here. Except apparently, the last time he was home, he took all his dress pants back to D.C. with him. Luckily, he’s the same size as Frank so he borrowed a pair of black pants and Frank’s shoes.

After we got back from Mass (2 hours later, after the ceremony and the reception that followed in the parish hall) he still had on the neat clothes. Thus, he was wearing Frank’s black pants during the dolly skateboarding incident. While messing around on the dolly, he brushed against the broken wall, getting plaster dust all over the back of Frank’s pants. (You see? There was a reason I went into the whole story of why he was home.) Later I accidentally brushed against it, getting plaster dust on my clothes. I then announced that we were plastered because I am just so witty. Bahahahaha!

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Katie, who got a whopping 13 answers right out of 16.

Here are the Monkling Trivia questions with the correct answers in red and my favorite responses in blue. I also included some links to posts where I mentioned the answer. Not all of them have links because some were never mentioned (thus, the psychic questions) & some had too many references to list them all (like my complaints about my neighbors).

1. What is the name of my favorite Italian restaurant? Luigi’s - Mario…No, wrong brother.
2. What is my middle name? Sadly, I don’t have one
3. Am I the oldest, youngest or middle child? oldest - Oldest, but you certainly don’t look it!
4. How old am I? 50
5. Where did I go this past fall to celebrate my birthday? San Antonio
6. How did I get tennis elbow? chopping ice after a sleet storm - probably trying to beat your family at Wii
7. What kind of pet do I plan on getting after Nicky goes home to Jesus? none - grandchildren
8. How many wives does Frank have? 1 or 14
9. What did my MIL’s nursing home roommate accuse us of? drinking & doing drugs - doing tequila shooters
10. What is across the street from me? a school & a playground
11. I have been to 2 countries in Europe - which ones? Italy & France - Slovenia and Transylvania
12. How tall am I? 5′ 1″ - not all that tall, but big enough to sit at the dinner table and reach your plate
13. Why do I dislike my next door neighbors? they’re loud & obnoxious - park cars in the backyard and probably have also buried bodies back there
14. Which baseball team do I root for? Yankees - The Mets. Haha!!! YANKEES
15. Who did I see in concert recently? Keith Urban & Carrie Underwood - Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons Reunited

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Time is running out! Surely there have to be a few more of you out there who want to enter my contest. Do y’all want me to become completely discouraged with the pitiful lack of participation and stop running contests? Get moving! You have until tonight.

And on a completely different topic - why on earth would someone take 2 banged up, broken, old basement window frames out of someone else’s trash?? If I had know there was a demand for that sort of them, heck, I could have sold them on Ebay! Gee, I wonder if anyone wants to bid on those broken basement window screens…

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