Monkling’s Blog

Today, after helping Frank with some yard work, I had to rest my tired old body & blistered hands so, naturally, I plopped myself in front of my computer. While browsing the Internet, I came across a couple of interesting things that I feel compelled to share.

Did you know you can snoop on your neighbors right from the comfort of your home? Yep, you can find out what political party they donated to and how much they donated. I assume you can access this information because candidates are required to disclose this stuff. Anyhow, you can plug in a city, zip code or last name. (Even if you know my last name, you won’t find anything.)

Another interesting article I came across was on Newsday’s website. Apparently the Nassau county police are cracking down on DWIs and, at their request, newspapers are publishing the photos and names of people arrested for DWI.

I was sitting there looking through them to see if there was anyone I know. Happily, I discovered there wasn’t. What did surprise me was the vast span of people - all different ages, both men & women, all races - everyone was on there so clearly it’s not just a problem with underage teen drinking.

Currently we are switching between the Yankee game and the Stanley Cup playoffs. Since the Islanders are out, we want the Penguins to win.

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…can you stuff into a Smart Car? How many college students can you cram into a sedan? And, more importantly, how many people can you fit in a house that isn’t all that big? It’s this last question that has me stumped.

We’re planning this party for Stephen. We skipped the graduation party and, instead are having a farewell party for him, before he goes off to Rome. It will be on the day of his Candidacy Mass in June. (I will stick a footnote at the end of this note & explain what sort of Mass that is.)

I have not even begun to plan out how much food I need or where I’m getting it from. I am obsessing on how on earth I’m going to fit a whole bunch of people in my house. If it’s nice out, we can use the backyard. If I want to spring for a tent, that’ll take care of us even if it does rain, I suppose. But that’ll only take care of maybe 35/40 people. Just counting family, alone, we can hit that number easily.

This seemed like a real good idea at the time. I’m now thinking maybe we better not invite every single person we know.

The Candidacy Mass: Before Stephen goes to Rome, he has to be admitted as a candidate to the Diaconate & Priesthood. This involves several steps including him writing a letter petitioning the bishop. Then he is officially accepted as a candidate by the bishop at a Mass.

I guess I’ll have to be wearing a dress again. Luckily, no one but Frank saw the dress I wore to my friend’s wedding so I can wear that again. The best part is it’s long so I don’t have to wear stockings.

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I remembered my password and was able to log in to Wordpress to do a blog post. You see, there are 2 issues here: 1) The reason why I had to even log in and 2) my memory problems.

Issue #1: After a hard drive failure, I did recover Windows but the stupid thing wouldn’t do updates because this computer is so old, it probably couldn’t even find the right ones. Therefore, I completely ditched Windows on this computer and installed Linux. So far, I’m liking it except for the fact that I can’t figure out how to import my email and, although I can open Word files & just about everything else, I can’t open Publisher files on here but we won’t go into that headache.

Issue #2: How bad is my memory? If Dolores was still reading my blog, she could chime in here. I had a check for her sitting on my desk. I immediately wrote it out the second I knew how much I owed her. And then it sat for almost 2 weeks before I finally got it to her.

Then there’s the issue of the card my cousin still didn’t get. We saw him twice this weekend - once for the dinner and the following day for the Mass. Did I give him a card yet? Nope.

It used to be that I’d forget for so long that I just didn’t give cards to anyone. I have decided on a new strategy. Now I don’t care how many weeks or months late I am, as long as the person eventually gets it. At my nephew’s First Communion, I had a card for him, a card for my sister’s anniversary (an entire day early!), a card for my dad’s wife’s birthday (about 2 months late), a birthday card for my brother (a month late) and an anniversary card for my brother & his wife (2 months late).

My son didn’t get a graduation card, nor a gift but that’s because he has to pick it out. Theresa didn’t get a birthday card. Let’s see what happens for Father’s Day…

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That’s right, I am shouting in my title. Did I get your attention? Soon as you are done reading my blog, go find yourself some blank CDs or that dusty external hard drive or whatever else you use and back up those digital photos and your important documents and your email.

Yep, I spent the entire day getting my computer back up & running and the only reason I didn’t panic is because I had just backed up everything yesterday, after Theresa got a virus that crashed her computer. I knew this hard drive was on it’s last leg and I have a new computer winging it’s way from someplace out west, thanks to Amazon but I’m not ready to bury this one yet.

In other news, my exciting day consisted of going out grocery shopping while a virus scan ran for an hour on my newly recovered hard drive. Darling daughter went with me. As I’m stopped in the driveway waiting for her to get out to open the gate, I looked out on the sidewalk by our house.

“Hey, someone painted the curb and the grass orange,” I told Theresa as I pointed out the window. We’ve had a ton of phone & electric trucks in the neighborhood so I figured it was one of their markings for something.

Theresa opens up the gate for me to get into the driveway and then walks over to the orange paint. “Uh, ma? Look.” I looked up at her. “No, look down there,” she said, pointing to the paint. She waved her hand by the back end of her car that was parked by the curb and the ‘paint’ broke up. It seems it was just a reflection from the sun bouncing off the red plastic reflector thingie on the car. Sure made me feel brilliant.

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Is it possible to drown in a sea of dirty laundry? Actually, that’s a pretty disgusting concept. Clean laundry, maybe, but who wants to be buried beneath a pile of dirty socks, damp towels and underwear?

With both kids away at school, I had forgotten how much laundry can accumulate with 4 people at home. Then add in the fact that we’ve barely been home and the little I have been home, I haven’t had time to do any laundry. Yep, that pile was huge. Must have been about 8 feet high. Or maybe it just seemed that high because I’m short.

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All right, people. This is a surprise contest. The first person who can tell me exactly where this picture was taken wins a souvenir from the place:

And now back to the barbecue…

Before any wise asses ask, no the prize is not horse manure.

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Today was Day 2 of the anniversary celebration for my cousin’s ordination. Today we drove back into Brooklyn to attend Mass at his parish. The Mass was supposed to be at 11 a.m. and we got there at 10:30. We walked over the the Church and could hear music and singing. Peeking into the Church, we saw it was rather crowded.

“Are those people attending an earlier Mass?” Nope, the sign with the Mass times only had 1 Mass listed. I made Frank ask what was going on. It was a Corpus Christi celebration. The woman he spoke to said that all those people were going to stay for the Mass that followed so we better go on ahead in. The place seemed packed but, luckily, there was a section reserved for family so we went in. Since the Church was bilingual, we happened to catch the Spanish part & I had no idea what they were doing until the got to the English. Turns out, they were doing something I was familiar with, the Divine Mercy.

Anyhow, I was so distracted with all the music that it took me a bit to realize not only were they doing those prayers but that voice I was hearing in English was my cousin. Then I noticed the monstrance. Now those are things I should have noticed immediately. Did I ever mention I’m easily distracted?

The rest of the family arrived and filled the pews in front of us and Mass began. Normally a typical Sunday Mass is around an hour. This was 2 hours. And now here’s the part I thought was a bit unusual. They had a whole lot of music. That’s not the unusual part. People were standing and clapping and dancing. They were yelling out “Amen!” during my cousin’s homily. Now that isn’t something you typically see in Church; at least not the Catholic Churches I’ve gone to. My cousin certainly has a very lively bunch of parishioners.

After the Mass, as we headed over to the parish hall, I went running up to my father, who had not attended the dinner the night before and who had not been sitting with us at Mass.

“Guess what!” I said, jumping up & down. Okay, I wasn’t really jumping up & down because I’m not quite that demonstrative, but I was jumping up & down inside. “My godson’s engaged!” I then went on to tell him the story I posted here yesterday & going on and on about how cool it was that my godson announced his engagement the same way I did.

And, once again, nothing much that’s funny here tonight but I’m tired from all this partying. There might not be anything funny tomorrow, either, because I will be buried under a mountain of laundry since I neglected it most of the week.

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Two weeks ago we were in Kentucky for my friend’s wedding. Last weekend we were in D.C. for Stephen’s graduation. This weekend the party continues. Tonight’s blog post isn’t going to be funny but y’all will just have to suffer through it.

We just got back from a party in Brooklyn at my cousin’s parish. My cousin was ordained 25 years ago. (As an aside that has nothing whatsoever to do with the story, my cousin belongs to an order, the Vincentians. Steve will be a diocesan priest. I’m sure there are other significant differences but the only one that I know; that matters to me is a diocesan priest belongs to the diocese and an order priest can be sent anywhere.)

But where were we? Oh, yeah! So we were at this dinner to celebrate his 25th anniversary. When he was ordained, there was a big party for that, as well. It was at that party, 25 years ago, that Frank & I shared with the family that we were engaged.

Tonight we were greeting our family, cousins, etc. My godson, nephew of my priest/cousin comes over to us with his girlfriend. They tell us they’re engaged. I was so thrilled and the idea that they did this the same way Frank & I did, only 25 years later - maybe it’s silly but I think it is so incredibly cool.

I was telling my godson about it and telling him about his grandfather’s reaction when we told him we were engaged; that he picked me up. I then told my godson I was sorry but I wouldn’t be able to do that. He’s probably a foot taller than me. I look around 3 feet tall standing next to him, a fact that his brother found hilarious.

I am too tired from dancing and eating and smiling so much that my face feels like it’s gonna fall off so I can’t write anything funny tonight.

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I decided I need to post a photo of the one and only box I did not examine. For anyone who has not read today’s prior post, you need to read that first. Okay, are we on the same page now? Alrighty, this is the box:

I also learned this evening from Theresa that the only reason he found the passport in that box is because, in his frustration, he began taking shoes out of that box and throwing them against the wall.

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Wednesday evening was pretty nice. Both kids were home. For an hour I had a house full of young men playing Apples to Apples before they all headed out with Theresa to see a midnight showing of the new Indiana Jones movie. I went to bed quite happy.

At 3:30 a.m. I was woken up by my son who was in a panic. He was leaving Thursday afternoon on a cruise and couldn’t find his passport. I looked through boxes and files, helping him search. Finally by 4 a.m. I had looked in every possible place. I told him I needed to get some sleep. He was angry with me for abandoning him but I needed to be somewhat coherent in the morning to help him try to figure out a solution.

I tossed & turned, hearing him toss things around and an hour later, Frank’s alarm went off. I finally drifted off to sleep sometime after 5. When I dragged myself out of bed at 8, I sat at the computer to see what was the fastest you could get a passport. It seems if you want to pay $350+, you can get one in 24 hours but that wouldn’t help him get on the ship in 5 hours.

I was trying to figure out what time I should wake Steve up so we could figure out what to do when I decided to call Frank at work. “Was Stephen still up when you got up this morning.”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know what we’re going to do.” I secretly planned to run away from home because I knew there would be no living with Steve if he missed out on that cruise.

“He found his passport.”

When the boy got up a few hours later, I said he could have at least left me a note so I knew he found it and where the heck did he find it, anyway? We looked through everything. Well almost everything. There was one box I didn’t look it. It had shoes in it. About 583 pairs of shoes. Apparently there was a bag in there with the shoes which had his passport. Yeah, sure seems like a logical place for a passport to me. And why should he leave me a note when I went off to bed, carefree?

He went off and all was well with my world. Until about 5 p.m. when it was darling daughter’s turn to panic. It seems she got a computer virus and her computer wouldn’t boot up. She has photos on there. TONS of photos; things that cannot be replaced. Do no ask me how many hours I’ve spent retrieving her files. I’m not even going to attempt to fix the computer until I know I have safely saved all her important stuff.

And that’s how my Thursday night ended.

Today, on the other hand, was a good day - hanging out with friends, playing games, eating…

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