Monkling’s Blog

This is more of a reminder to myself than an actual blog post. I need to tell y’all how I spent today. Let’s start by saying my day started at 3:30 a.m.

Let’s also say that today, for the first time in recent memory, Frank got home from work by 8 p.m. and both kids are gone but I have been busy for the past 3 hours with things way different than I envisioned for this evening.

Back tomorrow with the gory details. Oh, don’t worry. No one died or anything and, although Pop was in the hospital today, he’s home and fine. (I figure I better explain that with the way things around here have gone for the past few months.)

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AKA why I hate traveling around Washington, D.C.

We stayed from Friday through Sunday so we planned on attending Mass at my son’s adopted parish while we were there. Many of the families of the seminarians stayed at the seminary but there was a shortage of rooms. Since we needed 2 rooms, we opted to have Theresa stay at the seminary and we stayed in a hotel.

The Church Stephen attended down in D.C. for the past 3 years was about 3 blocks away from the hotel. We knew this because we looked it up on the map. The address was on C and 2nd Streets.

On Saturday we left the kids at the seminary after dinner and went back to the hotel. We were wiped out from our epic journey to get there the night before but it was way too early to go to bed. We decided to scope out the area and see where the Church was.

“C Street is right there.” I pointed down the street from the hotel. I’m very helpful that way. When we got to the corner, we looked down both ends of the street, wondering whether to turn left or right. Frank spotted 1st Street to our right.

“I guess we walk that way,” and off we went. As we walked, we saw a woman with a rolling suitcase. I figured there must be another hotel in that direction, near the Church.

Halfway down the block, everything seems pretty desolate except for a whole bunch of people standing in a line. They all seem to have luggage. Both of us look around, trying to find something familiar. We had been to this Church before. Nothing looked even remotely familiar. Near the front of the line of people, we see what it is they’re waiting for. It’s a homeless shelter. At that point we head back towards the hotel.

Frank asks the guy at the front desk where the Church is. The man says something about walking to the corner and making a left. Apparently there is a 1st Street both a block to the right and a block to the left.

The streets may be strategically set up to avoid invaders but they sure aren’t tourist friendly.

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Since there were graduation festivities in both NY and D.C., Stephen drove up to NY last Wednesday. (At least I think it was Wednesday. Could have been Thursday. One day pretty much runs into another when you’re crazy.) When he came home, he brought some stuff back with him as part of the moving out of D.C. process. His car, however, wasn’t what I’d call overly stuffed.

We discussed how we’d get the rest of his stuff back home. With gas being so expensive, it seemed silly to take 2 cars if we didn’t have to so I offered this plan. “Grandpa is going to the graduation in D.C. too. We can put some stuff in his car and the rest in our trunk. Will everything fit into our car?” The boy assured me it would.

On Saturday, after the graduation ceremony, my father & his wife were ready to head back to NY so Steve carried 4 boxes down to their car. He then surveyed the dorm room declaring there wasn’t much more and the rest would easily fit into our trunk. Now keep in mind my father still had an entire back seat that could have been utilized but my son said it wasn’t necessary so off went Dad.

On Sunday afternoon we were ready to head back home. Steve started loading stuff onto a cart to bring down to the car. The pile kept getting larger and larger. He was unfazed. “It’ll all fit in the car. No problem.” Then I opened up a drawer. It was full of clothes. I opened another. More stuff. Finally he realized this might be a bit of a problem.

We do not have a mini-van or a truck or an SUV. We have a 13 year old, 4 door Toyota Camry. By some miracle we managed to cram all this and more into the trunk:

More was crammed into the car, along with 4 people who, luckily, have short legs. There were 3 overnight bags in the car, 3 pillows, boxes & clothes.

I have no idea how we managed to get the trunk closed. I have no idea how everyone except the driver sat for hours at a time with boxes and bags under their feet. (We switched drivers several times.) I am so glad we didn’t get a flat tire, which would have required getting to the spare and the jack - in the rain.

Sending the boy off to Rome in 2 months should be real interesting.

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I was going to skip straight to the funny and/or unusual parts of the weekend but then I realized there are a couple of people who read my blog not only to be entertained but to catch up with what’s going on with the family. Because of that, I figured I had better mention about the graduation, first.

The thing is, graduations are usually pretty routine. Hundreds of graduates process in. You sit listening to commencement speeches, you clap for all the students who got awards and then it’s over.

I’m not sure if this is standard practice but after that whole part, at Catholic Univ., they then split the kids up according to their area of study to give them their actual degrees. That part is kinda cool because there aren’t too many people getting degrees in philosophy so it’s a pretty small group for that part. There were maybe 20 of them, total.

During the portion which consisted of every single graduate, we couldn’t really see much. Therefore, there were some parts that may have been just a bit boring. Theresa found a way to entertain herself during that part. She took my camera and starting taking pictures of random people. Some of them were chosen because of what they were wearing. There were quite a few uh… unusual hats & dresses in the crowd. I also seem to have a few random butt pictures, thankfully fully clothed.

I do have some normal pictures, too, like this one of the graduate and the birthday girl:

Apparently when you receive your master’s degree, you get a different cap. There was supposed to be a pom pom on it but the guys opted not to have a pom pom dangling from their heads.

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And I thought the 6 hour drive to D.C. was bad?? That ride was nothing compared to the 7 1/2 hours it took to get back to NY. There will be stories after I rest up. Stories about the 2 First Avenues, my ode to the Belt Parkway, graduation day, the 20th birthday, trunk madness and more. I have enough stories to last all week.

Stay tuned….

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Don’t even ask how long it took to drive from NY to DC. Put it this way - 3 hours from our house to Freehold, NJ, a trip which should take an hour & a half, tops. This hotel bed feels so comfy that I can’t even type anymore. Must sleep…

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Well not really, except for the fact that I don’t much like it. My feet don’t like shoes. My body is used to jeans and a t-shirt. And here I am all dressed up again, waiting for Steve to pull up. Not only that, I have to get all dressed up again on Saturday and again next weekend. I don’t think I’ve ever gone 3 straight weekends of playing dress up.

Last week when we were in Kentucky getting ready for the wedding, one of my friends says, “If you don’t mind, can I do your make-up?”

For some reason, people like doing this. Must be the fact that I normally don’t wear any. I said sure. Then our other friend says, “Oh! I want to watch!” Yep, it was like a show. No make-up tonight, though. I’m too lazy.

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Craziness is in the air as I get the house ready for the junk… uh, I mean stuff my kids will both be bringing home this weekend when they will be all moved out of their dorm rooms. I have no idea how darling daughter will fit anything more in her bedroom.

Our schedule is like this: tomorrow the boy comes home with some of his stuff. In the evening we go off to the diocesan seminary for Mass, dinner, and the convocation. (I’m not quite sure what that really means but, to me, it’s like a mini, pre-graduation ceremony.) Normally all 4 of us would be attending but Frank will get there late because of work and Theresa had already made plans for a birthday barbecue with her friends because, up until this weekend, we thought the whole seminary thing was Friday night.

On Friday, after Theresa is done with finals, she has to be moved out of her dorm room. On Friday, we will also need to drive down to D.C. for the actual graduation at Catholic Univ. which is at the crack of dawn Saturday morning. Okay, not at the crack of dawn. More like 9 a.m. but hey, close enough. Saturday is also Theresa’s 20th birthday. She grumbled about having to share it with Stephen. I told her at least it isn’t the 21st birthday.

I may be scarce around here. Or I may not be. You just never can tell with me but if I’m not posting, it’ll just mean I’m busy.

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You will note the title does not say, ‘Graduation Exercises.’ That is because Graduation isn’t until this weekend. No, we are talking actual physical exercise. I have just discovered a way to get a really good workout.

First you need a kid in college who is dorming. If you do not have a child of your own or you do but they are not college age, there are plenty of kids in a nearby dorm who would be quite happy to pretend you are their parent for a day.

Next, you need to have a normal sized car - not an SUV, not a mini van, not a truck. Having a larger vehicle wouldn’t require quite as many trips and you want to get as much of a workout as you can.

Another necessity is that the dorm room be on one of the upper floors in a building with no elevator.

Once you have all of those things in place, you drive up to the college. You then make about 5 or 6 trips up and down 4 flights of stairs, carrying out heavy boxes and shopping bags full of stuff and load them into your car.

When the car is filled to capacity, you drive home, unload everything, carry it into the house and then up the stairs where it is finally deposited in the college student’s bedroom.

This process can be repeated several more times until the entire dorm room is empty.

You will then collapse onto the floor where you will remain motionless until you get feeling back in your arms & legs.

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The wedding weekend got off to a rough start. The festivities were supposed to begin on Thursday afternoon. Those of us from our online writing group who were in for the wedding were supposed to go out to dinner. Well those that actually made it in, did go out to dinner. I, unfortunately, didn’t make it in time.

Thursday was a bad air travel day. There were delays all over the place. The only plane that entire day that took off on time was the plane we missed by 10 minutes. I was not pleased. There was a trash can in the Cincinnati airport that felt my wrath.

We were told we had a confirmed seat on the next plane out to Evansville. I asked are they sure we’d get on that plane? My thinking was, if not, we should just rent a car and drive the rest of the way because then we’d make it by dinner time. We were told yes.

2 hours later we find out we’re not getting on that plane. Instead they sent us to Atlanta and from there to Evansville. I was not a happy camper. Instead of arriving at 4, we arrived at 11. When we got in our rental car and made it over the Indiana border into Kentucky, I wanted to get out of the car and kiss the ground.

Things started looking up from that point on. I was even able to get the wine stains out of my Italia soccer shirt.

Frank & I stayed at a Bed & Breakfast that was within walking distance of the Church and reception hall. The B&B also happened to be near the finish line of a 5K race that was run the morning of the wedding day. My friend decided that, since she wasn’t getting married until 5:50, she was going to run in the race:

There were an awful lot of people who knew of our group, the Housewife Writers. Lou had corsages for all of us. I suspect this was so people knew those were the crazy, out of town, Internet folks. Lou’s parents also remembered me from a previous visit a few years ago. Her father mentioned to Frank how much I seemed to enjoy shooting when I was there and he invited us out to his place. We didn’t think there would be time that weekend but promised to visit another time.

When we were leaving for home yesterday, I was sure we’d be delayed. Our plane took off from Evansville about 15 minutes late and we only had half an hour to catch our connecting flight. I got a Mother’s Day gift, though, and we made it home on time at 11 p.m.

When we got to the house, this is what my front door looked like:

I didn’t get to see my kids for Mother’s Day but Theresa made sure I knew they remembered. Inside were gifts & more decorations:

Pretty great ending to a wonderful weekend. And Happy Mother’s Day!

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