Monkling’s Blog

I was driving to the doctor’s office, minding my own business, waiting at a red light when I looked in my rear view mirror. There was an old fashioned car behind me. One of those Model ___ something or others. I couldn’t see the driver. I could, however, see who was sitting in the passenger seat. Bert. As in from Sesame Street. Not some person in a suit but a life-sized Bert doll. Ernie may or may not have been in the car someplace but I didn’t see him anywhere.

Speaking of the doctor, so I was right. I do have plantar fasciitis. Am I good at the whole self-diagnosis stuff or what? I (obviously) read up on it a bit beforehand. I was surprised that I’d have it because I don’t run, I’m not on my feet a lot, I’m not really overweight… well I am but only by about 10 pounds so that doesn’t really count.

As the doctor is looking at the x-rays, she asks me if I ever damaged my foot. Uh, not that I can recall. I mean I always bang things up but unless I am in intense pain, I just ignore it so yeah, I probably did badly bang up the top of my foot at some point but have no idea when. Why was she asking?

“There’s a little piece of bone floating around up there.” Also it seems my arch has collapsed, theoretically from whatever damaged the top of my foot at some unknown time, which is putting pressure on that ligament on the bottom of my foot. Thus, the inflammation & intense pain.

I am hopeful that the cortisone injection, the icing, the Motrin, the staying off the foot and the brace I now have will mean I will be able to walk around next week when we’re at Mohegan Sun for the Boston/Styx concert. I mean hey, we can’t just go for the concert. We have to walk around a little bit and at least attempt to win a big jackpot.

Meantime if I have to spend much more time on my butt and not walking around, I’m certain to end up way more than just 10 pounds overweight.

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1. When an emergency fill-in dentist tells you she’s using temporary adhesive to fix a crown that popped out, ‘temporary’ does not mean it’s going to fall out again any second. As a matter of fact, your regular dentist will wait for it to fall out again before using something more permanent.

2. When you’ve lived half a century, a cracked filling automatically means you’re getting a crown.

3. You can ice a foot and wash dishes at the same time.

4. Icing an injury really does help and icing is definitely an easier thing to do in the summer rather than in the winter.

5. If you are going to have a problem that involves seeing a specialist, you need to be psychic & make your appointment weeks & months ahead of time if you want to be seen when the problem first crops up.

6. Any doctor that is any good will not be accepting new patients because they already are overbooked for the next 341 years. Which, I guess, means anyone who does have an opening probably sucks at their job. (But let’s hope that’s not really true.)

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Today was a big day. It was the day I had to speak to someone in Italian for the very first time; someone who does not speak any English. I was terrified.

Right now Stephen is in Assisi taking language classes. He’s in a hotel where he does not have a direct phone line and where the staff does not speak English. In order to talk to him, I need to ask the switchboard operator to connect me to his room. I had the sentence written down because I haven’t memorized it yet: Voglio parlare con Stephen. The person answered, saying, “Buona notte.” I understood that - good night. I repeated it back and then went into my one sentence, asking to speak to Steve.

So far everything was going fine. But then the man said something back to me. I have no idea what he said. He could have said Steve wasn’t there or I had the wrong number or Assisi exploded. I stammered. He said something else and then I heard music so I knew I was on hold. A few minutes later, Steve answered.

I really need to start learning more Italian. I’m working on it but apparently 1 hour a day isn’t going to cut it.

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On Sunday, completely out of the blue, my foot started hurting. Today I figured I could walk a little so I went out to the post office to mail Stephen the watch he forgot. That was enough to convince me that no, I cannot walk. Considering we’re going away next week overnight, this might be a bit of a problem.

Who wants to hear my self-diagnosis? It seems I have no choice but to come up with a diagnosis myself since I can’t get to a doctor until next week. (It seems there must be a whole lot of people with foot pain, eh?) I say it’s Plantar fasciitis. Of course we won’t know whether or not I’m right until Tuesday but I’m putting my money on that.

I did manage to hobble down to the basement to do the laundry. It was there that I discovered that lye may not have an indefinite shelf life. Some lye decided to make an escape from its jail cell (aka little plastic container). It then dripped down to a few other items. Luckily, there wasn’t too much damage. Darn, one of the things it ate away at was an iron! Oh, well. Now I can’t iron any clothes. That is such a shame.

My basement now smells of vinegar because I poured that on all the spots where the lye leaked out to neutralize it. I guess there are worse things it can smell of.

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And the answer is, “Because they know stuff.” There is no innocence left anymore. Matter of fact, I think I’m probably more innocent than they are.

My tomato plants & cucumber plants have completely taken over my little garden. Today I went out back to pick a few tomatoes & cucumbers. Oh, wait. Before going back there, I have to cover my entire body with bug spray. I have no idea what the heck kinds of bugs are out there but I get bitten up like I’m a freaking steak bone thrown to a dog every time I walk near my crops.

Anyway, after dousing myself with insect poison, I went back there, picking stuff. I found THE hugest cucumber I ever saw in my life. It had to be about 3 feet. Okay, fine. Maybe not exactly 3 feet. It was more like 14″.

When darling daughter came home from the beach with her friends, I greeted them at the door, holding my cucumber. My little innocent (not!) child looked at it, raised her eyebrows and said something like yep, that sure is a huge cucumber.

She then took my picture with it. Which she then emailed to her brother. I think she plans on putting it on Facebook and I’m glad I am not on Facebook because I don’t even want to know.

And because I know you will all find this amusing and it is, after all, my job to amuse you, here is the photo:

Oh the things I do to keep my blog fans amused….

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My nephew just turned 4 this past week. A party was planned for today, much like last year’s. It would involve water. There would be the water slide and once again I planned on being the only adult in there with the kids. I planned on bringing out the huge water guns again. Yep, there would be lots and lots of water. And there was.

It rained today. All day. Not just a little rain. A monsoon. Huge bolts of lightening. Hail (or so my sister claims). Instead the party was held indoors where my brother tried to get me drunk. Back in the old days when my mom was getting a little cranky, my brother would sneak wine into her soda. Well she had wine with the soda but he would attempt to up the ratio a bit. Apparently I am now the replacement.

Then there was the music. Oh, by the way, it seems the old vinyl records aren’t the only things that skip. It seems CDs can skip in much the same way. Anyhow there was this song on and neither my darling daughter, nor my brother, would tell me what something meant.

Later on, my sister called me over and was whispering to me, saying I should just make up words and then act like I have something over on Theresa. Theresa sees us conspiring and immediately runs over, demanding to know what we’re whispering about. “None of your business and get your kabunka off of me!” I told her.

“What the heck does that mean?”

“Oh, you don’t know? Gee, Aunt Janet knows. We all know.”

“You just made that up!”

“Did not. I guess you don’t know everything, do you?” I’m going to have to make up a few more words. Maybe even a few new expressions, too. That’ll teach those wise ass kids!

Editing this to say you have to read the comments on this post because I filled in more details.

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I am not terribly familiar with other Christian denominations & how their services are, so I’m not too sure how widespread the whole ’sign of peace’ thing is. If there’s a lot of you out there who have no idea what I’m talking about, here’s a brief description. During Mass, there’s a part where you’re supposed to turn to the people in your immediate vicinity and shake their hand or offer some other sort of ’sign of peace.’

Now some people are very enthusiastic about this. They jump over the pews and give everyone a huge bear hug. Some pretend they didn’t hear the priest say, “Now let’s offer each other a sign of peace.” (Don’t quote me on whether or not those are the exact words. I’m tired.) Those people don’t want to shake anyone’s hands.

Yeah, y’all are thinking that since I’m the reserved sort, I probably am one of those pretending I didn’t hear it so I don’t have to shake anyone’s hand. I don’t mind it. I’ll even turn around to the people behind me & shake their hands. Hubby gets a kiss, as do my kids. If I’m near people I am friendly with, they may even get a hug. I do not, however, go running around the entire Church.

But that’s not the point of this blog post. It’s about kids. Now I love shaking hands with any kids that around around me. I think the enthusiastic ones are adorable. I think the shy ones that sort of stick out their hands are adorable. Here’s the thing, though. Say you’re sitting there in Church and there’s a kid about 5 years old in front of you. During the Mass, you see the kid oh, let’s say licking their hands or picking their nose or something. Now you have a dilemma. You don’t really want to be touching their hand after that. Then you have to be sneaky about avoiding them. That’s the time you have to suddenly be intent on shaking the hands of everyone behind you until they priest gets to the next part of the Mass and the kid is safely facing forward, eh?

Aren’t you all so glad I shared this little tip with you? Now tomorrow when you’re at Mass, I know what you’re going to be on the lookout for!

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Because he lived in 2 different places over the past 5 years, Stephen had stuff scattered about in the seminaries both in NY and D.C. When he came home, he came home with everything. There were plastic crates & boxes filled with… well I haven’t even looked in half of them and quite frankly, I’m sorta afraid to. I am afraid of what I’ll find in there and what story will be linked with whatever I find.

He had a bunch of stuff in his car, in the back seat, in the trunk. He needed to empty out the trunk so he got an empty, HUGE plastic bin and dumped the contents of his car trunk into the bin. There was no lid so I could see what was in there. One item was rather large and hard to miss - a front headlight.

“Uh, Stephen, why do you have a headlight in your car?”

“I’ll tell you after I’ve packed up all my stuff for Rome.”

Then he went off to Australia, I am the one who ended up packing his stuff and I never got to hear the story. Until yesterday. I told him he’s not allowed to leave until I hear the story. He chuckled and told me I wouldn’t like the story. I had some guesses. “It was from a scavenger hunt, wasn’t it? You pulled it off someone’s car.”

“No, that’s not it.”

“Stephen, what did you do?” If it was worse than that, I wasn’t sure I even wanted to hear it.

“Well there was this priest from … (I forget what country he said so take your pick) and he needed a car so I let him borrow mine. What I didn’t know is he planned on driving it all the way to NY.”

Right off I’m not too happy with the idea of someone borrowing the car to drive 450 miles & I’m thinking who the heck borrows a car to travel that far a distance.

Steve continues, “He was driving across the Brooklyn bridge and he sort of got into an accident.”

The good news is, it was just a bashed in headlight. The other guy involved in the accident took off, although I’m not quite clear on why if it wasn’t his fault. The priest had the car fixed & we wouldn’t have had a clue about it.

Now you may be wondering why, if the car was fixed, was there an entire headlight piece in there. It seems they though they would need the entire piece but it turned out they didn’t. It also turns out it would have cost the priest way less to fly from D.C. to NY & back than for what it cost him to fix our car.

Oh, & we now plan on selling the car since Steve won’t be here for 5 years and by the time he does come home, he’ll be ready to get his own car. (Yes, I did refer to the car as his but it’s actually ours. Same deal with Theresa.) Anyone want a nice little Saturn, real cheap?

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Just how much did it suck taking Stephen to the airport? Well let’s put it this way. I have never, ever, in my entire adult life cried in public. Nor have I ever cried in front of my kids. Yeah, I guess that record is broken. I didn’t want to. I always have such good control. I especially didn’t want to because I didn’t want him getting upset. Steve was cute. He said, “Sorry Mom. Do you want me to get a picture of the bishop so you can throw darts at it?”

I am now going to sit on the couch, drink beer and watch mind numbing TV. The good news is Frank will be home tomorrow. He took today & tomorrow off.

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My cellphone charger has safely made it home from Australia. So has my son, who, by the way, had no clue he told us he was getting home on Tuesday when he was actually getting home on Wednesday. It seems the boy has a bit of a problem with dates & times - or maybe it’s just when he’s changing time zones. In Rome, they think he’s getting in at 11:30 a.m. on Thursday. He’s not. He’s not even leaving here until 9:20 p.m. & arriving at 11:30 a.m. Friday. The really fun part is we can’t reach anyone in Rome to tell them not to send anyone to the airport tomorrow morning.

I knew the flight was scheduled to arrive at JFK at 12:10 this afternoon. I did not, however, have an clue as to what airline. I checked incoming flights (I just love the internet!) and there were 4 different flights getting in at that time so I did know he must have arrived when I saw all 4 of those flights were in. I also knew a priest from the seminary was picking him up.

At 2 this afternoon, the phone rang. I pick it up & hear this greeting: “Did I take my car to the seminary?”

Obviously, he was searching for his car in the parking lot. “Uh, no. We dropped you off at 1 a.m. Saturday night. Do you need me to pick you up?”

“That would be nice.”
“When?”
“Now?”

So off I went to get my son. He was conscious briefly. Very briefly. For the remainder of the afternoon, he has been asleep on the living room couch because there is no air conditioner in his bedroom. Actually that’s not the real reason. He seems to just have this thing about sleeping on the couch. Fully clothed. In dress pants. He is a strange kid.

I did find out he had a really good time in Australia, that food is very expensive there, and that kangaroo tastes like beef, only sweeter and that he had pizza with kangaroo. Ugh! He was also on EWTN’s coverage but, naturally, the one time he was on was the one thing I didn’t tape it because I didn’t even know about it - a Mass that the pope had with seminarians.

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