Feast of St. Suck It Up or Die

Elevator went out again yesterday. Door wouldn’t close all the way. It was stopped on a floor where a walker-person resides… but nobody was admitting to anything. The elevator guy came in less than an hour. (Maybe we are on their “preferred customer” list now.) 

Today is the feast of Benedict, THE Benedict who founded the monastic community that everyone now immediately thinks of when you say the word monastic. Like tissue is always kleenix and photo copies are always xeroxes, a monk (or nun) is always thought to be a Benedictine. Except they aren’t. Our order is Augustinian, not Benedictine. Go figure.

Our celebrant this morning decided to give a little sermon about Benedict, specifically about his particular rule, which includes the vow of stability. Stability means you’re essentially stuck in the middle of a bad situation. If you hate your sisters, tough. If you can’t stand the climate, tough. If you live in a geriatric zoo, tough. You have to stay put, suck it up, stick it out… you get the picture.

It was a good sermon, not too long (although any sermon on a weekday throws a wrench in our schedule) and it was pointed like an arrow to the heart. Afterall every functional sister has felt like leaving this zoo at one point or another. Some of us have actually said it out loud. Some of us have actually left. Well I did mention we’re Augustinians, not Benedictines.

So, is this an old folks home?

If I had the time to draw some cartoons about life here in the geriatric zoo, I would. Some of this stuff is actually funny. Some of it I just think is funny because it’s that or tear my hair out. But right now I don’t have the time. (I barely have the time to bitch about not having the time.) For now, I’m scribbling my ideas down on scraps of paper and stuffing them into a folder. For later… when they won’t seem so funny. I figure if they are still funny by then, I’ll go ahead and draw them.

Today a sister rammed her walker into the elevator door (second time in two weeks) and knocked it off its track. Of course she seems to only do this right before a meal, which means somebody has to carry trays up to the third floor (from the basement where the kitchen is) until the elevator man comes to repair the damage. We were lucky today. He was in the area and got here in less than two hours. Thinking ahead, I asked, “Is there anything we can do to get it back on its track ourselves?” But apparently it’s an elevator man thing… a special adjustment made from the machine room on the roof to override the stuck doorway. Damn.

Yesterday another sister overflowed the guest toilet in the first floor bathroom. Why she can’t use her own toilet is beyond me, but she makes her way around the convent when nobody’s looking, using various toilets… including the ones our housekeeper has just finished cleaning. But yesterday was a holiday… so no housekeeper. No maintenance man with a plunger. In fact, she was discovered by the trail of water droplets from the mop she had used to try and cover her tracks (so to speak).

I  was immediately suspicious.

“Why did you need a mop, sister?”

“Because I was cleaning up some water.”

“Where?”

“On the first floor… uh, the bathroom overflowed.”

The aide and another sister went to survey the damage. “Yep. The toilet overflowed. It’s all over the floor in the hallway too.” The aide got the mop and a pail of Lysol and went to work. I assumed the other sister had taken care of the toilet. But no. She did put a sign on the door that said “out of order” Lovely. The toilet was still full of sister’s reason for the overflow, which I found several hours later. Using a plunger on a stopped up toilet is NOT rocket science. Messy, yes. Nasty, yes. A pain in the butt, yes. But any moron can plunge a toilet. So of course this moron did. And she cleaned the plunger with soap and hot water. And she cleaned the toilet seat and the sink. And she took the out of order sign off the door. Grrrrrrr

When the elevator man came today, he asked, “So is this an old folks home?”

I told him, “No, it’s not. It only seems that way.”

Today is her eighty-seventh birthday, my large-pooping-toilet-cramming sister. Happy Birthday.

It means we will have wine tonight. Wahoo!

It’s my blog and I’ll rant if I want to…

Living in community is like nothing I’ve ever done. Living with a bunch of women is even more surreal… I remember reading Anita Diamant’s book The Red Tent. Women living so closely their cycles swung together, so they all ended up in the red tent together, nursing their periods. Gross.

We have sisters here who are selfish beyond belief. They would be hurt (or outraged) to read that, so I’m saying it here. None of them even know about this blog and even if they did, they can’t get in.

P R I V A T E.

It takes a certain conformity to live successfully in community. I see why habits were cultivated, both the kind you wear and the kind you practice. We’ve lost that, and the older sisters bemoaned the loss at first. Then they got over themselves. It’s the difference between a vertical relationship with God and mine… which is always askew. I still have ego issues and do-it-my-way issues, and other issues I’m not enlightened enough to even recognize yet. Work in progress. Maybe. Maybe a work stalled in progress and this will be what this blog is about. Welcome. You few chosen ones.

Stupidity is alive and well on Madison Avenue

There’s a new series of subway ads I noticed this morning… for a bank. (Just what we need, another bank.) So far I’ve only seen two of them. Both show the bank in… uh, a negative light. What’s with that? Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m just not in time with the humor of my day. Although I bet George Carlin could have gotten a ton of milage from this one. What do you think?

The continuity factor in these ads is a giant push-pin (to indicate location, duh.) But the push pin is a giant, as all banks must be giants these days, I guess. In the first photo it’s sticking out of the sidewalk and a geyser of water is spewing up out of the hole. A woman stands looking at it with a smile on her face. (Must be hot and she needs the cool-off.) Okay… implication: said bank cares nothing for the neighborhood, nor the ecology since they’ve just wrecked the sidewalk, hit a major water main and seem to care less. In fact, it’s supposed to be funny. Ha ha.

Next ad: same giant push pin is sticking out of a taxi’s hood and water is spewing out. The driver is looking surprised, with a smile on his face. (Obviously in shock…) he won’t be earning anything today and will be towed soon by the city with a big fat fine for double parking. Not to mention more water waste and the obvious damage to his vehicle. Implication? Our bank cares nothing for the small business man. Ha ha.

It makes me wonder what’s wrong with these pictures? Some ad agency thought it was clever. Some moron in PR obviously agreed, but I wouldn’t bank there if my life depended upon it. Which of course it doesn’t, since I don’t even have a bank account (cuz I’m a nun.) So someone puleeze splain me why these ads are funny.