They say it's your feast day.

Leaving vague and seemingly incomplete voicemail messages is sort of my mom's forte, but perhaps the most infamous message was received a few years ago and went something to the effect of, "Catherine. This is Mom. Happy feast day." However brief, I knew full well what it was referring to. Today, that message came in email form because today is in fact my feast day.

Although there are several St. Catherines, some with "C"s, some with "K"s, some with funny hats, etc., I was named after St. Catherine of Siena, she of the "C" and the stigmata. She is the patroness of Theta Phi Alpha sorority, nurses and Italy. And her feast day is April 29. When I younger, it was not uncommon to find me deeply entrenched in one of the three Lives of the Saints volumes that were housed on our living room bookshelf. I could rattle off the martyrs upon request (occasionally going so far as it include means of death, although lions and fire were usually fail-safe guesses). I was jealous that my sister's namesake was the patron saint of television. And I always had a subconscious feast day countdown rattling in the back of my mind. We usually got Crayola markers of the neon variety, occasionally we got candy.

Today I just got an email, but it warmed my heart nonetheless. Maybe next April 29 I'll get stigmata.

Thoughts on the last stall in the bathroom at my place of employment.

1. If you stare at the purse hook long enough, with enough imaginative intensity, you will have an Alice in Wonderland moment wherein the screws turn into eyes, the top hook turns into a nose, and the bottom hook turns into a mouth. This can be somewhat unnerving.

2. Someone keeps two different kinds of body spray on top of the toilet seat cover dispenser. One is green, but I'm not sure what the scent is. The other one was missing today. Possibly stolen, or possibly relocated to stalls 1, 2 or 3. I'm almost certain they do not belong to anyone I work with, but there's a psychiatrist's office down the hall, so they probably belong to someone who works there or a patient. I'm assuming the latter.

3. I have peed on myself countless times in this this particular stall, leading me to believe it is haunted.

Sometimes I see really great illustrations and hear really humorous humor and wish I'd spent a little more time with those Creightonian cartoons, instead of eeking them out five minutes before deadline. One in ten was passable, and the rest were certifiably lame. Such is life. Not to slip into a moment of Carrie Bradshaw Cosmopolitan Fancy Shoes Zen, but I think I'm doomed to recognize opportunity only long after it has passed.

Goal moving forward: To... not... do that.

Promise me smoking monkeys...

And I am putty in your hands.

I was talking recently with a friend from home, that friend specifically being Annie. And even more specifically being Annie R., since I've been strangely blessed with approximately 472 friends named Annie. Annie and I have a long and storied friendship that dates back to the zygote stage and has essentially retained the same dynamic ever since.

I am a huge nerd.
She is much cooler.
I am fairly reserved.
She likes to get wasted and verbally abuse strangers.
I am easily bribed.
She is, hands down, the best briber ever.

When we were little, it was often hard for her to get me to hang out. Mostly because I was too busy eating dandelions and watching Square One TV in my underwear to throw eggs at the neighbor's fence or whatever it was she wanted me to do. In this recent conversation, she informed me that one time, having exhausted all other avenues of prying me from the grips of my introversion, she broke out the big guns. I imagine the conversation went something like this:

"Want to come over and paint the patio with Drano?"
"No thanks."
"I have that National Geographic with the smoking monkey."
"Goddamn it. Ok."

Even at six years old, she knew me well enough to know that National Geographic was my downfall, and the issue with the smoking monkey was my favorite. It was actually a five-page spread of chimpanzees in various states of human-inflicted emotional duress. The Russian one was wearing a tuxedo and serving champagne. The Appalachian one was wearing roller skates and living under someone's back porch. And one of them was smoking a cigarette. I guess our subscription had lapsed because for some reason, my family didn't have that one at home. I would visit it at my aunt's house on a weekly basis, but the days in between were long and empty. And Annie knew that I would do anything to fill the void. At that point, I imagine I readily agreed to her offer, put down the Canadian dollar I was about to add to my collection and proceeded to engage in some form of vandalism. And I'm almost positive it was worth it.