55 Thoughts on My 54th Birthday

1. It’s sometimes tough to think of new and original material to publish on every major holiday, holy day or personal day. That’s the challenge of every blogger. It’s my 54th birthday and I have posted a blog post every year on January 27 since starting this blog. So I must continue the tradition. I decided to post 55 random thoughts about life, love and other mysteries because I needed something to write about. 1 thought for every year I have been alive. And 1 for the year I was in the womb.

I was born on January 27, 1971 at 3:53 P.M.

2. I have been fortunate enough to marry my best friend. We laugh, pray, have experiences and travel through life together. If you get married found your relationship on friendship. Romance and feelings may fade but friendship doesn’t go away very easily especially when your friend becomes your family. I go more into this topic in The Secret To Long Lasting Relationships.

3. I don’t talk to my daughter Princess all that often. We just recently started talking to her in the last several months after not talking to her for the last several years.  I see my granddaughter on a semi-regular basis. Despite the lack of time I spend with them, I love them and thought them important enough to include in my random list of 55 sayings.

4. Big/Small Poem by Kristin and Me

Elephants Are Big.

Dinosaurs Are Bigger.

Ants Are Small.

Skin Cells Are Smaller.

Angels have no size but yet we wonder how many can dance on the head of a pin.

5. The beverages I consume most are

• Lemon-aid: It’s amazing how different brands of Lemon-aid taste so different. Started drinking lite Lemon-aid. Not as favorable but better with no sugar.
• Milk: Nothing like having something sweet with my ice cold milk.
• Berry Punch: Fruit punch is also good.
• Diet Soda: I used to think DS tasted like mud. But I discovered that DS in a can retains all its bubbles and carbonation.
• Hot Chocolate: Usually only have this at work.
• I do occasionally drink water also.
• I don’t drink alcohol, coffee or tea. I hate the smell of tea and think it tastes yucky no matter what flavor it is.
• I can’t figure out how to get that dot to go away. – Kristin

6.  I think I figured it out.  I’m Mark’s wife and I am not tech savvy.

7.  When I want a drink, I get a cup from my cupboard and fill it up and drink the drink. I then put it upstairs. I then grab another one and leave it by the couch. I then get another one and forget where I left it. Soon I have lots of cups around the house just waiting to be collected and put in the dishwasher. This drives Kristin crazy.

8. One of my goals with this blog is to present topics on God, History, Entertainment, My Personal Life, and other various topics and have a conversation about them. But people don’t seem to leave comments or say anything. Sometimes that happens but overall I wonder if anyone cares. My own writing partner doesn’t read what I write unless I bug her about it. I continue to write on anyway. It’s an activity that I’m dedicated to.

9. I hope to get a new computer at some point which will help with the quality of what I write and will help me restart my video skills once again. Some of the keys on my present computer don’t type the letter the first time I hit it. I have to hit the G several times before it appears on the screen. Same with the F key. If I get a new computer I would have to take time to set it all up. So I’m waiting for a day I have energy to devote to that.

10. My friend  and best man at my wedding Marshall likes to drive long distances to do things. He drove from his home in Columbus Ohio to New York on New Years Eve just to watch the ball drop. He drove from Ohio to see Trump’s inauguration.  I asked him why he takes so much time to drive to events he could just watch on TV. His response was ” I like to have experiences.”  I would like to have more experiences but feel too tired to have them. I also usually want to work on my blog. He’s the only friend I have that calls me on a regular basis.

11. Insomnia causes me to have fragmented sleep. I feel too awake to go to sleep but too tired to do much else once I’m walking abound. If I could actually get a full nights sleep without any interruptions, I think my life would be incredibly different as I would then have more energy to do more things.

12. I would like to read more. But I get distracted by social media. I have ADHD. I get drowsy when I start to read. I’m indecisive of what to read seeing there is so many choices to choice from. If I read this I then can’t read this other thing I might like better and that is more exciting. But I have managed to make lists of things I would like to read if I ever do decide to read. I like to know who is writing what more than actually reading what they actually wrote.

13. Sometimes I can write an outline in my head as I’m working throughout the day. Other times I don’t know what will come out of the keys till I sit down to type it all out. Sometimes the outline takes a different direction then it started out. I’m at # 13 on this list and already created the last point which is # 55. Can I come up with 41 more interesting thoughts in time for this publication at 3:53 PM on my birthday? Sometimes I don’t think I’ll come up with material or feel I’m slogging through. But the ideas and craft sometimes flow when I least expect it and walah, and article appears for publication.

14. Sometimes I repeat myself to other people. I’ll forget telling them a story and tell it again. Or I will write something I’ve all ready written, but from a slightly different angle. It’s one of the side effects of having a forgetful ADHD brain and also of having a love of sharing yourself with others.

15. This post is # 715.

16. My mother died back in 2016. She sold my childhood home several years before she moved to a retirement village. Here is what it looked like before she sold it.

Now here is what it looked like on January 25, 2025

My whole neighborhood looks so different from when I grew up there.

It was really interesting and weird to see.

17. A former neighbor of mine named Regina commented on the photo.

My favorite neighbor 

18. And More triggered Memories from Reina.

And then when Laurie and Patty woke up, we would work on our play in your yard.
I don’t know remember the plays that we did.
They were based on the 50s routine and we’d wake up everybody in the neighborhood
and they’d have to pay us $.25 to come watch the play.
It was probably by 9 AM.
All of the people did not want to really come but they did because we woke them up.
I don’t know if you remember cops and robbers on the bikes.

19. I grew up next to the Nigros. I see some of them online as well as that of some of my other neighbors. On Saturday January 25, 2025 I picked up Mike Nigro, who now goes by the name of Clara Nigro, and we drove by the old neighborhood. Clara turns 45 on the 29. Were basically nine years apart. Clara also wanted to go to St. Paul’s Roman Catholic Church which Clara has not been to in years. But it has collaborated with another parish, Our Lady of Hope in Ipswich, and didn’t have a Saturday vigil mass. A tad disappointing  and weird to see the parish I grew up in having changed so much.

20. Quiz Question: Quote “can the Quebec Queen Quibble Quintessential Quips Quite Quickly and Quietly?” end Quote.

21. Craig Onan@CraigOnan (Jun 16, 2024) Catholic Twitter is mostly just Catholics telling other Catholics they’re not Catholic enough.

22. Everytime we come across another Catholic with a different opinion, how about not labeling them a heretic or fake Catholic as if we were so awesome to have the monopoly of truth discovered by our own brand of cleverness and not the grace of God.

23. When I was a child about half the kids in our public school were Catholic. We never knew there were conservative and liberal Catholics. We wore shorts to our overcrowded Church full of tourists every summer. Simple Yesterdays And Harder Todays | Kristin Wilson

24.
I am so thankful for my Carmelite vocation.
My marriage is a vocation.
My online class is preparing me for a vocation.
being a mother is a vocation.
Many vocations for one person,
one God makes it all possible.
-Kristin Wilson

25. Dr. St. Therese of Lisieux was canonized in Rome on  May 17, 1925

26. Growing up in the 70’s and 80’s we did not have Tiktok,
so it is no big loss personally.
Many younger colleagues are in withdrawal.
–Marshall L. Myers

27. The fires in California are a reminder to us all that anything and everything can be taken away from us at any time. Your home, Your health, Your reputation, Your life. The only thing that can’t be taken away from you is God’s love for you.

28. July 7, 1928 – An event in history occurred in which all future great things are judged. The first machine-sliced and machine-wrapped loaf of bread is sold in Chillicothe, Missouri, United States, using Otto Frederick Rohwedder‘s technology.

29. It seems as if many Catholics on social media like to critique the messenger and not the actual message of what someone said. They’ll take one thing someone said that they find negative, take it out of context and then separate it from anything else they’ve ever said on the same related topic and assume the worst of them. Even if they might actually agree with something someone said, they can’t get over who actually said it. Catholic dialogue on social media is really lacking in good faith, charity and reason.

30.
And so I write here and there
My computer is nearly the size of the Earth
so long as there is an internet connection
So I’ll tell this internet world
I’m in love with a man who died 2000 years ago
and rose from the dead
I’m in love with an infinite Triune God
-Kristin Wilson

31. 1931 is entering the Public Domain in 2027.

• “As Time Goes By” sheet music w.m. Herman Hupfeld
•  Bing Crosby‘s first record “I’ve Got the Girl” from 1926.
• Tough and intelligent police detective Dick Tracy, created by Chester Gould. made his debut on Sunday, October 4, 1931, in the Detroit Mirror.
• Irma S. Rombauer – The Joy of Cooking
• Pearl S. Buck – The Good Earth
• City Lights, a Charlie Chaplin film
• Dracula, directed by Tod Browning, starring Bela Lugosi
• Frankenstein, directed by James Whale, starring Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, John Boles and Boris Karloff
• Salvador Dalí – The Persistence of Memory

32. Some Catholic Youtube Channels I love to listen to include

•  Jimmy Akin –
•  Ascension Presents  Fr. Mike Schmitz-
•  Breaking In The Habit with Fr. Casey Cole

•  Bishop Robert Barron 
•  The Michael Lofton Show 

They help my mind and spirt grow in understanding and love of Jesus Christ and his church.

33. Saints in 2025

• The Smiling Nun  Sister Cecilia María of the Holy Face from Argentina (Dec. 5, 1973 – June 23, 2016) is now a Servant of God.
• Sister Clare (Crockett) Maria of the Trinity and the Heart of Mary, S.H.M. from Northern Ireland (November 14, 1982 – April 16, 2016) is now a Servant of God.
• Computer Wiz Blessed Carlo Acutis  (May 3, 1991 –  October 12, 2006) from England and Italy will canonized a saint on April 17, 2025.
• Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati  ( April 6, 1901 – July 4, 1925) whom St. Pope John Paul II dubbed  the “Man of the Eight Beatitudes” is set to be canonized on  August 3, 2025

34. Pope Francis and Donald Trump are the two most divisive people on social media. People either love them or hate them.

35. I don’t think Trump is as bad as some say he is. He just freed some pro-life prisoners. Good for him. Reaffirmed the biological reality of men and women. All right.  At least the Trump voters I know online and in real life are decent non-crazy people and voted for him out of conscience.

He also is not the great messiah some people think he is. He really is a braggart and an egocentric man who I believe loves the spotlight and can’t stand not being under it. Some of his policies lack charity and go against Catholic social teaching such as his stance on mass deportation.

36. Pope Francis is not as evil and wicked as some claim him to be. He is also as Great as his fans think he is. Seriously I don’t know how people dislike him as much as they do.  I take statements like this

• January 29, 1937- The Good Earth, directed by Sidney Franklin, starring Paul Muni and Luise Rainer
• September 21, 1937 – J. R. R. Tolkien‘s juvenile fantasy novel The Hobbit, or There and Back Again is published in England by George Allen & Unwin on the recommendation of young Rayner Unwin.

December 21, 1937

• Dr. Seuss‘s first book, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, is published by Vanguard Press.
• Walt Disney‘s debut feature film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first feature-length cartoon to be made in America, in Technicolor, and in sound, premieres at the Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles. The film opens nationwide on February 4, 1938, and is a massive box office success, briefly holding the record as the highest-grossing sound film of all time.

38. For some reason people seem to believe that if you want to help migrants or limit someone’s’ access to guns you must be pro-choice. If you want to deport all illegal aliens or give people access to any gun someone’s heart desire you must be pro-life. The truth is we should want to help migrants, limit someone’s access to deadly weapons and protect someone from conception to natural death. There is no reason to always pick your political tribes social concerns. Catholic social teaching encompasses both liberal and conservative causes.

39. You can’t answer every objection to faith, morality and reason. There are too many various opinions described in a number of ways to do this. You can only find good enough reasons to convince yourself.

40.
This is a picture of us in Ireland
in front of King John’s Castle in Limerick.

I wrote this article about Ireland. The Challenges And Spiritual Lessons Of Traveling |
I wanted to write a second article of our fun experiences in Ireland

But I never did.
Yet Anyway.

I did however create a jigsaw puzzle of this picture for Kristin for our 15th wedding anniversary.

41. Kristin and I often play Scrabble on our Phones together even when we’re far apart while I’m at work. My best word was Journals at 95 points. Her best word was Skettle at 83 points. But she does win more games then I do.

42. Kristin and I love to watch shows and movies together. Things that make us go awe in suspense, be mystified in wonder and  weep with heartfelt emotion during touching scenes. The latest show were into has us laughing and smiling with delight. Were currently towards the end of season 2 of The Middle starring Catholic celebrity Patricia Heaton.

43. As Kristin and I drove through Boston she remarked that she would have liked to be a fly on the wall during the meetings of the founding fathers. Driving along the twisting and turning highways she thought that the founding fathers wouldn’t recognize modern Boston.

44. I thought I would have a Sunday where I cleaned the condo, wrote and watched some TV. But my friend Dave whom I have not heard from since last year actually called me. He thought I wouldn’t pick up the phone, but I did. I thought he wouldn’t call me but he did. So we went to Dennys and chatted. We came back and watched movie trailers which is a tradition we do after going to Denny’s. I then hung out with some friends of his I mostly never met and we watched some Ryan George videos. It was the most social I had been with a group outside of work for quite sometime. It recalled the days when I used to be a lot more social than I am noways.

45. The Band OK Go without a doubt puts out the most creative music videos of any music artist working today. They should sweep every video music award whenever it is presented. Here is their latest.

47. Sometimes because of my forgetful ADHD brain I’ll forget telling a story I told and tell it again.  But sometimes because I do like to share myself with others, I’ll repeat myself. This is especially true when I write something I’ve all ready written about. But the next telling of it is from a slightly different angle.

48. The first Christmas in our marriage, only weeks before our 1 year anniversary Kristin gave me a gift I still have a use to this day. It is a blanket she bought at the shoe store where she worked. It’s such a cozy and comfortable blanket and just feels good to wrap around yourself. I even wore it to the movies once as a scarf. It reminds me that I had my baby blanket with me till I left for college. My mother hid it on me thinking I had outgrown it. I did get it back, but it had lost its glory.

49. We are waiting with baited breath to hear about the arrival of our newest granddaughter. She is due on my birthday. Whether or not Princess will actually share this information with us were not sure. But we pray it will go well and hopefully she will let us know soon.

50.
Sometimes time flies faster than the speed of light

and you suddenly realize a week has past or even a month

You work, you pray and you help others,

and you spend time with your family

then you tweet about it

then time keeps flying

before you know it eternity will be yours

-Kristin Wilson

51. Yogi the Yetti Yawns Yodeling while Yogaing while Your Yellow Yackity Yak eats Yams.

52. If you haven’t already, please consider reading and liking The Catholic Bard and signing up for it to be delivered to your inbox every time there is a new post for free.

” The Catholic Bard is the one blog I love to read. I recommend everyone read it.” –Pope Francis (Leader of the Catholic Church)

53. You are going to die. And everyone you know will die. And just like most people cannot give you the name of their great grandfather; people, very soon, will not remember you. More than that. In order to be forgotten you must first be known. But very soon. Sooner than you think, you will not be known by anyone.
– Matt Fradd QUICK! You Are Almost Out of Time!

54. on July 29,  1954 – The first volume of J. R. R. Tolkien‘s epic The Lord of the Rings – The Fellowship of the Ring – is published in London by George Allen & Unwin. The Two Towers follows on November 11 and publication will be completed in 1955. By 2007, 150 million copies will have been sold worldwide.

On September 17, 1954– William Golding‘s first novel, the allegorical dystopian Lord of the Flies, is published by Faber and Faber in London.

1954 also gave us C. S. Lewis‘s  The Horse and His Boy and Dr. Seuss‘ – Horton Hears a Who!

55. Finally,  my deepest hope for myself is that I love God with all my heart mind and soul and that I love my neighbor as myself. I want to make amends with anyone I have had a rift with. I love all my friends and my family, even the ones I don’t see often.  I hope to be a witness to Christ and his church all the years I have left to live on this earth. I hope to die a happy death by being free of any mortal sins and of most if not all venial sins in the grace of God’s mercy. I hope this for all my family and friends and for every member of the human race that ever has or ever will live. The Trinity are the most important persons you will ever invest your life into as they are the ones you will spend eternity with or apart from. Jesus is the one that will save your soul from death so it is best to make friends with the only person  you will want on your side when you die. As a Catholic it is good to know that your blessed mother Mary and all saints known and unknown are praying and rooting for you to be with them in heaven.

May God bless, love and have mercy on you all.