*cat*heaven*

[alejandro with the book]

Cat Heaven

*

the story behind it goes as follows:

i stumbled upon this book in the picture book section

of a public library i was visiting last year,

and

always had it in my mind because of how old

my cat, Dinah, was.

I sat on the floor, legs crossed,

turning the pages,

tearing, imagining reading this at a time when

i knew i'd no longer be able to squeeze her,

hold her,

hug her,

smooch her,

and it made me really sad.

*

that was about a year ago.

*

...and this is now.

now she is gone.

it happened one week ago, today,

and

thinking of it

still makes me sad as ever.

*

i miss her so much.

*

i bought this book this week, and

i open it when i need to let go of some of the pent-up emotions.

***

here's

some pages from it:

***
***
***
this page gets me every time:

{{tear, tear}}

***

to imagine her like this,

sitting on a cloud...

***

i recommend it to anyone who's lost the cat-love of their life.

it's a good gift along with a sympathy card to anyone you know who's lost the cat-love of their life.

there's also a Dog Heaven book, but i never read that one.

*******************

thinking of my Dinah

on this *saturday*...

LGRaB Summer Games - 3rd entry - book about *cycling*

in celebration of the

1) completion of my killer June college class

and

2) the end of yet another year of subbing and successful networking,

I

decided

to treat myself to

a mani/pedi

after work yesterday

and

buy myself

a fun new

*bike book*:

i needed a book about cycling to read

as one of the bulleted challenges of the

second round of the LGRaB Summer Games

[first round completed challenges blogged about here and here]

i chose this book because i'm obsessed with

language, and how people put into words

feelings & thoughts on things i love.

in short, i love quotes. more specifically, i love good quotes,

and so many of them about biking are found

in this little *lasagna square* of a book.

***

i also thought,

rather than a book i'd have to read cover to cover

to gain the full story and/or message/plot,

i could pick this up whenever to

get a quick dose of inspiration,

and

now i have a resource for

many many *bike quotes*

[categorized by bike-topic]

to use in future posts.

*yay*
***

i even brought the book out to dinner last night

where the boyf and i took turns reading to each other,

and

laughing at the oh-so-true snippets.

in between reading,

we noshed on reeeeaaaally bland chicken francese:

and

oh-so-watered-down

chicken parmesan:

yeah. sucks when food looks good, but sucks.

***

*
later on,

i read some more in bed.

i put my *Clark Kent* glasses on

for atmosphere. hee hee.

first quote i thought i'd share:
"Ride as much or as little, or as long or as short, as you feel. But ride." -- Eddy Merckx
***
*
oh!
and here's my
*special treat*
mani:
Can you guess the name of the nail polish color??
Is it:
a) too cool for school bus
b) too intense mac'n'cheese
c) mango lover
d) pull over taxi
e) banana explosion
f) okay O.J.

g) egg yolk

h) cheesey doodles
***
*
What'd'ya think??!!??!!

***
*
P.S. --
the babies are eating like champs,
and are getting so big!

***

okay. that's it.

***

Friday, Friday, loviedovies.

*snap me out of it*

stuck inside

on this beautiful,

dry, 80-degree NY thursday,

tied down to finish

the last 100 pages

of the book i was forced to read for class.

this class really sucks.

reading sucks when it's forced upon you, like,

read, sucka, read!

the fact that i wanted to jog today, bike, or do something outside, and can't -- makes me want to bomb the school.

oh my goodness, i'm so melodramatic.

i am just one big whiner.

i could whine and whine and whine all day long.

i wish i could go outside, but there's only today, monday, tuesday, & wednesday left of this class, so...just gotta survive it. get through it.

so...

needless to say, i'm depressed about my in-my-room lock-down.

whatever, though.

there are some things that *snap me out of it*:

*

1) a video of our friend, Alex, from last summer.

he's totally wasted,

dancing to some tune,

which was then set to Miley Cyrus's PartyInTheUSA

and played on loop:

this video always cracks me up,

and reminds me that *Summer* really

is almost here...

...i just gotta get through these last few days of bull*smack*.

**

****

2) i made this video using JibJab,

and it's Tomas and his buddies as

Chippendale's dancers

...this cracks me up every time I watch it, too:

Tomas, Alex, Cezar, Damian, & Romain as Chippendale's dancers

haa haa!

OMG, ridiculous!

**

****

3) of course, the babies always send my soul flying.
they have been such a *blessing* since

finding them this past weekend:

Carmen Sandiego, top.

little Alejandro, bottom.

video love:

**

****

alright. gotta read. this.

*

Enjoy yuh Thurs, turtle shells.

*color* poetry w/ *Miss Zampelli*

i read the kids

this book:

we filled out

this chart in

the meeting area:

i was showing them

how to think about a color

using their 5 senses.

*

***

*
these are some finished poems:

haa haa!!

ya gotta love

Winnie.
** *** **

i love how she spelled lettuce: letis.

love it.

** *** **

i love that *pink* sounds like her mom

spraying perfume on her hair on Sunday.

oh, Ting Yu,

you're too cute.

[what color sounds like your mom?]

** *** **
* * *

***

*

Hey!

I never thought before

of what

Dr. Seuss actually looked like.

**

**

**

**

well,

ya'll,

he

looks

like

this:

i thought he'd look weirder for some reason.

Friday's here. Enjoy.

*lindamichellebaron* comes to *Queens College*

lindamichellebaron

was

wonderful!!!

she burst through the door,

arms waving wildly in the air,

& proclaimed, "I'm hear ya'll!

I'm famous!"

Animal-print jacket with red trim!!

the suede booties!!

...and it was raining out!

** ** **

She performed several of her poems, including:

*

*

If I Were Music

*

If I were music

I'd be jazz

So real you'd feel my pure pizazz!

*

Snazzy, jazzy...boiling ice

I'd never play the same way twice

*

When He made me

God closed his eyes

Heard the music

And improvised.

*

*

other poems she read were:

The Way to Start the Day

*

Even Weeds Have Needs

*

Daddy's Little Girl

*

You Talking to Me?

*and*

Yes, I'm Talking To You

*

*

a list of her poems can be be found here.

*

and for your absolute reading pleasure,

lindamichellebaron's

BOOKS

are entitled

The SUN is on & For the Love of Life

*

i'm convinced that

if you read from these books

before laying your head down to sleep,

you will dream lovely, lively, spirited dreams...

...she was that magical.

she also wrote these words on the board:

"Gonna do it Got to do it

Gonna more than try --- Gonna make it

Got to make it

Get my piece of the sky"

she was clapping,

& while she 'sang' these words, she had us

bop our heads & swerve our necks...

...made us believe the words & the rhythm of the words.

*

*

i left so happy to have met her,

& of course I harassed her for a picture [it was just one!]

& then pretty much skipped out to my car,

& hummed all the way home.

*

*

when thinking about my future & my possible writing career,

i'm forever going to remember yesterday & lindamichelle B.

& try to stay focused

& remind myself

that I just:

"Gonna do it Got to do it

Gonna more than try---Gonna make it

Got to make it

Get my piece of the sky"

*creativity* in a new light

When you hear the word genius,

what do you think of?

*** *** ***

Do you think of someone as being a genius

OR

having a genius?

author Elizabeth gilbert -- of *eat pray love* -- suggests the latter

*

*

after I finished reading *eat pray love*

I 'YouTubed' her name and the video below

was the first to display.

*

*

I'm so excited to have stumbled upon this twenty-minute clip

because she tells, from experience as a successful writer,

from research,

& from talking with other great writers who've

experienced it,

of a fresh new way to think about creativity.

*

*

I'm excited because if you are a creative

individual -- and we all are, really -- this video

will

truthfully

and

honestly

make

so

much

gosh

darn

sense

to you

that it'll be a

tad

bit

scary.

*

*

I hope you watch.

*

*

What she says about the poet

and the *thundering poem*

has happened to me more times than I can

count, but now I just have words to go

with what I experienced.

*

*

i just started gilbert's new book Committed

and we'll see how that read goes.

maybe it'll straighten up my great BIG marriage

question mark over my head?????

*

*

Anyway...without further ado...a new way of thinking:

i *finished* it

i looooove being able to say that i finished it.

It was one of my first goals of *2010* and I've already accomplished it.

Yessssss!

*** *** ***

So, of course, I encourage you guys to read it. Elizabeth Gilbert breaks up the book into three parts:

the eat part - which she did in Italy

the pray part - which she did in India

and then

the love part - which she did in Indonesia

*

the Indonesia segment has so much good writing in it [I mean, the whole book did, but I really enjoyed Indonesia]

Here are two of my favorite excerpts [just to wet your appetite a bit]:

Felipe, a man Liz meets while in Indonesia, tries to convince her to have a romance while she's in Bali.

Liz responds with:

"I don't think I'm ready for it. I don't feel like going through all the effort of romance again, you know? I don't feel like having to shave my legs every day or having to show my body to a new lover. And I don't want to have to tell my life story over again, or worry about birth control. Anyway, I'm not even sure I know how to do it anymore. I feel like I was more confident about sex and romance when I was sixteen than I am now."

Felipe says in return:

"Of course you were; you were young and stupid then. Only the young and stupid are confident about sex and romance. Do you think any of us know what we're doing? Do you think there's any way humans can love each other without complication? You should see how it happens in Bali, darling. All these Western men come here after they've made a mess of their lives back home, and they decide they've had it with Western women, and they go marry some tiny, sweet, obedient little Balinese teenage girl. I know what they're thinking. They think this pretty little girl will make them happy, make their lives easy. But wherever I see it happen, I always want to say the same thing. Good luck. Because you still have a woman in front of you, my friend. And you are still a man. It's still two human beings trying to get along, so it's going to become complicated. And love is always complicated. But still humans must try to love each other, darling. We must get out hearts broken sometimes. This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we've tried for something."

It really had me thinking.

The second piece of writing that hit home to me was when Gilbert writes reflectively about her past relationships and her analysis of why she's been unsuccessful at them:

"I have a history of making decisions very quickly about men. I have always fallen in love fast without measuring risks. I have a tendency not only to see the best in everyone, but to assume that everyone is emotionally capable of reaching his highest potential. I have fallen in love more times than I care to count with the highest potential of a man, rather than with the man himself, and then I have hung on to the relationship for a long time (sometimes far too long) waiting for the man to ascend to his own greatness. Many times in romance I have been the victim of my own optimism.

I married young and quick, from a place of love and hope, but without a lot of discussion over what the realities of marriage would mean. Nobody advised me on marriage. I had been raised by parents to be independent, self-providing, self-deciding...of course the world was not always like this. If I'd been born during any other century of Western patriarchy, I would've been considered the property of my father, until which time he passed me over to my husband, to become marital property. I would've had precious little say in the major matters of my own life. At one time in history, if a man had been my suitor, my father might have sat that man down with a long list of questions to establish whether this would be an appropriate match. He would have wanted to know,

'How will you provide for my daughter?'

'What is your reputation in this community?'

'How is your health?'

'Where will you take her to live?'

'What are your debts and your assets?'

'What are the strengths of your character?'

My father would not have just given me away in marriage to anybody for the mere fact that I was in love with the fellow. But in modern life, when I made the decision to marry, my modern father didn't become involved at all. He would have no more interfered with that decision than he would have told me how to style my hair.

I have no nostalgia for the patriarchy, please believe me. But what I have come to realize is that, when the patriarchic system was (rightfully) dismantled, it was not necessarily replaced by another form of protection. What I mean is -- I never thought to ask a suitor the same challenging questions my father might have asked him, in a different age. I have given myself away in love many times, merely for the sake of love. And I've given away the farm sometimes in that process. If I am truly to become an autonomous woman, then I must take over that role of being my own guardian. Famously, Gloria Steinem once advised women that they should strive to become like the men they had always wanted to marry. What I've only recently realized is that I not only have to become my own husband, but I need to be my own father, too."

Wow, right?

It rings so incredibly true.

I will be one of the first in line for the movie, out in August of this year. You've got a couple months to read it, if you haven't yet. I can't imagine it being better than the book, but it might be entertaining, if nothing else.

Happy Wednesday, loves.

Have you read any good books lately?

*swing & read*

we're supposed to get *snow* late afternoon

and all day tomorrow,

here in

NYC

i'd rather come home from student teaching

today and escape here.

ride my bike.

park it on a tree.

bring my studies and *eat pray love*

sit in a spring dress,

on a spring late Friday evening,
and

swing and read

Swing and Read, my dears,

swih-hih-hiiiiiing and ree-heh-heeeeed...

Awwwww yeaaahhh.

*to do* TODAY

(toDOlist above found here.)

the *To Do* list is LAWNGGGGG...today:

1. Do Laundry [3 loads worth]
2. buy my textbook on amazon.com
3. write a one-page autobiography on my educational background for my student teaching assignment starting Monday [ah!!!]
4. pay my phone bill
5. go to BANK & get $$
6. go to Weight Watchers meeting @ 1 pm [i've been so chubby]
7. make photocopies of a Lockhorn cartoon to hang on our ski-weekend cabin's fridge**
8. go to H-Mart & get three big bags of edamame as a weekend snack
9. pack for weekend
10. straighten hair [probably in vain, because of the predicted snow sleet & slush]

all though your day can get hectic

and all over the place, I encourage you to find

steady breath and a sense of

WoooooSaaaahhhh

for me, it will come in the form

of remembering these words I read in

*eat pray love* yesterday:

"I have searched frantically for contentment for so many years in so many ways, and all these acquisitions and accomplishments -- they run you down in the end. Life, if you keep chasing it like so hard, will drive you to death. Time --when pursued like a bandit -- will behave like one; always remaining one county or one room ahead of you, changing its name and hair color to elude you, slipping out the back door of the motel just as you're banging through the lobby with your search warrant, leaving only a burning cigarette in the ashtray to taunt you. At some point you have to stop because it won't. You have to admit you can't catch it. That you're not supposed to catch it. At some point...you gotta let go and sit still and allow contentment to come to you."

this is what i expect to do this weekend.

sit still

(well, ski too)

but mainly just enjoy the snow and the cabin

and my last weekend of

away-ness

friend-ness

no-homework-ness

i hope your *to do* lists are wonderful today and filled with at least one or two things amongst the bunch that set your *heart* a-flight

happy Thursday, reader.

** the Lockhorns cartoon that I'm copying shows Leroy in a hospital bed all bruised up with bandages and the doctor is holding an X-ray and saying to Leroy, "Want to see your ski vacation pictures?"

haa haa...that's what I'm afraid MY ski vacation pictures are gonna look like.

still reading *eat pray love*

i'm still reading

i should really hurry up because i start my student teaching February 1st & i'm worried i'll not have time to recreationally read. [gasp!]

i made it to India.

(if you read the book, you know what i mean)

i made it to India and met Richard from Texas.

i've only just met him, and i love him.

Gilbert writes about Richard:

"His giant ambling confidence hushes down all my inherent nervousness and reminds me that everything really is going to be OK. (And if not OK, then at least comic.) Remember that cartoon rooster Foghorn Leghorn? Well, Richard is kind of like that, I became his chatty little sidekick, the Chickenhawk."

Oh my goodness!

I love the piece of advice he gives her on ego.

page 140.

I know a few people who I could give that advice to.

;)

i urge you to pick up the book.

*tootle loo, for now.*

*read* eat pray love

okay, I know.

I'm *late to the dance,*

as usual.

*eat pray love*

let's talk about it.

well,

the extent to which *I* can talk about it is this:

"I started reading it last night. I'm on page 30."

I saw Elizabeth Gilbert on the Ms. Winfrey show

a couple of years ago, & wanted to read it then.

Didn't.

Picked it up now.

started it.

and *we'll see*.

(pic above found here.)


i know that julia Roberts has been filming the movie

version of the book due out

in August of this year. (pic above found here.)

up to page 30, the book's a good read. I want to read on, so how much better can it get? My favorite part so far has been *on page 24* when she talks about loving every minute of 'learning herself' Italian.

Gilbert writes that after her Italian classes she signed up for she would

"slosh home through the rain...draw a hot bath, and lie there in the bubbles reading the Italian dictionary aloud to [herself]...just speaking the words made [her] feel sexy and happy."

This makes *ME* happy because I'm from Italian decent, but lately...I don't know...I've been indifferent about it. Actually, I've always been indifferent about it.

I want to be Asian, I think.

I cannot pinpoint why this is so, and it's not like I'm ashamed to be Italian, but I guess I kinda feel like i'm not Italian. my family doesn't speak it, so I don't. We eat plenty of it, and cook just as much lasagna as the next group-a *pisanos*, but...my mom and dad are from Queens.

I've never been to the homeland. I dream that when I do go to Italy, it'll all *click*, but Queens, NY is the culture I most identify with, and quite frankly, a lot of Italian people are just so high on the fact that they can call themselves "ITALIANO" even though they really don't know what that means.

(don't get me started on the MTV show Jersey Shore. don't even.)

I don't wanna be one of them.

page 24 of *eat pray love* however, struck a chord because here's a woman who appreciated something about my background so admiringly that I was proud to be of that background.

does that make sense?

(deep sigh.)

Gilbert writes

"Just speaking those words made me sexy and happy. My divorce lawyer told me not to worry; she said she had one client (Korean by heritage) who, after a yucky divorce, legally changed her name to something Italian, just to feel sexy and happy again."

reading this, my loves, made me grin from *ear to* droopy-lobed *ear*. I have a very Italian last name, and sadly, but honestly, it took this line in the book to change my perception of it.

I looked up from the book, said my own last name in my head and - for the first time ever - felt somewhat sexy and happy about it.

Whatever.

i'll keep reading.

If you've read it, check back HERE regularly and we'll BLOGGY-TAWK about it.

I suppose that's all for now.

Take care.

enjoy your *wednesday*