"Let me tell you a story while you're still in love with me. My mother had a son who died on the day he was born. They buried him at the door of my father's church. I was born one year later to the day. I used to read his gravestone every Sunday.

His name was the same as mine. 'Vincent van Gogh, died March 30th, 1852.' I'd stand and read until they pulled me in to hear my father preach the sermon. Then I'd think about the amazing fact that I'd been born, and buried, and born all over again. That God had given me all my second chances rolled into one."

Happy 20 months with Bear

He tells me that I'm stubborn, like when it's raining and he tells me to wear my rain boots instead of my hole-y converse sneakers. but i look down at my feet and shake my head no, no I won't wear my rain boots, i don't need to. Then after sitting in a three hour class wriggling my toes inside my squishy-squashy socks, I think: I should've worn my rain boots.

When I tell him this, he smiles and says, "So what does that tell you?"
That Bear was right, I say. And inside I'm thinking how lucky a stubborn P. like me is
to be with a Bear who knows best.

Happy 1 year 8 months, hunny! <3

Always an adventure

From Summer 2007, right after we made a stop at 7-11 after a movie night at Tiger City. That same summer, we went bike-riding at Metropolitan Park with Kellen and ate "frog balls." Once Harry hid in a giant cardboard box upstairs (one of the boxes used as luggage) and waited for Tina. When she climbed up the stairs, he bursted out of the box and screamed "SURPRISE!!!!!!!"
She nearly shat her pants.

Really miss hanging out with you, Harry. Happy birthday!!!!

From, A Beautiful Mind

Nash: Alicia, does our relationship warrant long-term commitment? I need some kind of proof, some kind of verifiable, empirical data.

Alicia: I'm sorry, just give me a moment to redefine my girlish notions of romance.

Her face

was as broad and innocent as a cabbage.

-Flannery O'Connor

Favorite pizza

is without a doubt, Papa John's. and Dominoes when I'm in Taiwan. Here are three things about my preferred pizza:

-jalepenos should be on there
-the cheese should not look like elmer's glue (i.e. it should not be ALL OVER THE PLACE, runny and undercooked)
-the crust should be a nice balance of crunchy + chewy, but that's only if it's a regular. thin crust is always awesome when i'm in a crunchy-only kind of mood.

p.s. I hate when a slice wasn't separated thoroughly enough from another slice, and i have to pull it apart, and when i do, a glorious glob of cheese/pepperoni slides off the tip of MY slice while staying on its neighbor slice (or in the worst case, remaining on the damn cardboard). I think of it like a wishbone-pulling kind of deal, except with pizzas.

Do the flying move again

I had a super wonderful weekend with Bear
who likes me even when I'm whiny
And from whose plate I get to eat bright red tomatoes
as well as little cartoon-like mushrooms.
From whose body I get to hold onto as I sit on the back of his motorbike thinking
nothing gives quite the same feeling as this.
Which is a thought I often have when I'm doing any sort of anythings with B.

Seneca

"I ask you, wouldn't you say that anyone who took the view that a lamp was worse off when it was put out than it was before it was lit was an utter idiot? We, too, are lit and put out. We suffer somewhat in the intervening period, but at either end of it there is a deep tranquility.

We are wrong in holding that death follows after, when in fact it precedes as well as succeeds. Death is all that was before us. If there is any torment in the later state, there must also have been torment in the period before we saw the light of day; yet we never felt conscious of any distress then. It will be the same after me as it was before me."

-Seneca, "Asthma"

What's your issue

Think outside the lunchbox

One day when Drew and I go on an outing, we will pack the following for lunch:

His: A Beary Cute Meal!

• BabyBel cheese with a beach umbrella cupcake pick
• Carrot sticks with dip in a plastic shot glass and
a bucket cupcake pick
• Drink
• Teddy Bear Cookies
• A bear sandwich dressing in a swim suit
made from Air Heads Sour Belts, sprinkles and icing eyes
• Red-seedless grapes with a beach ball cupcake pick

Mine: Kisses for Piggy!

• A piggy shaped sandwich with an icing eye
• Hershey Kisses in a heart shaped silicone cup
• Heart shaped carrots in heart shaped silicone cup
• Pretzel snaps
• Strawberry slices with a pink kiss lip pick

...And I'm throwing in this last one just because.

Octopus Lunch!

• Sun chips
• Octopus sandwich with icing eye & sprinkles for the mouth
• Cheese cubes with starfish pick
• Blue m&m's
• Blueberries, raspberries, blackberries
• Cucumber slices with an octopus pick

Why I was a grouch this morning

When you are wearing rain boots, you MUST make sure your socks are tight. Because the worst thing is trudging about in scrunchy socks that scrunch down even more with each step, till in the end they've slid off your ankles and gathered all at the forefront of your boots. And if you happen to own boots with a rather scratchy interior, torturous chafing of your bare ankles will ensue.

Also, if this is taking place on a day that you thought would be all thunderstorms and rain, but that actually turned out to be screechingly sunny, you'll feel even more like an idiot as you glare enviously at rosy-cheeked passersby skipping about in Havianas.

If you ever undergo this unpleasant experience then keep in mind that the one and only antidote for it is to head to your nearest Dunkin Donuts and order a Tropicana Coolatta. You will feel instantly better. Even in your pathetically scrunched up socks and inappropriate rain gear on a garishly sunny day.

I'd like to

perch right here with you.

"Simple can be harder than complex: you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it's worth it in the end."
-Steve Jobs

"Associate with the noblest people you can find; read the best books; live with the mighty;
but learn to be happy alone."
-Saul Bellow

Know it well

"There are all kinds of love in this world but never the same love twice."
-F.Scott Fitzgerald

"She mumbled that I was peculiar, that that was probably why she loved me
but that one day I might disgust her for the very same reason."
-Albert Camus

Oliver Twist

I think people often forget how much children can feel. Not only how easily they hurt, but how deeply. Perhaps it is because they are very small, and so adults often brush aside their agony as displays of juvenile impudence over petty matters. This passage in Oliver Twist pulled at me. I hate imagining any child being ill-treated or dismissed, and I don't think there's anything sadder than a child who is lonely. It seems like such a failure on the world's part. Children shouldn't feel lonely ever.

--------

"Oliver!" said Mr. Bumble.
"Yes, sir," replied Oliver, in a low, tremulous voice.
"Pull that cap off of your eyes, and hold up your head, sir."

Although Oliver did as he was desired, at once; and passed the back of his unoccupied hand briskly across his eyes; he left a tear in them when he looked up at his conductor. As Mr. Bumble gazed sternly upon him, it rolled down his cheek. It was followed by another, and another. The child made an effort, but it was an unsuccessful one. Withdrawing his other hand from Mr. Bumbles, he covered his face with both; and wept until the tears sprung out, from between his thin and bony fingers.

"Well!" exclaimed Mr. Bumble, stopping short, and darting at his little charge a look of intense malignity. "Well! Of all the ungratefullest, and worst-disposed boys as I ever see, Oliver, you are the --"

"No, no, sir," sobbed Oliver, clinging to the hand which held the well-known cane; "no, no, sir; I will be good indeed; indeed, indeed I will, sir! I am a very little boy, sir; and it is so -- so--"

"So what?" inquired Mr. Bumble in amazement.

"So lonely, sir! So very lonely!" cried the child.

Playful space

A part he knows you can break

Snooze marathon

Oomph!

Down at the Dinghy

Woke up and made myself some of that exquisite coffee that Vera gave me. In a fancy french press like this one... which always makes me feel more sophisticated than I really am, hehe.

Meet Larry, my all-season mug from Target. I don't care that there's nary a spot of snow outside, my Christmas penguin does just swell in 82 degree weather drinking hot coffee with me. See he's even got a cheerful drop dribbling from his beak.

And for now we'll hang out reading Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger till Drew wakes up. Here's an excerpt from "Down at the Dinghy" --

"They found him at a quarter past eleven at night, in the middle of -- my God, February, I think. Not a child in the park. Just muggers, I guess, and an assortment of roaming degenerates. He was sitting on the floor of the bandstand, rolling a marble back and forth along a crack. Half-frozen to death and looking--"

"Holy Mackerel!" said Mrs. Snell. "How come he did it? I mean what was he runnin' away about?"

"Some child in the park that afternoon had come up to him with the dreamy misinformation, 'You stink, kid.'"

Frozen grapes for breakfast

"When you wake up in the morning, Pooh," said Piglet at last, "what's the first thing you say to yourself?"
"What's for breakfast?" said Pooh. "What do you say, Piglet?"
"I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?" said Piglet.
Pooh nodded thoughtfully.
"It's the same thing," he said.