Ding dong! Christmas is upon us!

Winter Wonderland

Today I did my Christmas tree. As I was arranging the lights and finding a place for all the balls and stars (to the sound of Mary Poppins, thank you very much), images of this new season kept popping into my head.

Me and the wolf's folks waiting for him at the airport. He commenting on the jello decorations I've put in my car. Me driving us places. Seeing the lights of the Christmas tree reflected on his face right before we kiss. Having home-made pizza with him and his folks. Introducing him to my family. Falling asleep to the sound of his breathing. Seeing him walk about wearing the silly scarf I made him. Watching the new Doctor Who Christmas special all snuggled up together on the couch. Kissing at the stroke of midnight at New Years. Having him pick me up at work not knowing where we're going next. Being together for about two weeks.

Twenty two days to go... and I'm counting every minute.

The wolf is coming to town

Happy Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving

It's Thanksgiving. Even though it's not really part of my culture, I just thought I'd join in and hold hands with the rest of the world. Mentally, of course. Because this year I have so much to be thankful for. I have a wolf in my life.

Ever since he came along

Yay for lists!

Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here.
Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES. Bold those books you've read in their entirety. Italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read only an excerpt. Tag other book nerds. Tag me as well so I can see your responses!

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma -Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno - Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

McDreamies

Growing up I always had a very clear picture of what I wanted to find in a guy. Within the four walls of my bedroom and my boundless mind I dreamt and made lists. As time went by they grew longer and longer. That's wasn't so much because I was growing older and more articulate, but rather because I wanted to protect myself. By making it harder to find a match I somehow hoped to reduce my chances of getting hurt. I wanted someone compatible that would treat me differently than what I was accostumed to.

Then at some point, I started to lower the bar. Must haves became opcional features, boxes that might never get ticked. I wanted the perfect person, then a good person, and then a person. Oh Heavens, I thought, in the immortal words of Queen, "somebody find me somebody to love". Pretty please! And so it was that little by little McDreamies turned into Average Joes.

Then I met the wolf. A sparkle of hope was born. Little angels sang in my ear. I was amazed. Mankind had something to offer after all. Even to a meerkat like me. At this point the wolf was a beacon of hope and nothing more. He was far out of my league and that was it. (That and the small fact that we were living in different countries). So I started asking for someone that somehow resembled the wolf. Someone made out of a similar blueprint. I had a McDreamy again.

Nearly two years afterwards - on a bright strawberry season - things just changed between us. I guess it was just the right timing. Right now... what can I say? I've never been happier. I'm so lucky to have him by my side (even if not in complete a literal sense). And in the end I got even more than I've asked for. And far more than I've ever dreamed possible.

Waiting for Christmas

Can't wait for Christmas. Everything is already set in my mind, just waiting for the dates to make it all happen. Waiting to rearrange the furniture in the living room and to decorate the Christmas tree. To put the jello thingies shaped like flakes in my car windows. Waiting to do the origami stars and stick them on my brother's window. Waiting to bake butter cookies and cook my gradma's old recipe again. Waiting to buy the presents. Waiting to have a wrapping session while listening to a Christmas cd. But most of all, I'm waiting for a plane with a wolf in it. Then it will trully be Christmas.

1st rule about meerkats

Do not say a word about responsabilities, chores or things to be done before breakfast is over. I mean it.

*****

Best Harry Potter movie ever!

Forward is the way

There's this Facebook thing where people choose a cartoon character from their childhood and leave it as their photo for the entire month of November. Usually it's the kind of thing I'd join in a heartbeat. But this time I really don't feel like it. People ask me why and I don't know what to say. I guess it's just this need to move forward. To grow up, open my wings and leave the nest as soon as I possibly can. And I really don't want to look back. Because ahead I see so many wonderful things. And I can't wait to meet them all.

How to render a meerkat speechless

Just send her a love letter on your monthversary and that should do the trick. It did here. Two days have gone by and still not a word. Speechless.

Memories fading

My memory is starting to fade. Even though I try to hold on to the memories as hard as I possibly can, deep down I realize this is a good thing. Because it hurts to remember what his skin smells like or how our hands fit together. There's still thirty three days to go. That's 793 hours, I mean, a person could go crazy! That's all I have to say, really. I miss him terribly, I wish I didn't have to forget, but then again, I think I welcome the numbness.

A musical a day

Being bored out of my wits, I decided to give myself a little challenge: to watch a musical a day for a week. Here are the results:

• The King and I
• Annie
• The music man
• Thouroughly modern Millie
• Damn Yankees
• Easter parade
• Kiss me Kate

Seize today

Harold Hill - Oh my dear little librarian. You pile up enough tomorrows and you'll find you've collected nothing but a lot of empty yesterdays. I don't know about you, but I'd like to make today worth remembering.

The Music Man

If you cover your nose you can't smell the roses

Shields that become walls

When I was a kid my dad used to tell me this made-up story at bedtime about a little girl with a cold nose. She was sad because her nose was always as cold as a dog's. After some complaining, the little girl got her grandmother to knit her a sort of small cloak to cover the nose and keep it warm. The girl's happiness gradually faded away when she realized that her covered nose didn't allow her to smell the roses in the garden or a hot bowl of soup. (Hey, it's been a long time since I tried to remember this, so cut me some slack!).

Real life is not that far from that story. Sometimes you try to protect yourself to a point where you end up shutting life out. Like the bit about the rollerblades in Home Alone 2:

"I had a nice pair of rollerblades. I was afraid to wreck them, so I kept them in a box. Do you know what happened? I outgrew them. I never worn them outside. Only in my room a few times."

This not brain surgery here, it's just a simple home truth. The heart is meant to be used. Even if it means getting it broken a few times. And taking a chance is so worth it. Really. I don't care what people think. Sometimes playing it safe doesn't get you anywhere. Sometimes the best you can possibly do is just believe and take a step forward. And who knows what wondrous things you might find?

The 3rd mugcake

The coffee sensation :)

Ain't it the truth?

'My darling,' she said at last, 'are you sure you don't mind being a mouse for the rest of your life?'
'I don't mind at all,' I said. 'It doesn't matter who you are or what you look like so long as somebody loves you.'

The Witches, Roald Dahl

Can I get a hallelujah?

Ok, so I'm going through his report and all of a sudden I'm finding words like furthermore and nevertheless and passive constructions. What? When did this happen?? Ahhhh... Lord, I'm so relieved! He finally realized he can do it on his own. Little by little the cord is being cut. Ain't that a reason to smile?

This cracks me up every time

Coffee and a bright future

There's this little cafe in Areeiro. A tiny little thing called CityLounge. The first (and last) time I went there was about four years ago. I felt right at home. It had this vibe sorta like Starbucks meets The Shop Around the Corner. Further description would be pointless.

Today it was practically deserted. Lunch hour was over. A group of older women chatted at a table for six. A man sipped ice tea while working on a laptop. And then there was me. Me in a big soft armchair with a book in my hands and reviewing my life from that first visit all the way back to today. The person that I was then and the person I am now. It made me proud. Very proud and happy. There was a huge picture of a New York building in front of my table. I smiled. In little less than a year that'll be me. Well, not the Big Apple, but still! I'm opening my wings and flying high. Away from what I know and into the wonderful unknown. So many adventures awaiting me. And so much love.

Silver lining

There's still fourty eight days to go, but as of today I can officially say that we'll meet next month.