The Smell of Books

I once got a book from the library that had such a strong smell I couldn’t stand holding it so close to me. It smelled of cigarettes or something. I assumed the person who read it before me was smoking while reading it, and that’s how it got such a smell. It was so strong I couldn’t even read the book, and I had to return it to the library. That was the only book that I ever had a problem with concerning the smell of it. But it did make me wary of library books and I avoid smelling them since then.

Today, however, I couldn’t resist it. I’ve been reading 1Q84, by Haruki Murakami, and I got to a part that says:

“Still sitting on the floor, Aomame closed her eyes. She pressed her nose against the pages of the book, inhaling its smells–the smell of the paper, the smell of the ink. She quietly gave herself up to its flow, listening hard for the sound of Tengo’s heart.” (p.546)

After reading that I brought the book closer to me and inhaled its smells. I had to. Then I pressed the open book against my chest and thought of the hands that had touched it before me. I thought of how many people, upon reading the same paragraph, would have brought the book to their noses to smell it. I thought of how many more will do it in the future. I wondered if the book would carry along a smell of me that will mix with the smell of all its readers. A smell no human can smell, but that only books know about.

(Book Sniffer by shieldsink)

 

Guys in Labor. Yep, you read that right.

Last Wednesday I got sick. Real sick. And I’ve been sick since then. Great, huh? I’m not sure what gets me more annoyed, the fact that I was too tired to even walk to the kitchen and make something to eat and, therefore, didn’t leave the house for days, or that I didn’t have energy to even read. But anyway, right now I’m medicated and on my way to complete recover. I’m crossing my fingers, at least. However, I’m a little confused about the medicine the doctor gave me, since it’s supposed to lower my immune system (the one I thought I needed to fight this thing) and tells me to avoid sick people (wait a minute, am I not sick? should I avoid myself?). But I’ll give it a try. I have to.

Anyway, ever since I got sick not many things got me happy. Yesterday I did laugh a whole lot watching Diane Keaton’s interview on The Ellen DeGeneres show. But then today my friend Mel posted this video on her Facebook and I just had to share it here.

It’s about two Dutch TV hosts (Dennis Storm and Valerio Zeno) who decided to be hooked up to a contraction machine to simulate labor pain. Because who doesn’t want to experience that, right? In fact, it is a type of experience very hard to describe, unless you’ve been through it. The best way I saw it described was that someone was twisting her insides and trying to rip them out of her body. But those two brave nut-jobs decided to go and see what the fuss was all about.

 

How to defeat your enemies

T-Boy (he likes dinosaurs, that’s why I call him that) was watching a TV show yesterday called Ninjago. Since I don’t know what the show is I should do some research to first get to know the show and then do a brief explanation here, but that would take time. Instead, you’re left with my version of the show: it’s about legos, and they are ninjas, and one of them is the master and the others are learning from the master. That’s it. Kind of a teenage mutant ninja turtles but with less turtles and less pizza.

Anyway, I didn’t really sit there to watch the show, but the little bit I heard was about the ninjas trying to answer some riddle from the master. They’d come with a solution and it was always wrong (of course). Instead of watching the show I tried to distract T-Boy. I was not very successful at that, so I agreed to let him watch the last 5 minutes of the show in peace. He was really invested in it.

At the end the master tells his lego-ninjas: “The secret to defeat your enemies is to become their friend.” T-Boy’s expression was priceless, combined with an “Ah” that I’m sure meant what an interesting concept! Maybe I’ll try that next time. And that’s when I was reminded that as much as we may not like the idea of children watching TV shows all the time, if chosen wisely, they can help us teach them valuable lessons. Not that Ninjago is the best show ever (please, I’ve only watched a few minutes of one show) or that I’m advocating that children should watch more TV (I certainly am not saying that), but there is a team of people working behind TV shows and they do (in some cases) try to send good messages to the children.

Did you watch Dungeons & Dragons? Boy, that was a fun show!

I remember when I was a child and all the TV shows I used to watch. And boy, did I watch TV! The TV was always on. Always. I watched Thundercats, Dungeons & Dragons, Tom & Jerry, Flintstones, Jetsons, Smurfs, Snorks, and so many others. I remember I used to love play-dough as well, and I’d make things from TV shows for my playmobil, like a tiny shell with tiny colored pencils inside. Well, of course it was tiny, have you seen the size of a playmobil’s hand?

I had this! This exact one!

Oh, boy, what a sweet childhood I had. Maybe it’s time to get the box of play-dough out. Maybe I’ll make something the legos can use…

Remember the Snorks?

 

A wine tasting dance with a handsome stranger

I just had the most restful night ever. I can’t even remember the last time I had such a good night of sleep with such vivid dreams.

The first dream I remember was in a theater. There was going to be a play there in a few minutes, and we were going from backstage to the stage and to the part were the seats are. I can’t remember who was the man with me, but I know we were together. Once we reached the steps going down he pulled me to him and said something. It was a silly conversation and I won’t bother you with it, but it was nice.

Then we were in a restaurant. I have a feeling we were in Italy, for some reason. I can’t be sure, but I know for sure it was not here or anywhere I’ve ever been. There was a man, probably the same from the theater but I could see him a little better now. He had dark hair, a beautiful smile, and a nice chin. I know, I know, most people couldn’t care less about chins but I like them. Anyway, we were standing next to his table where there were several people, mostly women. He grabbed a bottle of wine, a special wine, and poured me a glass. He handed me the glass and I saw women looking at him as if they wanted him. I didn’t feel like they were jealous of me, but that they certainly wanted him and his attention. I remember laughing. He started dancing with me and I told him to slow down so I could drink the wine and that I had to smell it first. And I can still remember how good the wine tasted.

Cheers to good dreams and strangers making us smile!
(photo by CityRover Media – http://www.cityrover.com)

 

 

Don’t we all feel smarter now?

Teddy bears and other toys kill more people than REAL bears.

Ants stretch and yawn when they wake up.

It is believed that Shakespeare was 46 around the time that the King James Version of the Bible was written. In Psalms 46, the 46th word is shake and the 46th word from the last word is spear.

Q is the only letter that never appears in the name of an US State.

A 12-year-old’s science project showed that Fast food ice was in fact dirtier than toilet water.

“Eleven plus Two” and “Twelve plus One” both equal 13 and both have 13 letters. In fact they both have THE SAME 13 letters.

“Silent” and “listen” are spelled with the same letters.

“W” is the only letter in the English alphabet that is more than one syllable.

A way you can tell if you’re whispering or not is to put your hand at your throat. If you feel vibrations, you’re talking. If you don’t, you’re whispering.

The voice of Mickey Mouse for 32 years, and the current voice of Minnie Mouse were actually married in real life.

In 1898, 14 years before the Titanic sank, Morgan Robertson wrote a book about a ship called the “Titan” that crashed into an iceberg and sank.

Tomatoes and cucumbers are fruits, not vegetables.

A penny is worth 1 cent but it costs 1.7 cents to make it.

LOL isn’t just laugh out loud. LOL is also “fun” in Dutch.

No matter how hard you squeeze the two ends of an egg, it will NEVER break.

If you put two straws in your mouth: one inside a drink and one outside it, you won’t be able to drink through either straw.

A piece of paper can’t be folded in half more than 7 times .

No word in the English language rhymes with purple, orange, month or silver.

Chewing gum can keep you from crying when cutting onions.

Months that begin on a Sunday will always have a “Friday the 13th”.

A mosquito is more likely to bite a blonde than a brunette.

There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.

In New York, the penalty for jumping off a building more than 50 ft without a permit is death.

Elephants are the only land mammals that cannot jump.

A strawberry is not an actual berry, but a banana is.

You can’t hum while holding your nose closed.

The sentence “The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog” uses every letter of the alphabet.

Eating celery is technically exercise. When you eat celery, you burn more calories than you consume.

A female platypus sweats milk.

‘Racecar’ is spelled the same forwards and backwards.

‘Uncopyrightable’ is the longest word in the English language that doesn’t repeat a letter once.

Penguins cannot walk backwards.

In 1963, baseball pitcher Gaylord Perry remarked, ‘They’ll put a man on the moon before I hit a home run.’ On July 20, 1969, just minutes after Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, Gaylord Perry hit his first home run.

Vending machines kill four times more people each year than sharks do.

When you put a seashell next to your ear, it’s the sound of your blood surging in your veins, not the ocean.

Wow, don’t you feel smarter now? Yeah, me neither. But, hey, at least it’s entertaining, right? I mean, I’m still thinking about the tiny ants stretching and yawing early in the morning. So cute. Now, tell the truth, did you also try to hum holding your nose closed? It’s like the licking your own elbow thing. Try it. Then tell me how it goes.

Your turn now. Tell me a useless fact that is not on this list. I dare you. Come on, it’s easy, I have almost nothing here.

 

Ginger, the Cleptocat

I have a cleptocat. Seriously, this is a first for me. I’ve had cats stealing the pens I was using or something before, but never one using its mouth to carry things to another room. Well, that’s what Ginger does. She grabs whatever she thinks is a good toy for her and carries it to her bedroom. The good thing is, her bedroom is the one that used to be mine. Well, I still sleep in there, but let’s face it, it’s her bedroom now. And she let’s me know by meowing at me when I go in there and turn the lights on when she’s asleep. Also, her toys are usually on top of the bed (on my side of the bed, mind you) or scattered around the bed on the floor.

Here are the toys she collected so far:

The only ones that were hers were the cat toy ball with feathers (at least it had feathers when I got it for her) and the paper ball. She loves to throw both of them up in the air and chase them around the house. It’s adorable.

The pen and the tag she got from my bedside table (I was using that tag as a bookmark). The red leaf is from a potpourri I have on my coffee table in the living room. The wine stoppers (blue and green) she got from the kitchen sink. Yes, she did carry every single one of them to the bed. Sometimes she puts those things on top of where my toes are in the middle of the night. I think she does it on purpose because she knows I’m going to move around and the noise of them falling on the hardwood floor will wake me up. That’s what she wants, because then I’ll get up to see what it is and she can meow and try to take me to the kitchen to give her tuna for breakfast.

Oh, and here’s a picture of her stealing her toy back because she didn’t like that I was taking pictures to use as evidence of her crimes.

Have you ever had a cat (or any other pet) stealing your things like this?

 

Why do we write a blog?

Why are blogs so appealing? Why is it so great to write about personal things when we know strangers will read? Why is it so important for us to share private, sometimes even embarrassing thoughts with people we’ve never met before? Do we do it so we won’t feel so alone in the world? Do we do it for the satisfaction of knowing someone else out there can relate to it and that can make us feel less abnormal?

A year ago I started writing in this blog and I honestly hoped I wouldn’t quit. It wasn’t my first blog and I was afraid it would end up forgotten just as the other ones did. So far so good, but it isn’t over yet. It never will be, right? To avoid wanting to quit I did take some precautions. I decided it wouldn’t be too personal, that I wouldn’t reveal too much, and that I would keep it separate from my real life. But what does that all mean? To be honest, that’s up for interpretation.

If you pay attention to what a person writes (or rather to what that person decides to write or not to write) you end up knowing more about that person than you can even imagine. You, all of you, have access to more about my life than people who’ve known me in person for years! You may not realize that but you do. You can imagine how I’d react in a situation or try to imagine what I would or would not say about a certain subject. The fact that you may not know my age or my last name or what I look like does not mean a thing. Or perhaps you’re one of the few ones who do know me in person, in which case, hi! It’s great to see you here!

But I think that more than anything I wanted this space to be a place where I could say (or write) what I wanted without having to worry about who is reading it or whether or not they’d judge me for what I’m writing here. We end up meeting a lot of people we have to deal with in real life and sometimes we don’t have a choice whether or not to let them be a part of it. But in here, online, we have the privilege of not having to do that. If you come here and read my blog is because you want to, not because you have to do it. I probably won’t even know you were here anyway. Well, unless you like a post or leave a comment, of course. And by the way, comments and likes are always welcomed. 😉

Anyway, I just wanted to say it’s been a great journey and I appreciate every single one of your likes and comments. You all make me feel like I belong, like I’m not the only one, and like I’m actually part of a group I truly enjoy being part of. Thank you.

 

Of name changes and refrigerators.

I woke up this morning and I just knew her name was Ginger. I tried to name her Phoebe yesterday, but who was I kidding, I can’t name her, she names herself. And that’s how I woke up thinking “Ginger. Ginger is her name.”

Maybe she was whispering that in my ear during the night. Who knows? I just know that that’s her name, just like I know that she picked me when I went there to adopt a cat. She adopt me, and not the other way around.

So after I woke up this morning I went looking for my mini purring machine. She saw me passing in front of the kitchen and gave me a meow. She was on top of the fridge, hiding behind the cereal boxes.

I went on with my morning routine, got some coffee, took a shower, got dressed, etc. When I was brushing my teeth I heard a noise. “Great. Did she drop my cereal box behind the fridge?” Just imagine the mess. Plus, if it was one of the opened boxes, I’d have cereal under the fridge and that would be a mess I didn’t want to clean up. But no, all the cereal boxes were still there. Weird.

It only took me a few seconds.

I started pulling the fridge away from the wall, yelling her name (the right one, mind you) and nothing! Not even a tiny meow. When I pulled enough I looked and there she was, not moving. I know the poor thing was scared to death, but couldn’t she at least let me know she was alive?

When she finally summoned the courage to jump out of there I hugged her tight and didn’t want to let her go. Then I pushed the fridge against the wall as best as I could.

She hasn’t been there since then. We’ll see.

Look at me. Do I look like anything other than Ginger? Of course not.

 

Something white, something new, and a puzzle.

I like traditions. They are things that were established long before you (or even by you) that repeat themselves in some sort of pattern (every year, every month, every whenever I want to). They gives us some sense of belonging, some sense of being.

My new year’s eve tradition is to wear something white and something new. They can be the same things, the same article of clothing, but they must be present. Usually (but not always) my underwear is brand new. The white part is to call for peace in the year that comes. You can also wear other colors: red for passion, pink for love, yellow for gold/money, etc. But the white for peace is necessary, at least for me.

Something else I like to do at this time of the year is a puzzle. I like to start putting the puzzle together on the 31st of December and finishing it on the first day of the new year. I don’t know why (and I do not do this every year) but I just love it.

This year (after quite a few skipping this particular tradition of mine) I decided to put together my old 1008-piece puzzle.

December 31st. Hello, old friend.

It was great finding each little piece, trying them to see if they fit, looking for a particular one shaped just in the right way. There’s something about putting together a puzzle you already know that I can’t quite describe. It’s like revisiting an old friend after a long time apart. It’s familiar and comforting and full of memories.

And here is the finished puzzle, now with only 1007 pieces since my cousin lost one over a decade ago when I let him borrow it.

January 1st. Can you see the missing piece?

But it’s not about finishing the puzzle, it’s the journey, it’s the time spent putting the pieces together. It’s feeling like a child again, with not a worry in your mind but the thought of finding that tiny piece to fit the space. It’s touching the space where a missing piece should be and remembering you should never let your cousin borrow things with tiny pieces again. It’s touching every single piece put together and smiling.

 

Say WHAT?

I’m about to leave the house and I notice I’m a couple of minutes late. Okay, that is not that big of a deal, I know, especially because I always leave the house with enough time to be where I’m supposed to be at least 5 minutes early. Still…

So I start looking around for my keys. I can’t find them. They are not by the back door where I always put them. I pat my pocket. Of course, they’re in my pockets. I left the house earlier in the morning (as in still-too-dark-outside early) and kept them in my pocket.

I reach for the door knob to open the door. It doesn’t open. Well, this shouldn’t surprise me, since I didn’t even unlock the door yet.

I unlock the door and leave. Then I remember my cell phone. I go back in. I can’t find it. I look at the normal spots where it should be and nothing. Then I look at my left hand. Oh, there it is! I’m already holding it.

I finally leave the house (for real this time and by now I’m really late) and shake my head.

Apparently waking up at 3:30 a.m. can transform you into a grandma looking for glasses that are right under her nose.

P.S.: I arrived at work 3 minutes late. Say WHAT?