Taking the long way - or - It's a Dog's Life

Above: Bella / Below: Min with Bella and her pups
Below: Newborns and their protective mom
NEMO BEFORE HIS DISAPPEARANCE



Below: NEMO AFTER HIS RETURN!















I keep going back to what my niece said when we were listening to the song by the Dixie Chicks - Taking the long way... she called it "the minshap song"... like a song that defined me or something... Maybe it's true. Maybe I take the long way to get somewhere. It's true, I prefer driving to flying. I like to see the scenery. And If I could choose between sea and air to cross the ocean, I'd take the sea. But that option is usually not available and besides, how often do I get to go across the world? Hmmm... ONCE in my life so far!

On the other hand, it's not like I plan to take the long way - it's more like things happen along the way that I inevitably want to see or experience. So I get diverted and I'm usually happy about that.

But not always! Sometimes, taking the long way is a scary and frustrating business!

Look at this situation for instance:

We have a dog named Nemo (see photo above). We got him when he was a baby to be the playmate and later hubby for Bella (see above).

Bella and Nemo were a beautiful couple, although Nemo was always rather obstinate, and downright disobedient at times, whereas Bella has always been the most loyal, intelligent, obedient, eager-to-please dog in the world.

Eventually, Nemo and Bella produced a lovely litter of nine puppies (see pic). We had no trouble giving them away, but before we knew it, she was pregnant again! So they had another litter together and then I got Bella spayed.

Soon after that, Nemo disappeared. He had always been prone to finding a way to get out of the fenced area around our property, but this time, no matter how hard we whistled and called for him, he didn't show up. We thought he'd be back at mealtime or the next day but we were wrong. We started to ask around, and to drive around looking for him, but without any luck. A couple of months passed and a neighbor told us she'd seen him - he was dead! Though we never saw the body, we came to believe that he was either dead or lost for good. Being a handsome honey-colored laborador retriever, he would surely have been picked up and appropriated by now, we thought.

Around 10 months later, Nemo suddenly appeared! He was skinny and sick, but a trip to the vet proved to be the only thing he needed and in less than 2 weeks he was well. Unfortunately, he seemed to have developed some horrible behavior problems. He constantly jumped Bella - couldn't stay off her, in spite of the fact that she'd been long neutered by then and shouldn't have had any appeal for him. He was overly active, growled at people, and attacked his bowl of food with insatiable hunger each feeding time. The reactions to all of this undesirable behavior among the members of our house varied. Samo insisted that it wasn't really Nemo and we should throw him out. Anto said we should give him a chance, until the day Nemo lunged at him and ripped his jacket sleeve. Car seemed to go from one extreme solution to the other - put him down (after he bit the neighbor's gardener) or get him fixed (after the vet said that would calm him down). We finally decided on neutering and I was the lucky one who got to take him and bring him home. I won't go into detail about that experience or the subsequent recovery period, but the upshot is that, after the operation, we didn't see much improvement in his character - he tore up Samo's shoe in a moment of anger; twice he got out and didn't come home till the next day; he wouldn't obey orders and though he'd attack any person or animal who tried to touch his food, he had no qualms about gobbling up poor Bella's food if she didn't finish before he finished his. So once again we started debating the idea of putting him down.

It's now been over two months since we got him fixed and finally we are seeing some positive changes in his behavior. The other day we actually played fetch with him!

I asked 3 other people what they did when their dogs showed aggressiveness and undesirable behavior. Two out of three said they didn't think twice about putting their dogs down. They were very sure about their decisions.
I guess that when it comes to ending a dog's life, I'll just have to take the long way.

both sides clashing

I'm tired of being the middle(♀)man. It seems like I am perpetually being put in that position and it's really starting to bother me. How did it happen? Or was it something I let happen? Could it have anything to do with the fact that I am the middle child in my original family? Am I now destined to be in the middle when there are clashes between the members of the family my partner and I created? Does it have to do with being a Sagittarius? Was it being born in the year of the snake? Or is it simply the fact that, because I always see both sides of an issue, I end up mediating between those who can only see opposing sides? Hmmmm, that must be the reason....

But what does the reason matter? The question is, why do people clash in the first place? And when they do clash, why do they prefer to deal with each other indirectly - or simply not deal with each other?

NOT DEAL WITH EACH OTHER?? WHEN THEY LIVE IN THE SAME HOUSE?? WHEN SOONER OR LATER THEY WILL NEED EACH OTHER??

Okay, you may say, they're siblings; cut them some slack! That's fine, I reply, but to these clashing sibs, I add: GET REAL! No matter what the other guy did, you're no angel yourself! So that's my final official verdict as middlewoman.

OH, that reminds me of the final scene in one of my favorite movies. The man and the woman who were thrown together in a dangerous but lively adventure - but who have never been able to get along with each other (though they did acknowledge for a brief moment their mutual attraction) - have finally defeated the villians who were trying to kill them. So there they are, free at last from those bad guys; free to go their separate ways... and yet, there they stand together on the top of a hill looking at each other and saying, "so....?" Then the man, smiling and looking deep into the woman's eyes, says: "I don't know fulana, you're no picnic." And the woman, smiling up at him and putting her arms around his neck, says, "Well, you're no day at the beach either." KISS and FADE OUT! THE END!

Anyone know the movie I'm talking about?

The secret...

No fair! I said to myself when I saw my electric bill - no fair how the electric company can come up with these rules and regulations. No fair that I can't complain and WIN! No fair, no fair, NO FAIR!

The way it goes is that if you are a low consumer, you get subsidized service. This was our case when we first got connected, but after about 8 months of delightfully low electricity payments, our bill suddenly jumped to the medium consumer level. In this case you still get a gov't subsidy but it's lower, so you pay more of your true bill yourself. Every couple of months we'd get a notice saying CAREFUL, YOU'RE GETTING CLOSE TO THE HIGH-CONSUMER RANGE! (and this means zero subsidy; you pay the full price! From what people have told me, once you get into that range, it's hard to go back down). During those months, I frantically changed all our light bulbs to those energy-saving flourescent bulbs, hounded everyone into turning off electrical devices not in use, and changed from an electric coffe-maker to a stovetop one!

... But I didn't see much change in the bills, which continued to rise until - you guessed it - we were classified as high consumers and our bill jumped so high I cried when I saw it, whining pitifully to the poor man who handed it to me, "How can this be??? We've done everything in our power to get the bill back down, and now it's higher than ever! I give up!" Amazingly after this, the tariff did go down! (makes me wonder just how the electric company works??). Happy days were here again as we found ourselves back in the mid-range. Even my environmentally-conscious morality can tolerate mid-range because after all, this is a household of 6 people... we do have a microwave and power-tools for fixing cars and making home improvements, we also have 3 computers that are running practically nonstop most days...

But then, last week, the bill came again... I knew I had to expect it to be high again, since it's the bill that's coming after the holidays when you normally go all out in every way... but, I mean, to be DOUBLE THE AMOUNT OF THE LAST BILL???? TOTALLY UNFAIR!!!

So, after the intial anger, denial and disbelief, I had to talk myself back to a good place. And just about the time I had managed to do that, one of my students mentioned The Secret during our class. She told me if I wanted to know more, to talk to a co-worker of mine, so I popped into this person's office and said, "Okay, what's the secret?" and she just smiled at me, opened the drawer of her desk and whipped out a DVD, handing it to me and telling me to take my time in returning it. The DVD was called The Secret! So I watched it and what it all boils down to is this: THE UNIVERSAL LAW OF ATTRACTION... just think about it a minute. This means that your thought waves can attract the very thing you're thinking about!

Now that makes sense to me! In fact, I've been trying to find an explanation for the phenomenon I have been seeing in my own life over the past several months; it's been the subject of more than a few conversations in my classes as well as at home. You know how you can be thinking about something and then, that very day or the next, something happens in your life to connect and bring a conclusion to that thought or resolve the problem behind it?

When I talked to Lu about it (he loves a good philosophical discussion), he responded by telling me that the microscope was invented in 13 different places in the world all during the same time period, by 13 different people, none of whom were in contact with any of the others, each one different from the other 12, but all of them accomplishing the exact same objective!! I was flabbergasted by that. It seemed to be proof that thoughtwaves do travel!

Anyway, whether you buy into this theory or not, I experienced its effect once again just the other day when I swallowed my anger about the electric bill and made my decision to cut down on electrical devices starting ASAP. But that very evening I found myself hankering for nachos, which I usually make in a flash thanks to the microwave. I pacified my conscience by promising to start my electricity cut-down "mañana"; but it was still with some guilt that I slipped that plate of nachos into the microwave for a quick cheese-melt. Evidently, however, my thoughtwaves had sent out the message to the universe and the universe had answered because lo and behold, the microwave was dead! Wouldn't start, wouldn't even display the digital clock.... completely GONE! Pretty amazing, huh?

Bread and butter anyone?

An obsession, by any other name, is still an obsession. And mine of the moment (later I may mention others) seems to be tortas de agua. Do you know what they are? Well, first of all "tortas" as they are called in Puebla (bolillos in D.F.) are individual-sized daily-baked bread loaves. You can eat them torta-style (filled with coldcuts, or whatever) in which case they are similar to the Subway Sandwich in concept.


But tortas are also delicious eaten hot with butter or cream cheese, though they are almost too filling to be satisfying - UNLESS you happen to be eating a torta de agua. These are made differently from the more common tortas de manteca, and the difference is precisely that: one is made with manteca (shortening) and the other is made with agua (water). The difference in taste is that, though they look almost the same, the former are just thick pieces of white doughy bread with no particular smell, while the latter are insanely, dangerously delicious - and I use these adverbs because they can become your obsession, or worse, if you have them around you can find yourself eating 2 or 3 at a time... I'm telling you - from the moment you get the first whiff of one, an encounter with a torta de agua is a religious experience.


Now, none of the above will be relevant to you unless you grew up perceiving bread as a snack food. That's how it was for me... we'd get home from school and that was our afternoon snack, and we loved it! I mean bread is soothing, comfortably filling, and yummy, especially topped with butter! My grandmother used to use REAL BUTTER (as opposed to margarine at our house) and when we went to their house (the B-sky's), bread and butter was the best snack in the world because, aside from the fact that the butter was real, it was at room temp. instead of refrigerated. Exquisite! Back at our own house, my mother sometimes allowed us to have those coveted open-faced peanutbutter-and-jelly sandwiches (though not often because she said it would spoil our appetites for dinner) and taught us the dubious delicacy of bread and mayonnaise... now my own kids go eeeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwww, when they catch me eating that, but I still have a bread-and-mayo snack at times... I mean look at Harriet the Spy who ate only tomato and mayo sandwiches!!! Don't knock it till you've tried it! Totally delish... but I digress... back to the story.


So it was only when we were desperate for food, and our mother wouldn't let us have a snack, that we opted to sneak a plain piece of bread (sandwich white in those days) from the pantry to tide us over till suppertime. You see, by then we had very definite ideas about the whole bread-and-butter question, and believe me, plain bread was the last choice, but it was the one that would make the least noise when disobeying an order to wait until suppertime (no preparation needed, no telltale signs of the crime!)


Sunday mornings, we had bagels, lox and cream cheese. Here, I learned a good trick from my Dad. I mean, the table settings included butter and cream cheese, so it was a real dilemma trying to decide between the two for our allotted bagel. One morning I saw how my Dad resolved the problem and got to have his cake and eat it too by spreading on a LAYER OF EACH on EACH HALF of his bagel!!! At first I thought it was too much and totally unnecessary, considering that if there are two halves to a bagel you can spread butter on one and cream cheese on the other - you don't need to spread both on both halves!!! But, sometimes, as a treat, I followed my Dad's example and I can tell you that a combination like that is sinfully delicious!!! (so is peanut butter and cream cheese together on bread, though it tends to create a live bomb in your stomach during the digestion process, so you should try it in very small portions)...


And then I came to Mexico, where sweetbread is a dinner staple! You would think I'd have been in 7th heaven (as my mother would say), but actually, I don't like Mexican sweetbread except for cuernos sometimes, and even those lose their appeal once you've tasted a croissant in Paris. But, as luck would have it, Car was a die hard sweetbread-for-supper disciple, and even a "dunker" (another issue to debate in another post!), so we had it quite often (or rather, he would have sweetbread and I'd have bread and butter). One night, we couldn't find any change to buy sweetbread with, so he turned me on to a variation on my bread and butter ritual by spreading butter on a piece of pan Bimbo (still cracks me up that there's actually a bread called Bimbo - and it certainly is an apt name), and then sprinkling sugar on the top! And a new obsession was born!


Then there came the time when I got a constant and insistent hankering for peanut butter. I tried making it (it turned out good but eventually broke the blades of my blender), then buying the Mexican version, which was okay but not totally satisfying... Finally, I resorted to bringing it back with me from the States when I went for a visit, but it was too traumatic when I ran out (nothing beat Smuckers at that time)... today I can actually find huge jars of Skippy which satisfy the craving and last forever, but okay back to the question at hand (did you ever think that bread with or without a topping could become such an obsession???).


So as you can see, I was pretty set in my ways about how to eat bread by the time we got to Puebla in the 80's, at which time I learned to call bolillos tortas... but it wasn't until the early 90's, that I learned that there were two kinds of tortas! I had been teaching English one-on-one to executives for about a year when one of my students asked me what I was giving up for lent. I told him I wasn't Catholic and had never done anything like that but I asked him what he was giving up and he said tortas de agua. I asked what was so special about them and the next morning (we had an 8:oo class, and he always had his secretary serve us coffee at the beginning of class), I came in to find the table set with coffee and tortas - de agua! Well, I got it IMMEDIATELY!!!! I can't believe that I had lived 7 years in Puebla and never had one! And let me tell you, he didn't serve them with butter or cream cheese or ANYTHING, just plain old tortas with our coffee.... I mean, I went home and asked Carlos - WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME ABOUT TORTAS DE AGUA???


But of course I couldn't really fault Car, because he truly didn't know about them himself! He's a Chilango who'd never been to Puebla before... when we arrived here, it was the first time for both of us. And the thing about these tortas de agua is that you only get them in Puebla. They don't make them in other parts of Mexico - or at least not the same way - and even in Puebla, you can only get them early in the morning... the rest of the day, the bakeries produce tortas de manteca (I think the dough is easier to handle or something for large quantities). So if you don't know of their existence, or if you don't go out at the crack of dawn to buy your bread fresh, you could live your whole life in Puebla (or at least 7 years as in our case) without ever tasting a torta de agua!


Which brings me at long last to the point of this story! We hadn't had tortas de agua in a long time, because as I said, you can't get them except for early in the morning at certain places. But last weekend, we went out early to get tamales, and I asked CAR to stop at a place I knew carried them. Sure enough, I brought them home and they were gone in a half hour. I thought better not to have them around because I know how out-of-control I get around them. Then, yesterday I came home to find a bag of tortas on the kitchen counter. I was hungry after a long day at work and I passed up the tortas because I thought they were the regular manteca ones bought in the afternoon; I went directly to the rice and beans on the stovetop, another fave of mine served piping hot with jalapeños, and only after calming the voraciousness of my hunger, did I return to that bag, open it and take a whiff! OMYGD!!! Tortas de agua! And I wasn't even that hungry any more!!! And by morning they would be stale (the downside of buying fresh bread is that you gotta eat it the same day)... NO WAY! I took half of one and munched on it in ecstacy while I turned on the TV to watch a movie - Urban Cowboy if you must know. Then I went back for the other half while the movie was rewinding. Then I went back for another torta and spread both halves with cream cheese and took it upstairs to eat while checking out the computer. And finally, around 10 pm I had my "supper" (who was I kidding??) of - you guessed it! A torta de agua with cream cheese once again!


This morning, I had to entice poor Anto out of bed to help me take the trash down to the fork in the road where they pick it up once a week... "If you help me take it out, we can go on down to the store and get some tortas de agua, hot off the line," I said. He was downstairs and ready to face the frosty weather in 5 minutes flat.


So finally I've written this and here's my sad realization: sometimes it's better not knowing about something so wonderful because once you know, you have to RESTRAIN yourself from going completely bananas over it. I really feel sorry for gamblers, or drug addicts... it's gotta be scary... when you can't stop and you end up bankrupt or burnt out... only in this case I will end up supersized or dead.



But can you believe this?? I've finally finished this blog, and guess what I'm going to have right now? A torta de agua with butter - oh yes!!!

Back to Real Time

Vacation is over and it's back to real time... as usual I'm doing something else (as in blogging) when I should be getting ready to go, so I'll get back to this later.


So now it's much later and the problem with blogging is that you get a thought that you want to blog at times when it's impossible to stop and blog. So I cheated. I wrote it all down in my off moments at work and now I just have to type it in here! (note: this is not such a bad idea - for one thing it forces me to actually write something out longhand, which I rarely do, so maybe I can improve my horrendous handwriting! Also, now, when I'm typing, I don't have to think so much, so my fingers can fly over the keys, unless I can't read my own handwriting, which will probably be the case!)


So here's the thought: I was contemplating giving up the whole blog thing - thinking that while it's fun and enlightening to read the blogs of others, it's hard work and time-consuming to try to keep up one's own blog. And then something happened that just changed my perspective! One of the teachers who just came back from the States, put a book in my hand and said, "I got this for you because when I picked it up and saw the title, I thought this sounds just like you!" The book is called 'Saving the World', and is by julia alvarez ... has anyone read it or read other things by her?


Now I haven't gotten very far in the book yet, so I don't know if anybody actually does manage to save the world in it and I don't think I'm saving the world very well from where I'm at either, but it made me feel good that someone sees me as being that kind of person! So I guess I'll keep blogging along. Don't expect too much though.



But here's the final thing - the quirk! After all the thinking about what you want to write about and even jotting it down on paper... when it finally comes time to put it all in your blog, you don't feel the same way... other things have happened and your perspective gets changed because of it! Talk about both sides of the coin!

Vacationing on Both Sides of the Border

This will be a quick one - just gotta get something down as the end of vacation creeps up on me. What a wonderful end to this - my special year - i.e. the year I was born coinciding with the age I was. Now it's a new year and I'm a new age and this year could be special too since the age I am now is the same as the year I was almost born! (If anyone can figure out the mathematics of that, they'll know how old I am, but hopefully you won't be able to, cause it could scare ya!)

But anyway, this year I got to split my winter vacation half and half; I spent the first week as my United Statesean self (After living 30 + years in Mexico, I can't get back into the thinking that people born in the US have the exclusive right to be called American), with my family in SAT, and 3 of my kids, while C, my partner, spent it on this side of the border with the other two kids - and we each did our own thing. It was nice. I loved getting to be my old gringa self, as opposed to my Mexicanized self - for awhile! I saw family I haven't seen in so long, and got to have a night out with one of my oldest friends, where we sat up talking into the pre-dawn hours as we used to way back when...

I felt surrounded by the most loving, caring people, and I felt so loving and caring myself! For once, I didn't let myself or my kids cater to the consumerism thing - as we usually do when going up over the border between Mexico and US - doesn't matter where you cross, as soon as you're on the other side you can't resist the urge to stop and shop! But this time we did resist that urge. Partly, probably, because we had just seen http://www.storyofstuff.com/index.html which is an incredible video about that - the story of stuff! Once you see it, you seriously start to re-examine your compulsive buying habits. At any rate, we did go around looking at stuff and buying here and there (notably much-needed clothes and shoes), but this year, I found that my book and movie lists were so short, I figured I might as well wait till next trip. As for the two younger kids, they had to tread carefully as they each had limited funds.

So this trip up north was more concentrated on just being with people, taking zillions of pictures, and storing up lots of memories. Unfortunately, my poor, simple little digital camera kept dying out on me (batteries), so I hope other people (as in fned, mimi and stacy) will send me some of their snapshots!

We crossed back over to Mexico 3 days before the end of the year. Getting back to this side really sobered us up - you can't imagine the difference until you've crossed over and kept on going. You get deeper into Mexico and you know you're in for an adventure of some sort. Nothing is predictable here. Everything is just out there and you don't know what will happen next or how it will present itself. So you just keep driving south and fall into whatever.

Traveling like that, we finally got to Puebla and home at 1:00 a.m. As a delightful surprise, C was up and so were L (number 1 son) and A (number 2 son), who had recently returned from trips themselves. They welcomed us in with pulpos en su tinta and wine and we told stories and they told stories and it was cold in the house, so L lit the pot-bellied wood-burning stove in the corner of the dining room and we toasted up nicely.

Then the days started to rush by... with C's brother arriving the next day and bringing music and tequila into our midst, and the whole family battling daily with faulty plumbing and billions of dishes to wash (you have to realize that we are a family that RARELY - as in ALMOST NEVER - eats out and considering that we were ALL HOME, well you can imagine)... and with our 3 dogs plus a temporary boarding dog to feed and care for... so mornings were lazy with lots of coffee and good talk over bagels, tamales, or torta de papa or whatever; afternoons brought on lots of wine and good talk over delicacies like pescado zarandeado y ensalada verde con aguacate, or arroz con plátanos fritos y dobladas con salsa verde; and finally, night would fall amidst tequila and pizzas (NYE), and good talk, accompanied by guitar and percussion and singing. Throughout it all, we were periodically blasted away by S (number 3 son) practicing on his new (used) saxophone...

So P (number 1 daughter) is gone now, and C's brother has returned to his own family, and I'm going to watch a movie that P and I started but never finished watching, but before I go, I'll just add that CLo (number 2 daughter) doesn't agree with my one-word description of her (didn't I tell you she had a driving personality?) and C doesn't agree with my one-word definition of myself! He says I don't adapt to Everything, and of course he's right, which is only logical as that's part of being adaptable too - adapting to the fact that when you can't adapt to something the way it is, you change it! Seems to me you should have a healthy balance between the two, but whether I do or not is a whole nother story.

Both Sides of Adapting

I've done this exercise with different students over the years and it's one of the most interesting conversation starters I've ever encountered. You get a partner and ask that person to give a one-word description of him/herself. It always knocks them for a loop when I spout out the instructions. They always try to get around it by uttering a phrase, which I shake my head over and repeat, "One Word." It's an excellent exercise, usually involving both of them working together to come up with each other's one-word definition, getting to know each other pretty well in the process, and using the target language throughout it all!

The first time I did this, I had to think of a word to describe myself too! While my students were struggling with their own and each other's self-conceptions, I was trying on different pertinent adjectives in rapid-fire succession for myself. As I recall, it didn't take long to find the one that stuck: 'adaptable'.

Now when I was a teenager (about a million years ago) I heard myself referred to by others as 'easily influenced', and I realize that it was true; I was. But somewhere along the way, I grew into myself enough to be able to consciously choose where I wanted to be and what I wanted to do, and not just follow someone's lead, and then it became my own preference that determined what decisions I made. And yet... preference is a tricky word. Any decision I make that affects others (pretty common event), always poses a challenge, and I try to adapt my own ideas to fit in with those of whoever else is involved. Some might call it being indecisive, others might see it as being manipulative, depending on which way I'm trying to adapt, but ultimately, the intriguing part of making any decision is to manage to get what you want without keeping others from getting what they want too. Now isn't that the original idea behind the popular phrase: "win-win situation"?

One of my standard mottos is the chorus from a Rolling Stones song - "You Can't Always Get What You Want". I used to sing it to my kids when they were small and harping on me to get them something or do something their way, and I couldn't or wouldn't (being the parent, I had to weigh ALL the consequences). They didn't much appreciate my little motto then, but over the years, I've noticed that they have grown into the idea of 'getting what you need' as opposed to what you 'want', which makes them more interesting people to deal with.

So tonight, I've been trying to describe my husband and each of my kids in one word, and this is what I've got so far:
My partner: steadfast (like a ship's mast)
Daughter 1 (late twenties): resolute (no qualms about getting where she wants to be in the real world of marriage and work)
Son 1 (mid-twenties): dreamer (ex-philosophy major, living in the here-and-now)
Son 2 (early twenties): radical (sociology major, devouring the ideas of hisory's great thinkers)
Daughter 2 (17): driving (not just a car; we're talking about personality)
Son 3 (14): attentive (to everything around him).

Wonder if they agree? And if they don't, then the question is: which holds more weight: a self-description, or someone else's description of you?

Day 1 - 2008 - New Year - New Blog - Same Me

So after everyone went to bed when the New Year had been ushered in - and in certain cases, that meant at 12:03 a.m. - I sat in the living room and listened to my thoughts for awhile. And my eldest daughter's words kept getting into all of them: "you should start your own blog!" (see

http://fnedsblog.blogspot.com/). And of course now, today, I've forgotten all those unique and insightful thoughts I had at 1:00 a.m. and it's the first day of the year and of course I MUST have something in my head to write about!


So we'll start there - writing. A self-description would never be complete without including the fact that I'm a writer. As in: I write. Always. Since I learned how to hold a pencil, spell words and write them down on paper. Because, the truth is, I love words - the sound of them, the way they look on paper, how they stream through my mind. I am a complete believer in communication as an ongoing. ever-onward approach to bringing the world to sane living and maybe even an eventual utopia of sorts.


Of course, on the other side of the coin, words can be vituperative too! (see http://www.answers.com/topic/vituperative for definition). Situations in which people don't agree with each other and become angry and vituperative put the whole above-mentioned idea of communication in tremendous jeopardy. But even in the face of such risk, I would say that, unless you live your life completely cut off from other people (and I don't really see how anyone could survive for long without interactive contact of some sort with others, as you know if you've ever been seriously alone for an extended amount of time) - you simply HAVE TO communicate in order to survive.


Communication was the major theme underlying all the things I was thinking about during my inner-self chat in the wee hours of the morn. I suppose this is tied to the fact that I am an English teacher/translator living in Mexico, completely absorbed in highlighting and shedding light on the meaning of words between people of different languages. You can imagine how fulfilling my job is to me! I love words and communication - and I also love LANGUAGES! Exchanging thoughts and ideas in Spanish and turning them into English (or vice-verse) simply enhances what we already carry around in our minds and invites us to vary our perspectives and reach conclusions we may otherwise not have been able to see - which is what Communication is all about, right?


Okay back to the subject at hand. Here's the point of this - my first - blog entry: It's a new year, and I'm ready to move onward (don't really have much of a choice, but I'll ignore that for the moment), and though I may not be a clairvoyant, I am an optimist and I believe in communication, and I am always looking at things from both sides, so I am ready and willing to do my part to make 2008 be a good year, but I guess the crucial question is whether WE CAN ALL work together to make it happen? Here's wishing the best to everyone for a COMMUNICATIVE, RECIPROCALLY UNDERSTANDING, and NON-VITUPERATIVE new year!
Among other things...