Mother's Day

Last Sunday was more than special for me. My mother and my brother came to my house to have lunch and I cooked for them. It was me, my husband, a friend of us, my mom and my brother. I and my mother have had many problems throughout the past years. It was very difficult for me to understand her attitudes and it was very difficult for her to accept me the way I am. We've fought so much. After she told me the truth about my father - and the whole truth took two very painful years to come out completely - she changed. She's another person now. Of course I changed too. But the change in her is crystal clear. I'm proud of our relationship nowadays. I'm proud of my mother having had the courage to come clean and tell everyone in my family about my history, about my origins. I'm proud of having accepted her without judgements - that was certainly the most difficult part of it all. I love my mother and, most of all, I accept her the way she is. And I understand how difficult those years in secrecy must have been.

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I cooked Moher's day lunch with all my heart. Main course, dessert and coffee cake - I put my heart in every dish. One of the things I love the most nowadays is to cook for the ones I love. My friends know that and take some advantage of it: there's always some friend asking me to cook something. And I do it, happily. Last Sunday's dessert however was my desire: blueberry cheesecake. Mini blueberry cheesecakes, to be more precise. And here it is the picture of my mouth-watering treat (no, I'm not humble when it comes to cooking):

Possibilities

You feel trapped. You feel like drowning in a sea of nothingness and unwillingness. You feel like doing nothing, just because you're not sure the steps you should take next. Then you talk to a friend and he tells you that one of the things you think about doing is 100% possible.

You'd thought it would never ever be possible. It is. You have real possibilities, you just need to decide.

You don't decide anything but it's not a problem because the fact of being acknowledged that YES, YOU CAN clears all the air around you.

You are in the middle of a career crisis but you HAVE possibilities. That's a blessing.

:)

A tad of honesty

When I first set up this blog my intentions were not true. Well, they were true, but that truth doesn't make sense to me anymore. I said I wanted to practice my writing. What I actually wanted was to communicate with some people related to my ex. My ex, the Mexican aka the Crazy Hair Dude. He is not a part of my life anymore. I have no connection with anyone related to him - except from a friend in common, but that's all. The only things I know about the Mexican are things that Facebook tells me.

My intentions now are 100% solid: I really want to practice my writing. Not only I need to but I also promised I'd do so in my last CELTA assignment and I take promises very seriously. That's why I decided to change this blog's name. I don't want to tell anecdotes about my life and change the ending, as I had planned to do years ago. I just want to spill out words. Ramdonly. About whatever I decide and as freely as possible. I'm even planning to go WILD and maybe not even really finish some texts. Isn't it rebel of me? ;)

"You know how I feel" is a sentence from my favorite song of all times: "Feeling Good". It was sung by Nina Simone, Michael Bublé and Muse. I obviously love Muse's version. Sorry Nina. Bublé, I don't really care about you. I would never name a blog of mine as "Feeling good". It's too optimistic and too much optimism is not my cup of tea - I'm a sarcastic gal and sarcasm and too much optimism do not go well together. "You know how I feel" is so appropriate because what I like the most about writing in blogs (and believe me, I know about writing in blogs, I've been doing this since 2002) is the fact that no matter what you're going through, there's always someone who's going through the same. And comments about it. And then you don't feel like you're the only one in the world who thinks like that. Or goes through like that. You feel like you belong somewhere, even if that "somewhere" is the "freak club". That's alright.

Because you know. I know. Everybody knows - even though this is not something we admit: being unique is good. However, what human beings really seek, what we really want, is to belong. Isn't it?

Whyyyyyy that hair, man?

(Facebook and its status update system shows everybody's pictures and, well, I saw yours. I could change the settings but 1) I'm lazy and 2) it's sort of funny seeing your weird pics on my timeline)

You don't rock a hair like that! Go to the hairdresser N-O-W. Get a haircut! Hippie days are over, dude, please, pretty please, have your damn hair cut. Thank you very much.

And that's exactly why it wouldn't have worked out between us. I'm futile enough to care about your long hair even though we haven't spoken for ages. You used to be cute! Where did that guy who used to worry about stupid things like haircut go?

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I think it's awesome that someone makes a choice in life and follows it through 'till the end. And, because of that choice, one changes everything around, just to go with the flow of that choice. You chose a horrible (lack of) haircut. That's great. I tell you, you'd never work in a company with that hair and goatee. Sorry, life's unfair and so is the corporate world. So what did you do? You, smartass, chose to be a scientist. Which means: the crazier-looking, the better. Congrats!

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I wish I could say I'm drunk and that's why I posted this fucked-up text, but I'm not. Believe me, I wish you all the happiness in the world but your hair is something that my kindness and my sweetness simply don't accept!

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I think I'm going to delete this post eventually but I'm the only one who reads this.

Annual professional crisis

Once a year, at least, I suffer from professional crisis. It's a time where I question every single step I've taken in my career as a teacher and get sad for the time I wasted during my educational crisis more than 10 years ago. It's ridiculous. I wish I could say it's pointless, though. It's not. When in a crisis I usually take great decisions and and decide to change things around. The only problem is that this time I cannot precise what the problem is. Or maybe this time the problem is more difficult to solve than before.

I'm here

It's been forever, I know. And I also know that probably nobody even knows about this blog. The last comments I got were from these crazy Japanese dudes, probably spammers - but I'm guessing here, I don't know a thing in Japanese and I was too lazy to use Google translator.

Last year I took an important teaching course. Now I hold a CELTA - Certificate of English Language Teaching for Adults. Which means that I'm a Cambridge certified English as a Foreign Language teacher and can teach anywhere in the world. It is a big deal in my field and I'm certainly proud of it. In my last CELTA writing assignment I said that one of the things I'd do to keep practicing was to write in this blog more often. As you can see, I haven't done that. Until tonight, when I was insomniac and couldn't stand stay in bed any longer.

So here I am. This is my comeback.

Homemade Cinnamon Roll

I'm CRAZY about cinnamon rolls. Since they're not easily found here in Brazil because they're not very well-known, I decided to try to bake them. I'd never made dough from scratch and it takes a lot of strength to mix up all the ingredients. As I'm home, sick with the flu or something equally bad and I had nothing to do, I baked this whole afternoon. I'm a rookie! It takes me a LONG time to cook those more elaborated recipes!

Ch-ch-changes

I changed the layout because I was sick of the other one and because I like this polka-dotted one better. I also changed the commenting system: now there's this letters checking. Because this way I avoid spammers. I've been getting dozens of comments from some japaneses website saying things that I obviously don't understand. I used Google translator to check what the hell the japs want from me and, apparently, it has something to do with sex and nudity. Sassy, huh? Almost nobody reads this blog and I can't blame them at all: I hardly ever update it. I was planning to update it everytime I update my blog in Portuguese, writing in English the same text. I know that's a pretty lazy solution for the lazyness I already have in writing here, but come on, it'd be a solution after all!

Do you remember the time?

I vividly remember. Me and my aunt, a huge Michael Jackson fan, in her living room listening to
some of his albums. "I just can't stop loving you" was playing and we were singing it LOUD.
I mean, really loud. I had the lyrics in my hands, since I wasn't fluent in English yet. Actually, in those
times I had no idea I'd become an English teacher one day, but this is another subject.
My aunt knew all the lyrics by heart, she had all his albums, she was really crazy about every little thing
he 'd made. She used to be such a cool person, I don't know why years came by and she became so boring.
Again, another subject. So, there we were, singing out loud. And I started crying.
Because I was madly in love with a boy and he didn't even know about it. I think he suspected, everybody suspected.
He is my aunt's cousin, but me and her are not blood related, so he isn't either.
Anyway, my family and her family are very close and it was like he was family too.
Inside my crazy teenage mind, he should never know because "our" love was forbidden, we were like family.
Oh my God, how silly was I? My aunt knew about my secret love and hugged me - she understood why I was crying.
And we kept singing along together.

I also remember when he launched "Black and White". I was in a friend's house, it was a nice evening and we were all utterly impressed by all that technology of turning people's faces into other people's faces. It was SO wow... I remember when "Thriller" was launched, I was a little child and felt terrified by all those monsters. I sang along with him in some language I believed it was English when he sang "Beat it". I was very impressed by all the break dance, his moves were so amazing. When "We are the World" was all and about in all the radio stations I used to ask the school's bus driver to turn up the volume because I loved that song. I love it 'til nowadays, actually. When I found out that Billie Jean was not his lover, she was just a girl saying that he was the father of her child, I was apalled. I had always thought she was his lover!

I still can't believe we are in a world where there is no Micahel Jackson anymore. I'm not a person who cultivates idols and I can't say I'm a fan of anyone or anything, but I do have some artists that I deeply admire. Madonna, Muse, Michael. He's part of my childhood memories. He was one of the artists who "taught" me how to speak English. I love many of his songs and I think he was genius. And just like all the geniuses, he was tormented and lonely. And I won't even start with all that pedophilia accusations he got years ago. I think he died alone. The King of Pop died completely and deeply alone. The greates entertainer the world had ever had so far, a man who influenced all the coming generations, completely alone.

How sad is that?

May he truly rest in peace and his kids can grow without all the media lurking them around.

Hi, there

Yes, I'm still alive. I know it's been a long time and I feel a bit guilty for not writing here - I had promised myself I'd practice my writing. But if there's something to be blamed for my radio silence it'd be TIME. Or lack of it, to be more specific. I have more students now and one of them has classes late in the evening. 9 to 10:30 pm, twice a week. Needless to say I get home worn out. One evening I have dance class, an weekly appointment to which I haven't been very present either. I get tiiiiired, the class finishes late and I have to take a bus to come back home. Sometimes I beg for a ride and some good soul gives me one, but this is not always. Then you could say: what about weekends? Weekends, my dear, are for love. They are entirely dedicated to kissing, cuddling, holding hands, giggling, going out together, laughing, talking and laughing more, watching "Friends", etc etc - I really don't have to specify what the "etcs" are. My boyfriend lives in Rio de Janeiro and I live in São Paulo, which means a lot of travelling on the weekends. Either he comes to my house or I go to his house and then there's always a party to go, some dinner with friends, family to pay some visits to. And that's why I've been very busy. I've been very very happy too and I think this is very important to be pointed out here since you, my probably only two readers, remember the hell I went through last year. I deserved a beautiful love story. Seriously, the Universe owed me that. I know, I had the boy I was going out with, but it wasn't a love story. It was a story, just that. A story that helped me to keep away from madness, a story that certainly provided me happy moments, but that was all.

I've been working hard, I still have financial problems due to the crisis that my life was in last year, but things have been going back on track. And I'll try to write here at least once a month!