Reading stuff

I have the habit of alternating the books I read among the "serious" and the "non-serious" ones. If I had just read a book with an intense, sad, deep content, it's was a "serious" book, then I'll read something lighter after that, a "non-serious" book. This is because when I read I simply dive into the characters' emotions and dramas, and at the end I'm exhausted and really need this break to be able to read something so deep again.

But on those times of life that are a bit tough, hard, like NOW, with this job stuff... Then I do avoid anything that's too intense. I run away from them like hell. I just can't deal with it. I need to read light books, light stories to relax and put my problems aside for a while and give my poor two brain cells a little time to breath.

So the past days I've been having tons of fun with a delightful book from the 60's called "All Creatures Great and Small", by James Herriot:

I bought this very old and torn-off edition from my fav street book vendor, Raimundo. It's so old he didn't want to seel it! But I insisted and he practically gave it to me for R$ 1,00 a huge bargain.

It's about the ingenuous adventures of the author when he was a young veterinarian in his first years of practice in the English Yorkshire coutryside, in 1937. He has the gift of talking about his patients and cases in such a funny, sweet and moving way that turns the book irresistible. All the passages has humorous and also heartbreaking situations as he fights to be a good doctor and to be accepted by the farmers that were used to have their animals treated by his boss, a fun, stubborn 40-something vet. From the first pages you feel trapped into his life and get linked to his thoughts about the beauty in the country life and all the Nature surrounding him. The last pages are coming and I know I'll miss this cool guy and his world...

I've read that he wrote other three books on this subject beside this one, I hope I find it soon! If you want to laugh a bit and feel you heart melt inside, this is the book!

Favourite Things Thursday -

So here we are again with this cool meme created by our sweet friend Blue. While she's taking some time to breath, BJ is hosting it for her - that's what friends are for! :)

I don't know abut you, but I love walking in bare feet. Whenever I have a chance, my shoes are off! Unfortunately, for obvious reasons, I can only do that at home...

At the beach...

Or when I see a wonderful lenght of grass ...

It's soooo relaxing and rewarding, to feel my feet touching the ground! It's a free massage given by Nature. Specially when the weather is hot, like it's beginning to be here in this city (grrr...), I only put my shoes on when I'm leaving home to the streets. My feet are my friends, they take me where I want to go, they allow me to dance when I feel like it, so this is a little treat I give them, set them free from the shoes dictatorship!

For more favourite things from friends, simply visit cool BJ's place!

ABC Wednesday - F

One more week for this cool meme hosted by Denise. The letter is F, for Friends. And this post is a bit different, dedicated to my blog friends who are very special, and maybe right now are working hard to deal with their lives with the dignity I wish I always had in difficult times! With a special kiss to Blue, Michele and Marcia.

I wish the quotes below reach you all as if spoken by myself:

Even more light in our lives!

Since yesterday, we have my sweet, lovely niece Catarina, a.k.a. Tatá, living with us! I'm so happy for her being here! She was born on the very same day when I was turning 18 - I couldn't ask for a better b-day gift! I can't believe that I held her in my arms when she was a tiny baby! Now she's this gorgeous 21-year-old young lady.

Catarina is my sister Claudia's daughter. Claudia and Luiz, my brother-in-law (above!), live in São Paulo, seven hours from here, for 4 years now, and my niece was in college over there, but suffering from being away from her boyfriend, Fred, and from all her friends and relatives she left in Petropolis when they moved to SP. So now that she's only 2 years from graduating, she wanted to study in a closer University. But she would have to travel every morning from Petropolis to Rio and back, waking up at 4,30am! No way, I said, why living such a stressful (and expensive!) routine when we live here, 15 minutes from the University? So we invited her to live with us. And she happily came!

Now she'll stay here from Monday to Friday, then go to Petropolis to stay with her love during the weekend.

We're very happy with her presence, and I'm particularly happy to be able to help her somehow. She's a very easy-going girl and already adapted herself to the "carioca" life style. Even Baruck loves he! Lucas simply adores Tatá, and they're always making a mess when together! So the Copacabana pack is now a 4-pack (or better, a 5-pack, counting with Baruck!).

PS: Just an update: Lucas is 100% now! Yesterday he didn't go to school just to be really alright, and today he's back to his old routine! Thanks for the sweet positive vibes for him! :o)

An award to share!

Sometimes it happens that sweet and generous friends award me, for whatever crazy idea they have that my blog is nice enough to receive them. Now it was Mrs. B. who did it!

She, who's a very fun friend with a super-creative mind, sent me this cool award: I feel honored for getting it! :o)

Now, following the award creator's rules, I should pick 5 bloggy friends to pass it on. And only to respect the rules, I'll do it, because actually as I always say, everyone in my blogroll is a friend to whom I'd love to spread awards, because each of them means a lot to me. But let's go...

I pick my kick-ass bloggers Lady Rose & Mama Kelly: the girls from 2Witches, Lilith from Crunchy Green Lovin' Mom, Blue from Behind Kyanite's Door, Dragonstar from Dragon Days, and Katney, from Katney's Kaboodle. Hope you enjoy it!

If you feel like it, pass it on too! :)

A rainy weekend and a little sore throat

Lucas wasn't feeling very well the past four days with his old tonsilits. Thank gods it was a mild case this time, I believe that giving him a spoonful of honey every morning and having his throat sprayed with propolis 3 times a day had made the trick and the problem hasn't developed to a worse level like before. The fever was low, never reaching more than 38°C, which is a miracle! So we spent an indoors weekend, with a rainy Saturday to deal with.

Of course he was restless wanting to do something, so we decided making some crafts. First we replaced the old blue ribbons that held our decorating Goddesses doorknobs' hangings by others with nice beads. The one below was made by Lucas:

As you can see, he was proud of his creation (and as usual, happy to be photographed!).

Then we made another string of beads to the second hanging, the one that is on our CD's cabinet's door:

We have these hangings for a long time, I took the images from Internet and had them laminated. The ribbons were torn out with time, so it was a good thing to replace them. We loved the new ones!

After lunch, as Lucas was feeling better, he wanted to make some crazy crayons. I learned this from Martha Stewart' site. It's so cool and easy to do! Crayons are easily breakable and in the end I never knew what do with the bits that weren't good for my little artist to hold. Reading Martha's article was like a dream. Whenever we have enough old crayons, we make these!

Only after that, we had some TV, eating hotdogs and watching Tom & Jerry's old cartoons with dad, while the rain was falling heavy outside.

At night Lucas' fever was still there, but after a cool water shower, it decreased and he had a good sleep until the morning after. Just great!

About the Sleeping Goddess

I learned that this gorgeous sculpture that I posted yesterday, called Mud Maid, is located at the Lost Gardens of Heligan, in Cornwall, thanks to the information given by Dragonstar and Aileni! Thank you so much, friends, I'm in love with it, and now with this amazing garden! The artist is Susan Hill, and at the Garden you also find another of her sculptures, called The Giant's Head:

Isn't it absolutely incredible??

Goddesses around

Yesterday I found gorgeous Goddesses illustrations at the Newt when I was looking for a Eclipse Moon's! I wanted to share them here with you.

*Air Elemental, by Iriloth.

*The Spirit of Flight, by Josephine Wall

* Earth Elemental, by Rebecca Sinz.

*Mud Maid, by Susan Hill, at Lost Gardens of Heligan, Cornwall.

Favourite Things - Asterix & Friends

Here's Thursday with the Blue's cool meme. My Favourite Thing to share today is reading Asterix!

This is one of the greatest comics I've ever read. I remember when I was a little, little girl and didn't know yet how to read. I used to go to one of my aunt's house with mom, and my cousin Frederico (who, by the way, looked extremely like Rick Wakeman back then!) had the complete collection, and I loved looking at the funny strips, turning pages and laughing for their crazy faces. Later, when I finally started reading, I'd be there devouring his Asterix books every time we visited them. My brothers love them too, and started buying the series. One funny thing is that we incorporated some of the expressions for fun, like "By Toutatis!", "These Romans are lunatic", replacing the "Romans" by any people who were bothering us at the moment... We used to read excerpts out loud when things were too funny to keep to ourselves. I still do it at home with my husband.

How not to fall in love with the brave gauls, full of life, living in the little village surrounded by Roman troops!

Each of them has such strong personality, that it's like following up the lives of someone we know in real life!

Panoramix, the wise, old druid, was the first pagan character I got in touch with, and yes, it had a huge influence in my later choices, believe me or not.

The mix of Uderzo's fantastic drawings and Goscinny's amazing stories makes this series irresistible. After Goscinny's death in 1977, Uderzo kept publishing new adventures, but in my opinion, the charm was in the hilarious dialogues and jokes created by his partner, and the stories got a bit less funny, but still a must.

Asterix & Friends are so popular because they have this very French humour that is so kind to read, they are very political, and the historical aspect is very accurate, giving a great view of French culture.

These sweet, excentric, moody characters have a special place in my heart. I don't know how many times I have already read and re-read their hilarious adventures in my life! I never get enough. Now it's Lucas' turn to discover these incredible stories. As I have many of the books (not everyhting yet) and am always re-reading, I keep them at hand, and my son already knows the characters by name, and sometimes he asks me to read some of the stories. I read bits that are funnier for him, because almost all of the jokes he'll not understand. I bet in the future he'll be reading and enjoying as much as we do!

That was my FT today! To know more about other cool people's FT, visit Blue's page!

Thank you!

Just wanted to say thank you for the sweet words of support on my Ommm post. I hate when I feel that way, not my nature! But it's always super-cool when you see how generous people are to take their time and send positive messages. I felt warm and cared by you!

Kisses full of love!

ABC Wednesday - E

ABC, hosted by Mrs. Nesbitt is back for the letter E. And E for the Eclipse.

This esbat - the Ful Moon night - we had in Brazil a partial Eclipse of the Moon.

As I told on a earlier post, I went with Lucas to watch it and managed to take a photo of the woderful phenomena. It was a double beautiful, powerful time for changing and focusing. It was Lucas' second eclipse!

I stumbled upon this cool art, by the amazing pagan artist, Micki Mueller, while looking for a Eclipse of the Moon illustration:

She says about it in her page: "... Gazing up at the almost totally masked moon, in my mind's eye, I saw the spirit of the Moon Goddess, pulling her dark cloak around her, amusing herself with a celestial game of hide and seek..." Just sweet!

To se more cool ABC Wednesday's photos, visit here.

Oooommmmmmmm...

While my weekends are usually great, even just being at home, I can't say the same about my working days during the week. I mentioned here already that I'm looking f a new job, because after a serious talk, my boss let me know that she can't keep the company any longer.

The problem is that while I'm still in my current job, the energy around this office is so bad, so down it makes me want to run away. I'm really sorry for my boss, because she is a wonderful person, and I was really betting in her talent and persistence in this jewelry business. Unfortunately, expenses are higher than profits. Simple like that. So I have to deal with her feeling down and exasperated, to deal with her other employees, jewel makers, who are so incompetent and irresponsible not showing up for days that shock me, and the perspective of one more time look for a job as a secretary... oh gods... That's the worse. My fault, life's fault, whatever, but I'm so tired of working in offices doing nothing that is really thrilling, that makes me feel complete! Doing things fr othe people, calculating numbers... I'm almost 40 and totally frustrated professionally.

Mind me, I'm very thankful for my life, for being healthy and all. I am, but I'm feeling this urge to finally do something that I really love doing, that wouldn't make me feel like wasting my time. *sigh*

So "Ommmm..." I go not to get crazy. Bear with me, not in the best mood!

Sunday at the parks 2. In the afternoon...

After lunch, I took some rest because my notorious migraine was threatening my Sunday. While Lucas watched some cartoons on TV, I stayed in bed with eyes closed after taking my damn medicine (I hate taking Ormigren, but it's the only thing that makes the pain go away, *sigh*). Luckly in half an hour it was gone (usually it takes hours to leave!!), and we could go to another park to spend the afternoon. It's in another neighbourhood, Botafogo, close to my own place. We took a bus to cross the tunnel that separates Copacabana to Botafogo, and in two minutes we were there, after walking a bit.

There Lucas went swinging...

... Climbed a tree for the first time...

... Climbed the squares...



... And showed off in the center of a sun clock: this is an old sun clock that was really used by the area's residents!

Behind the clock, you can see this majestic fig tree that is 200 years old, beautiful!

There's also this high, old chimney that belonged to a pottery factory. It's protected by a local law and can't be removed, as well as the fig tree.

As a bonus, when we were leaving, I spotted this cute stray cat in the middle of the green, like part of it:

We got home when it was getting dark. It was a good way of finishing our weekend and not to think that dad was still away - Rodrigo arrived at 6am this morning, sleepy and with his dad's farm's bottles of honey and packets of coffee to sell!

Hope you all guys have a great week, thank you for the patience in scrolling all this down!! :o)

Sunday at the parks 1. In the morning...

Yesterday was a very hot day. Winter is definitely saying goodbye here, and Spring is going to be a warm one... I don't want to think how the Summer is going to be!

As Rodrigo went to his parents' house for his Homeophathy course, Lucas and I decided having am early picnic at Chacrinha to spend the time. It was really cool! The beautiful morning invited us to stay long. I made a corn cake and tuna sandwiches, bought some juices, and took fruits. It was great watching Lucas running up and down the place, while I relaxed a bit.

Can you see the bubble he was chasing?

Me and my witchy boy. One last - and cute - thing: while we were there enjoying our picnic time, a thrush (called sabiá in Portuguese) started singing, and Lucas said he loved listening to that, because to him it is like Nature's radio. :o) Children have an unique way to express their feelings!