cats

I have been volunteering at the Kingston, NY SPCA for 4 months now.....I work in the first cat room which has about fifty cats.......

I can't remember when cats were not in my life....

The first day I spent here I felt like I had come home...a cat among cats.....All colors, shapes and sizes...abused, abandoned, but so many are amazingly resilient...The staff here works nonstop...

no time for complaining....

Last Sunday I adopted Holstein...a five year old male cat....he has been adopted before and returned because he is uncomfortable around cats. He has been here close to two years. He is here because his owner died......

Most people come to look at the kittens which are very adoptable........but I have been blessed to witness miracles...people requesting older cats or special needs cats.....

There are at least two other cat rooms....

about 200 cats in residence....

I´m sitting with my cup of tea. After a monday morning where everybody is off to work and kindergarten I´m now getting ready to begin my own week. Sigh.
Part of me wants to go away to a place in the sun. The summer came late here and the fall early so it´s already getting chilly.
This week I´m starting my fall teaching schedule and I am going to teach a lot more classes and workshops that ever. I´m excited and a bit anxious as well.
I will teach a women´s workshop on the practice of feminine principles. It´s the first time and I am very excited. This practice has grown in my own life for the past year. I feel this is my true calling - yoga for the female body. I know that in the years to come this will continue to grow in me. I keep meeting all these wonderful women and I feel deeply connection to them.
This practice rings true for me. i actually feel that it´s another expression of the writing I did with the wise women. It´s a bodily way to express my inner most essence which is rooted in the feminine.

Wise women everywhere

I have been busier than a one-armed paperhanger. I have not been writing, meditating, chanting and yesterday I had a migraine. My body is saying Stop.

Om gam ganapataye namaha...chant 9 times or anythng that can be divided by 9. I must google the 9 bit.

What will help me today: Restorative poses, working on my novel, gardening, eating lightly, being in the sun and of course thinking about my workshop with all my wise women friends this Thursday.

Arrived!!!

Hi Everyone,

I finally figured out (with help) how to get on. Now you'll be hearing from me from time to time.

Namaste ~ Donna

first poem in my new book out next month from Antrim House

Reading will be at Le Shag on the first Sat. of Sept--more to follow, and also at Daniel Berlin's art gallery, at Duck Pond, at Trinity College and elsewhere.

The Sweet and Low Down

Small gestures matter,
and I’m not talking about flipping someone
the bird. I got a note from the principal.
See I can spell that because some teacher
taught me the pneumonic, the principal is
my pal, and he is. He thanked me
in writing for my work with the teachers.
I came home and cleaned my house
lickety split. I was high on a small
gesture. I feel this way in the Midwest.
Last time I visited I was wandering
in the produce section of Hinky Dinky
or was it Piggly Wiggly—so corny out there.
And the clerk yelled, Hi, how are you.
I stepped back in a panic, thought
I was caught squeezing the melons.
But he was sincere. Day two in that market,
I knew the checkout girl’s name
and we exchanged some news of the day.
I know this will sound like some Feel-Good
New-Age advice, but why not smile at a stranger?
I did try that in the supermarket, here in NYC,
but the woman did not smile back,
did not say hello to my hello.
Oh well. I did not take it personally.
That’s the other thing that matters,
don’t take it personally.
No one is out to get you or me.
It’s a matter of being in the path
of hurricanes, earthquakes, the robber,
the suicide bomber, the terrorist.
I have myself panicked now.
My shoulders are up around my ears.
I am worried, not angry, but in need of one
small gesture. Thanks, I would love a cup of coffee,
yes, with one sweet and low.

flash fiction---tell me what you think--the different fonts disappeared

Confessions of a Scrapbooker

Rehab
I decided purple was a good background cover for my first scrapbook, subtle but royal. My husband is a royal pain in the ass. Yes, this first page is Mark exiting rehab. He looks good doesn’t he? The kids said at Christmas, Dad, it’s not funny anymore, your ruff, ruff, dog act and begging for food. Mom invited her teacher and she doesn’t drink a wink and you have to have three martinis, a bottle of wine and then put calamari rings on your ears and nose and bark like you are some cute dog. I called up an expensive rehab center, agreed to pay for it and Mark went. He looks good doesn’t he? I decided this page would be before and after, oh what am I talking about, a double page layout. Do you think the bottle of Jack Daniels from an ad is appropriate? And I don’t know about the sparkles.

From Bad to worse
I am using a bold funky font—Comic Sans MS. Lily is pregnant. We never expected that. I mean she is old enough but she doesn’t have much of a social life. The news sent Mark back to the bottle. That’s him on the left slumped on the couch watching football, holding his precious a six-pack. He says that beer doesn’t count, that in the old days, like really old, like the Middle Ages, everyone drank beer for every meal because it would protect them from the plague. He’s the plague if you ask me. I decided to go with red for this spread. You know—sex, love, Valentines. Lily takes up most of the layout. Before-- on the left—she had a great shape, that girl, and then after on the right. But wait, some of the before pix make her look awful-- her entire body is bloated. Here she is with the babies, all four. We’re advertising them because Mark says that Lily has a pedigree. Like what it is I don’t know. I put the ribbons, right on the photos-- those cute cocker spaniel, terrier, shepherd, poodle bitches.



Omigod.
Can things get worse? Look, here I am in the classroom as a Teacher’s Aid. I love my job and the kids. Yes, those are cut outs of books and I made them from real felt. Felt was expensive so I decided to make leftover scraps into chair protectors. I pasted them to the bottom of all our kitchen chair legs and Mark said, finally something useful for all that cutting and pasting. Speaking of legs, I really need to buy some tanning product for my legs, but wait, I don't want to get distracted from my theme. Pretty soon I will need an Aid. But really, I mean, who will work with all the problem kids. Oh we don’t call them that anymore, challenged. I mean look at Robert. That’s him sitting next to me. He’s autistic and doesn’t look at anyone. I have to sit next to him and explain it all, like I understand geometry?
And I have to keep away the bullies. See that kid snarling. That’s Theo, the biggest bully in the sixth grade. He snarls at Mark. I decided to go with blue for my background color because I do have the blues and my layout is very random to express my confusion. The kids gave me a going away party and that’s all over my second page. I saved some of the cards and tried to do a collage. I think the page is too messy but it’s the feelings that count: We’ll miss you miss martin, ha, ha.

Graduation!
Everyone is graduating except my kids. I went to the high school graduation anyway, and took some photos of their friends. This page is titled: See you could do it too if you just try and don’t cut classes and do your homework and go to finals like you’re suppose to and if you don’t call Ms. Hall a friggin’ asshole. Yes, I decided to be truthful. Here they are the boys: Mark Jr., Matt with their dad preparing, The I-don’t-give-a-shit-barbecue. Well I do. I went to Wanda’s grad party. Wanda used to go with Mark Jr. and then she got wise. I am noticing that my pages have the bad and good news--maybe that’s my theme. I keep changing the font from layout to layout—I don’t think that’s good scrapbooking style. I decided on white for my backgound color for these pages and Impact font, all in bold. It’s dramatic even if blurry. Wanda looks great, but is she pregnant under those robes? I didn’t want to ask. Her parents are quiet and shy and live in a trailer but they are not trailer trash.

Life is Good
I got a new job in the high school kitchen! I love it and Mark has not been drinking and the boys are getting their GEDs and Mark Jr. and Wanda are getting married and they will live next door to Wanda’s parents and everyone is working and we are going to have the best ever barbecue. I bought some hamburgers, frozen patties at Wal-Mart, the best, really, and I told Mark he could get a keg and we invited everyone we know, the whole goddam neighborhood and things are really looking good. The boys are working on a construction crew, thanks to the money given to Kansas to rebuild roads, and we do have health insurance and I do have hopes although my neighbors are still saying that Obama is a socialist. Then I get really pissed and say, you go join your Tea Party and see where it gets you. They just look at me like I’m some hippie or something but we invited them anyway and the color of these pages will be yellow and I want to use lots of ribbons and sparkles and call it Celebration and use some happy font like monotype corsiva because it is so classy oh man life is good.

a revision from Jean McAvoy from our last session

I wish others would post too!

Summer Jean Valla McAvoy 6/26/10

Summer is here. Even now, as a responsible adult, yoked to a job, I can still feel a hint of the freedom and excitement I felt when school was over and all kinds of summer pleasures lay ahead. And they were many: a trip to Playland in Rye to celebrate that we’d all passed to the next grade; neighborhood hunts for black caps or thimbleberries, which we shared out exactly, sometimes even splitting the little berries in two, which gave us purple fingers and a sense of justice served; later raids on Nonna’s raspberry patch, when the thimbleberries were gone by; the Bassi family reunion, full of cousins and torta and bocce and wine and the men singing old Italian songs in solid harmony (some songs they would translate for me and for others…they’d just smile and say little girls didn’t need to know those songs); trips to Saxon Woods, where you’d get a locker key on a stretchy loop to attach to your bathing suit strap before heading out to the pool to pretend you were a Weeki Watchee mermaid until your lips turned blue and your mother made you get out; catching fireflies in the night (one time we used a beer bottle to hold them and watched fascinated as they staggered around drunk when we released them); early morning trips to Jones Beach to beat the traffic, when we’d arrive to a parking lot full of gulls and leave in the heat of the day, weaving our way over the hot sand and pavement through throngs of people and cars).

But one of the most exciting things we did each summer was quite simple and always unexpected. Suddenly, on a particularly hot, sticky night, my mother would announce
“We’re having waffles and ice cream for dinner tonight.”
And we did. She would mix up some batter, heat up her waffle iron and cook them up. The first batch always stuck and then the iron was good to go. The last batch was always a bit skimpy and didn’t fill out the form. But they were all delicious. We’d go outside to eat them with ice cream on top. And that was dinner. Even though there were many hot, sticky nights it would happen once a summer and you never knew when that would be, so it always came as a surprise. I’d feel a bit giddy, like the world had tilted on its axis, and a bit reckless, like the supper police might come and arrest us.

Let me put this in context. In my world, Nonna Paulina ruled the kitchen, and her meals anchored our family with substance and regularity. She would start to cook in early afternoon and dinner would be on the kitchen table at 6 o’clock, without fail. Northern Italian peasant food, with some American standbys mixed in. Slow food. It was wonderful, truly wonderful, and a touchstone of my life, but that’s another story.

Somehow, those times we broke the rules stand out and mean the wonderful freedom of summer to me. When my mother pulled out her waffle iron, you felt like anything might happen.