grape ape, er, beast

The other night, I'm lying on the couch eating grapes and Belly's on the floor right next to the couch. She's begging because I'm eating. "You want a grape, little girl?" I give her one. She rolls it around in her mouth and spits it out whole. Stares at it. Paws at it. Takes it again, rolls it around in her mouth and spits it out whole. Stares at it. Paws at it a little. Begins the whole process again. Twice. Until she finally eats it. Stares up at me for another one. I'm laughing out loud, telling her what a funny girl she is. I give her another grape. So begins the process anew.

The thing I love about moving is getting rid of crap I don't need. I took three garbage bags full of old clothes and shoes to Goodwill the other day, and I'm going through all the books I've moved too many times and putting them into three piles: move to the new place; bring to school office; sell to used book store. I'd been having a very hard time trying to decide whether to bring all my CE and CCC journals to school. When Xin left Syracuse, she gave me her very big collection of CE, so it's an impressive coupla shelves' worth. On the one hand, it makes sense to have them there for easy reference when talking with students, etc. But the beauty of having them at home is not having to go anywhere to get the one article I desperately need to read TODAY. So that's solved. They stay with me.

The other big project of the summer: working on being nicer to myself. Deleting all the negative self-talk and replacing it with positive. I think it's the hardest thing I've ever set out to do--dissertation and entire Phud process included. Humility be damned.