Carl Hiaason

If you are looking for a book that will take you to a wickedly funny place and make you laugh out loud, then I highly recommend Carl Hiaasen's new book, Bad Monkey, to you.

I just finished reading it while on vacation at the beach last week and I loved it!  I can't tell you how many times I was sitting in my beach chair with my book while my friends were talking and catching up with each other.  There I was, face stuck in the book, reading Bad Monkey and literally bursting out laughing at the smart, flip and hysterical dialogue.  Truly great stuff! 

Come on.  Admit it.  You can't always read heavy, informational, historical books that you know will keep you up to date about what is happening in this crazy world of ours.  Sometimes you just have to read something for the pure unadulterated fun of it because laughing helps you de-stress and triggers positive emotions.  Laughing is definitely an energy and mood booster!  I usually experience my best laughs when I am relaxed.  Things just aren't that funny when you are tense, twisted and closed up.

 

 

Carl Hiaasen's gift to us as readers is that he always manages to create fabulous characters in all of his books and they always end up in a lot of wacky situations.  Given that Hiaasen writes a column for The Miami Herald, I have a feeling that he probably knows some of these people he writes about or has taken bits and pieces of different people's personalities he comes in contact with as a reporter and thankfully creates new people in his fabulous fiction.

 

I don't want to reveal the places in the book where I couldn't stop laughing because you really need to know the plot and the characters of Bad Monkey and allow them to cook together for a number of chapters before it truly becomes funny.  However, just to give you a flavor of Hiaasen's satire, here's a short excerpt involving the main character, Andrew Yancy, and Yancy's love interest, Rosa:

 

"Rosa looked irresistible as she walked up Yancy's front steps, but he was in too much discomfort to make a move, even after she changed into a devastating sundress.

While she inspected the knot on his skull, he said, "Know what?  We'd make a great crime-solving duo."

"How much have you had to drink?"

"Have mercy, woman.  I ran out of Advil."

"Well, I don't sleep with drunken guys.  Period."

Yancy sighed.  "So many rules."

She took notice of the shotgun propped in a corner, and Yancy told her restaurant inspections could be dangerous.  She informed him that for dinner she was doing blackened grouper with mashed sweet potatoes and a grilled Caesar, and that he was going to finish every bite or never see her again.

"I also stopped in Key Largo and got some homemade carrot cake," she said.

"From where?"

"What's the difference?"

"Rosa, you don't understand.  I see all the health reports.  I know the dirt on every kitchen."

She ordered him to be quiet while she sewed up his gnawed butt cheek.  To take his mind off the intimate unpleasantries, Yancy told the story of how he was conceived during side of one of Abbey Road.

"You mean side two," Rosa said.  "The medley."

"No, side one.  According to my mom, the big moment happened during Maxwell's Silver Hammer."

"It's all starting to make sense," said Rosa.

 

Besides Hiaasen's dry and snappy dialogue, Bad Monkey takes us on some unpredictable trips through Florida, where Hiaasen was born and raised, and also to the Bahamas where "everyting is jahmmin'."

 

Bad Monkey is a everything I wanted it to be: a great read and a fun, wonderful escape!

Carl Hiaasen never disappoints.

 

Happy Birthday America!

Parades, picnics, cookouts, and the day off from work.  These are just some of the ways we as Americans celebrate the Fourth of July, a day set aside to mark and remember when the United States first declared its independence from Great Britian in 1776!

 

Tonight, in the nation's capital, there will be a spectacular display of fireworks, and I'm sure it will be just as dazzling as it was last year.  It truly is a special event!

Photo Courtesy of Associated Press

Wherever you are and whatever you are doing, I hope you have a great day today.  I will be with friends hanging out by their pool and enjoying the time with special people.

Be safe, stress free and sing your heart out when you hear "The Star Spangled Banner." 



The Star Spangled Banner
By Francis Scott Key 1814

Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
'Tis the star-spangled banner! Oh long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion,
A home and a country should leave us no more!
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

I, Poet

When I was in high school, I used to write a lot of poetry.  I liked the deliberate way of choosing and using words and trying to find the right rhythm of each line.  I had a special notebook that I used to write down thoughts and words that I wanted to remember for images in future poems.

 

I even entered a poetry contest in high school and surprisingly one of my poems won and was published in a national anthology of high school poetry.  That was a confidence booster!

 

Then it was time to go to college.  My interests changed in college and poetry unfortunately fell by the wayside.  But since my husband died nine years ago, I have rediscovered poetry and its way of adding texture to my life.  Reading poetry is similiar to putting my foot on the brake of a speedy pace of life.  Reading and trying to write poetry slows me down and helps me shuffle through feelings and conflicts about what is going on in my life.  It is therapeutic for me.
 

Beach Grasses



In particular, in high school and also now, I am fascinated by Haiku, which is a very short form of Japanese poetry.  Traditional haiku consists of 17 on.  An on is similiar to a syllable but it is not really a syllable.  But there is a specific way of writing haiku, and when it is written correctly,  it is sparse and elegant.

 

I recently decided to try and write some haiku poems and I just finished one about my late husband.  My first attempts were really bad but I kept trying and once I learned to really focus on what it is I am trying to say, my poems improved. 

 

So here goes. . . this is a haiku poem I wrote about my late husband, T.O.:

 

New Jersey native

the moon and constellations

Party together.

 

 

Obviously, New Jersey native refers to the fact he was born in the Great State of New Jersey, a fact he put right out there for all to know.   The Moon and Constellations refers to his love of space and the exploration of it and as a first-class newspaper reporter he had the unique talent of taking complicated scientific concepts and distilling them down to make them interesting and understandable to nonscientific readers!  Party together says it all, for he was a very social man and loved hanging out and talking and listening to people of all ages.  He was definitely a people person!

 

I am once again taking great comfort in reading and writing poetry and perhaps will continue to share with you my poetry inspirations and work as they develop.  Try writing or reading poetry yourself.  You may find personal inspiration too!

 

Breathing

 

 

 

 

"Breathing in,

I calm my body,

Breathing out,

I smile.

Dwelling in the

present moment

I know this is a

wonderful

moment."

 

~Thich Nhat Hanh

 

 

Future Dream -- Pip

Pip Singing

Ouch!  Is it really Monday?

 

Four days off from work have been so great, can I repeat so great, for my mind and my soul!!  I went for some walks, did some yard work, caught up on my sleep, saw family and friends on Thanksgiving Day, did a little Christmas shopping and went to the movies and saw the new James Bond movie, "Skyfall."  It is excellent!! You really must see it if you haven't already.

 

But now I have Monday staring me in the face along with a brand new work week.  How do I get motivated to get out the door? 

 

Music, my dear friends, music! 

My cousin, Gina, posted a new song on her Facebook page that her nephew, Pip, wrote and sings.  He has a great voice!  Do you remember Pip?  He was a finalist on the second season of NBC's prime-time hit show, "The Voice."  Pip was on Adam Levine's team and since leaving the show he has been very busy in the recording studio.

His new song is called Future Dream and it features Pip singing and rockin' to some major drum beats.  I've listened to this a few times already this morning and I think I'm just about ready to groove out the door and face the week.

If you feel so inclined to spread the word of Pip's new song, please share this post/link.

Many thanks!  Go Pip!

The Night of The Cicada

 

I am happy for the arrival of today, for yesterday was a day when I was trying to follow my own advice about staying positive, breaking down a problem and letting it go when you can't do anything more.

 

For me, I get stressed when I am thrown into a situation at work and expected to solve it quickly.  I can work under pressure but I don't really like it.  I prefer to see the problem ahead of time and work on it in increments.

 

But that isn't what life is always about.  Untangling the problem takes time and sometimes I just don't have the luxury of time to figure something out.

 

It's BOOM and then I'm on deadline and that's it.

 

I did what I could to fix the problem and then because it was Friday afternoon and since others who could helped me had already left for the weekend, I had to leave the problem where it was.  Getting on the elevator to leave work and even while I was driving home, I really made a concerted effort not to bring the stress home with me.

 

I took deep breaths, I went down a mental check list of what else I could have done to solve the problem before I left work and there wasn't anything more.  I didn't play music on the car radio because I really wanted to calm myself.

 

I wanted to stop at the grocery store and buy myself a huge container of Ben & Jerry's Chocoloate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream but I didn't.  Instead, I tried to remain zen about my stress and and not let it the better of me.  I really wanted to have a really ugly cry and I was ready to let myself do it when I realized I left my cell phone out in the car. 

 

I went out to get it and when I came back into the house I accidentally let a cicada fly in.  OMG, OMG.  If you have never seen or heard a cicada then please take my word for it that they make a really weird awful buzzing sound when they are flying.  They are rather large, similiar to locusts, and they are just tooooo gross.

 

Now the thing is in my dining room, flying around inside the light fixture and trying to find it's way out.  All I could do is stand there and watch the cicada flying around in a panic.  I  couldn't touch it and if it flew out of the fixture I was going to open the front door and try to get back outside but that never happened.  It just flew around in circles until it tired itself out and through the glass of the light fixture I could see that it was laying on its back.

 

OMG what is a girl to do?  At least my work stress was gone but I couldn't take the cicada anymore.  I called it a night and quickly fell asleep.

Fortunately or unfortunately, so did the cicada!

Summertime Sayings

Courtesy of Katie's Pencil Box

Summer is the time when one sheds one's tensions with one's clothes,

and the right kind of day is jeweled balm for the battered spirit.

A few of those days and you can become drunk with the belief

that all's right with the world.

                                                      ~ Ada Louise Huxtable