“Dogs remind me of people,

Cats remind me of girls.”

-my 15-year old student’s response when asked why she did not like cats

Spiritual power molds physical and material conditions, but spiritual power is never in a hurry….Never try to force the door and to go into any condition by force; just wait and you will conserve all the power which will be necessary for you to accomplish your work at the given time. If things do not happen as you want them to happen, know that a better way is being found. Trust, and never forget that the true way is the way of love. Flowers do not force their way with great strife. Flowers open to perfection slowly in the sun….Everything happens at the right moment…. White Eagle

…quite like discovering the next level down on the big cat’s Hierarchy Of Inappropriate Places To Poo.

Last fall I was able to visit with some old friends from my elementary school days who live out in the Pacific Northwest.

They love coffee.

I do not.

But they did turn me onto the deliciousness that is Chai Tea Lattes, for which I am grateful.

As we were talking about getting together again this fall I mentioned how much I’ve been enjoying my (non-coffee) lattes. This was one friend’s response:

“Yes, we are the people who have helped you become the person who today can be forced into doing things through peer pressure.”

So today I was clicking through the blog posts that appeared on my Blog Rush widget, and I saw one entitled, “I can fill that bowl in six words or less” by Cardiogirl.

She is talking about the site called Free Rice. It’s a vocabulary game, and for each word you define correctly (they give you four choices to pick from) they donate 10 grains of rice through the United Nations to help end world hunger.

Word Nerds of the world, UNITE!

A few years ago I was a teacher at a small, religious school.

Fortunately for me, the head of the school was unshakably convinced of my secret identity as The Spawn Of The Devil, or else it would’ve been really easy for me to get the big head.

Because what I didn’t know, having no children of my own, is that kids? Are really easily impressed.

For example, one day I was teaching my third graders, and while I was talking to them I was writing on the board without looking at what my hand was doing!

And dude, once I revealed my magical super hero power of Doing Two Different Things At The Same Time, I totally owned the third grade.

So it’s lucky that I live with three cats, cats who are totally shameless and amoral, cats who condescendingly tolerate our presence in their home because we are the only two beings with opposable thumbs who can open the tub of cat food, cats who pee on every single square inch of the bathroom floor EXCEPT the very expensive, state-of-the-art, self-cleaning litter box we purchased especially for them, because it helps keep me humble and grounded.

And I need that kind of real life reality check to balance out days like yesterday, where I once again used my Magical Superhero Powers Of Awesomeness to outwit The 12-Year-Old Boy Who Is Laboring Heavily Under The Delusion That He Can Totally Play Me.

We were once again forced to confront his evil nemesis-Spanish vocabulary words, and once again he decided that the session would yield much better results for him if he could trick me into telling him the answers, rather than looking the words up himself.

We’ve been on the same chapter with the same vocabulary words for an entire month. We’ve had tests and quizzes and homework assignments on all the words related to clothing, and yesterday he still did not know the Spanish word for “clothes” (did I mention that it’s been a month?!), a fact which did not at all make me feel like a failure as a Spanish tutor, or heavily tempt me to become A Person Who Drinks.

So of course, I told him to look it up in the dictionary, and of course he used his super-keen spidey senses to hone in on my super hero weakness by saying, “Why-don’t you know the answer?” (accompanied by a disgusted head shake and heavy exhale) “Yeah, I bet you don’t even know the answer.”

Right.

Do you have any idea how hard it was not to smite him with the razor-sharp edge of my sarcasm? Really. f*&#ing. hard.

But I’m happy to say that I was able to restrain myself, and instead decided to use my powers for good, limiting myself only to saying, “That doesn’t work on girls.”

He was quite surprised to be let in on that little secret of the universe, telling me that, “If I’d said that to a guy, he would’ve told me the answer.”

Well, little one, welcome to my world.

because we are now the proud owner of one of these,

and I’m pretty sure that means that my cats and their elimination habits are now the boss of me.

Lately I’ve been having a mad, passionate love affair with the book Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. Everything in this book resonated with me, including an enlightening discussion she had on the subject of soul mates.

While spending four months in an ashram in India she meets Richard from Texas, who gives her the following counsel on a relationship she recently ended with someone whom she believed to be her soul mate.

She told him, “…I think the reason it’s so hard for me to get over this guy is because I seriously believed David was my soul mate.”

He replied, “He probably was. Your problem is you don’t understand what that word means. People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that’s holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave. And thank God for it. ”

I know exactly what he’s talking about.

I recently had a relationship like this end-not a romantic relationship, but a friendship. And I knew it was exactly this kind of a relationship, because I spent its entire duration having my insides ripped out so that I could examine them in the clear light of day.

Why, you might ask, would anyone willingly spend even one day (much less years) in a constant state of gut-wrenching turmoil?

That is an excellent question and, as it turned out, one of the main lessons I needed to learn in this particular relationship.

Why did I constantly settle for so little?

Why didn’t I think I was deserving of good things?

Why did I continue to give until it hurt me, especially since I got so little in return?

The most interesting thing about all of this was that I don’t think this person had any idea of the role they were playing in my life. Everything that happened was actually between myself and I, inside my own head.

It was like the Universe led me to an internal storage shed I’d forgotten about and said, “OK, it’s time. You need to do something with all of this stuff.”

It was all there for me to stumble over. Every old bit of magical thinking. Every unrealistic expectation. Every story I’d made up in my mind about how I thought relationships “should” be. All the parts of me that believed my happiness depended on what someone else did or didn’t do. Everything in me that thought I had to figure out a way to control other people and change them, so that I could feel better. Every part that was addicted to drama, crisis, and emotional extremes. It was all there, waiting for me to unpack it.

So I did. I opened up each and every mental box and dealt with its contents. I shone a flashlight into all the dark, icky, unattractive corners of my soul and swept out all the cobwebs. I owned my stuff. I did my work.

And then one day, I was ready to let go. I knew it was time, because I was able to release this person with love and gratitude. I truly wished good things for them in their life apart from me. I was done suffering in the same old ways, and was ready for something pleasant and new.

“A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave. And thank God for it. “

You know how sometimes people have those disorders where they do all kinds of crazy things in their sleep without knowing it, like eating, walking around town, and experiencing intimate, climactic moments with the unsuspecting people around them?

Well if the eleventy thousand emails that I’ve received today are to be believed, apparently my sleep disorder involves logging onto my computer in the dead of night and ordering an entire continent’s worth of medicine designed to enhance my Very Special Man Parts.

I wonder if there’s some kind of medicine for that?

Yesterday I was working on some new vocabulary words with one of my students. She quickly scanned the list, and from time to time I heard her mutter one of the words under her breath.

“Bargain…department store…size…oh, and there’s the gay man’s section.”

“What?!” I asked, apparently having missed that particular term during my own perusal of the list.

“Jenny,” she replied, in a tone designed to convey that, truly, my stupidity was beyond her ability to comprehend, “it’s synthetic fabrics.”