Thursday -- 1 January 2009 -- 7:33 p.m. -- 6th Floor Hall

A new year to start big projects...or small projects with greater likelihood for success.

The big project is still massage therapy school, which starts on 12 January...a little over a week.

The break has been nice, though textbook rush starts this weekend for the U of _ and I have to work 12-6 p.m. on Sunday (for two weekends).

And the small projects? Cleaning my apartment and perhaps getting rid of the excess books and other clutter that takes up space inside.

Another small project is to write a journal entry each day (if possible) and at the end of the year post them into my blog online: "Another Lousy Day at the Bookstore."

The music stopped on my stereo player, so I put in the Afro-Peruvian Classics CD from Lukabop (a company that David Byrne founded and put out 3 awesome CD's of Brazilian Classics that preceded this one).

I, also, poured myself a tall glass of Polish beer, "O.K. Beer - Okocim." It's a light, easy (and cheap, $1.50) pint of "full pale" ale.

Hopefully nobody minds my making the hallway into a little "living room" for me and my cat.

I'm sitting with my back against the wall, sitting on a zafu and zabuton set (both black), with a wooden dinner tray covered with books and a paper towel on it.

I have eight books out here, a poetry journal and this journal with my flip-flops (that my brother gave me almost a decade ago that a a couple of sizes too big, but I never seemed bothered with the extra space).

My cat's sleeping on the floor in front of me; her toys (a purple mouse, a green and orange "cat-sized" tennis ball, and a smaller ball of tin foil) lay scattered to my right.

I sit to the left of my door as I exit, to the right as I enter.

For me, this could be the happiest moment of my life and I wouldn't really notice it as anything especially unusual.

I love my cat, Tatiana, more than life itself and any other person.

The divorce made me assess my feelings towards other humans with their unforeseen capability for instant betrayal in a truly unholy moment.

That was the 'gift' S. left me with and sadly, it was all that I had left to take from our marriage.

The good times, the memories all swept away by a deliberate act of vengeance. How could it not have been? Setting me up with an ultimatum: "It's either me or the cats."

So I gave up my cats, the best birthday present I've ever received (and lost).

It was a cold, calculated act, well thought-out. How could it not have been?

A test of love that ultimately failed. My sacrifice surely couldn't have saved our marriage.

Had I done anything to deserve such contempt? Who knows?

It was all part and parcel of her plot to destroy our love and friendship.

She had fallen in love with J., a stroke-patient of hers.

And the day I got back from my trip to Kripalu, my marriage was over.

That and the "_" lost the Superbowl with "X.X." acting as scapegoat to the demise of my marriage. I had to blame someone and blaming myself entirely surely didn't make sense.

And nowadays, for the last two years (as of 18 March), I've taken to crying in the shower, now and again, as I remember the loss of my cats.

Fyodor and Natasha were the best cats in the world, and someone else ended up adopting my cats whom my friend JYG said I will one day meet, but how unlikely is that in a city of 8 million people? He's such a hopeless romantic!

But if I could ever see those cats again, I'd pay millions (if I'd won the Mega Millions lottery).

Now Tatiana is the best cat in the world and saved my life last winter after the separation.

A tortoiseshell cat karmically took the place of my orange tabbies.

They are all super-duper cats and I hope Fyodor and Natasha are in good hands.