Positive psychology

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April 27
It is a fight, between white clouds that color the sky bright blue, and the heavy gray clouds, that want to pour. It is a fight between the cold wind, and the branches of the tree that want to hang on to their leaves. It is the kind of day that makes you pause by your door, to take my umbrella or not to take my umbrella?  

It is the kind of weather to switch on the pretty fairy lights over my fake fireplace with a family of strange scurrying animals inside, to listen to Bruce Springsteen’s throaty mellow voice, to sit down with a warm striped cup of tea and wonder why the roses outside my window are so bright red.
It is the kind of weather to lay back on a comfy chair and think of you. To take deep breaths, and wish for pakoras. To remember mangoes, and monsoons, and wish for the summer to hurry up so I can be back home.

It is the kind of weather to be nostalgic and wistful, but happy, happy about the little black kid at the school dance who just had these groovy moves, the sixth grader who was so secure about the way she looks “I love that picture! I look so good!”, about the $1 frames I bought at Target, the ride I got back home, the goofy colleagues I work with who turn every Friday into a sitcom so that when I come back home I’m not tired from a long day at the office but just grinning and wondering when I can hang out with them again.

The ups and downs of working with middle school kids in an American public school are like the weather forecasts for St. Louis. Yesterday’s beautifully warm and windy spring day/evening gave way to a surprisingly cold, almost but not quite rainy day today, and thunderstorms are hiding around the corner.

Tomorrow I’m going to go to the farmer’s market and then explore that strange museum/café/house a street away from me!

More reasons to like St. Louis:

11. the strange street behind our house with a painted metal dragon leaning on a tree, and the two cute café type structures with strange statues in front
12. the old man who told me about an exhibition in one of these café type houses and then proceeded to show me a long series of pictures of the exhibition on his digital camera
13. the ice cream floats at Fitz’s
14. all the music – from Radiohead to Madonna to Black Keys to Six Pence None the Richer. They’ve all come here or are going to be here this year!
15. the Iraqi grocery store across the middle school where I work which sells Halal chicken sandwiches and chai made for rainy weather
16. the erratic weather
17. the smell of barbecue on a warm spring evening
18. the five-dollar cinema on Clayton
19. Tivoli with its offbeat movies
20. Delmar Loop with all its food and shops that look really small from the outside but stretch magically into the back when you enter  

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