Rats Country: Wednesday is Food Day

"Probably the best way to eat an orange is to pick it dead-ripe from the tree, bite into it once to start the peeling, and after peeling eat a section at a time."

from M.F.K. Fisher, "A is for dining Alone," The Art of Eating

Rats Country: I (Heart) Mondays

Happy Chinese New Year! I'm wearing red for good luck and making my bed with clean sheets.

Rats Country: Policy Statement

"Adopt a policy of being joyful."

quote from an article in the NYTimes, "Advice from Life's Graying Edge on Finishing with No Regrets."

Rats Country: Categories of Regret

The things you did that you wish you hadn't.
The things you wish you had done but didn't.
The things that you now know you'll never do before you die.

qtd. on Quora 1/17/12

Rats Country: Cold Comfort

"The advice of the old is like the winter sun:  it sheds light but does not warm us."

         from Nothing to Be Frightened Of by Julian Barnes

Rats Country: Thinking about Superstitions

When my mother sees a white horse, she spits on the palm of her left hand, makes a fist with her right, and smacks the spittled spot, sealing the wish.  She says, "You can't tell your wish to anyone.  If you do, it won't come true."

She doesn't see white horses  often, but, like the rest of us, she seems to have  secret wishes ready and waiting.  She is nearly ninety-seven.  My guess is that she  has two wishes left:  to die in her sleep and soon.

Rats Country: Wild and Crazy on Paper

"Both William Styron and Philip Roth have worked beneath the Flaubertian self-reminder:  Be regular and ordinary in your life, like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work.'"

              Julian Barnes, Nothing to Be Frightened Of