I'm really starting to believe that Canada's a better person than I am.

Excellent work, Calgary. Truly excellent.

XOXO

Nursing students smell like a combination of cheap berry body spray and cigarettes. Good morning, migraine.

A Short Play about Working for a University in Summer.

Elena: My entire floor was empty today except for two young eastern-European girls who didn't speak English, cruising around the halls on roller chairs.

Elena: Apparently now I work in an Ionesco play.

Caitlin: There are worse places.

Elena: At least I get a rhinoceros.

Caitlin: Make sure you use it only for good. With great power comes great rhinocerosponsibility.

Elena: That. Was. Awesome.

Caitlin: I am completely cracking myself up over here.

Elena: You earned it, lady. You earned it.

Having been through therapy once or twice (fuck off, I'm a Gen X American and as such it is my birthright), I have been led to the idea that a turning point in any break-up is when you look back at the erstwhile object of your affection and say, 'I miss you, but I don't want you back, not the way things were.' I got hit with this tonight. I've been having a teary day for no particular reason - I suspect PMS is involved, but god knows I've still got a few tears to shed over recent events, so it happens - and I was talking a bit with one of the clinicians at my temp job. After she left, I was getting back to work when the thought came to me unbidden: I don't want my life in Sydney back, not the way it was. I miss so much about it, about all of you, and when I think about those things I feel like a part of me has died. But you guys, it was so hard not knowing anything about my future. It was exhausting worrying all the time. It was breaking me down way worse even than I realised, I think. And that's the only life I could have down there, at least as things are now and would be in the foreseeable future.

To wit: fuck all that.

Don't mistake this for a miracle cure. As a lovely person I don't really know yet recently said to me, transition is not a linear process. There are good days and bad days, and the whole mess will go on for a long time. A long, long time. But it took me by such surprise, that thought, that I wanted to write it down mostly to remind myself of it later.

XOXO