Only a few years behind the times...

06/01/2003

Happy New Year!

I am now back in Ottawa, after two weeks with the family in Toronto and at the farm. It's good to be back, although I am surprisingly indifferent to the whole thing.

That's definitely not to say that I didn't have fun back "home," going to parties, lunches and dinners with my friends and just doing a whole lot of nothing. But I am still comfortable enough in my skin (and at my mom's place) in Toronto that my enjoying being home is not a comfort issue. Rather, it's a matter of having to get back to work.

But enough about work.

I had a good break. I got to see a lot of my friends, but not all of the ones I had wanted to. That's always the case, I suppose. Illness seemed to be my nemesis this time; a couple of people cancelled on me due to last-minute sickness (or so they say... ;), and we didn't have time to reschedule. Oh well — c'est la vie.

My family's Christmas was a bit disjointed this year. My father and Linda were in London (or was Kitchener? I'm never able to figure that bit out...), celebrating with her family. My sister and Devin were in Winnipeg with his. So Martha, my brother, my mother and I all went to the farm to enjoy a merry little Christmas there. Then, when everyone was back in town, we had a big celebration on the 3rd (this past Friday) where we had our big gift exchange. (I got a microwave! I haven't had a microwave in my house in the past 5 years... I hope I remember how to use it...)

It was a fun, if somewhat warped, event. The "original five" were there (my siblings and me, as well as our parents); Linda, Devin and Martha were also there; Jacques (my uncle) was there; and finally, Simon and Heather (Simon's mom) were there too. It was kind of a pseudo-extended family reunion.

Dinner was good — the food was excellent. Conversation got a bit one-sided at times, but otherwise, it went well. I think that Martha got a bit bored by it all, but she was very good at hiding that and putting on a brave front.

But now I'm back in Ottawa, and it definitely feels like home. That surprises me more than it should, I suspect. This goes back to my not having felt uncomfortable anytime this Christmas break: do I have shallow roots, or do they just grow in quickly? I seem to be able to make the transitions very easily, yet picking up one's life and moving to a new city ought to be more ... eventful. Monumental, even. But unless I'm still in a three-month old state of denial, it's been trouble-free.

Bah. Sometimes I feel like I'm growing more distanced and dissociated from life with each passing day. It's not a numbness, so much as a laissez-faire attitude bordering on numbness. Like in the book "Happiness^TM", where people who read the self-help book become so content that nothing gets to them. Which ends up being a bad thing, because it deprives one of the fun/thrill that comes from actually experiencing stuff.

Maybe I just need more sleep.

On a totally unrelated note, today has the triple-privilege of being Epiphany (king's day), Martha's birthday, and the one-year "anniversary" of my breakup with Imee. The second of these facets is consuming my attention at present; I'm too broke to buy anything decent... which annoys me to no end, because this marks the first time — ever — that financial constraints have caused me not to get a gift for someone for whom I want to get a gift. (Nice chiasmus there, don't you think?) She's said that a card will suffice, and that's extremely sweet of her. Still, I feel bad for not getting her more.

Then again, I will (hopefully) always want to get her more, so perhaps I should get used to this feeling... ;)