In the land of the Living Dead

Like everything else, blogger was working against me when I first got back home, and I couldn't get the entry to post. This is what I wrote:

"Almost exactly twenty-four hours has passed between the cup of instant coffee in Ana's kitchen area and the strong brewed one in my parents kitchen. I ache everywhere, arms and back mostly, but as much as it annoyed me somewhere between montreal and frankfurt and pissed me right off between frankfurt and stockholm, now the pain is rather soothing. It distracts me. It didn't quite feel like coming home, and yet it did. All my energy drained out of me the minute I entered the house. Like I'd been going on auto-pilot up to this point and now, fully planted on the ground, my engines turn off. All those options and possibilities I was reviewing for the future kind of fell away in that instant. My mum told me, "Well, first thing on Monday you'll have to go and report to the job office so they'll give you unemployment support and benefits. You're not on holiday now, you know." (Note, she didn't say 'start looking for a job', but 'report for unemployment support', that's how impossible it is to get work here. But that's probably a good thing, I can't afford to get stuck here, I just can't.) I'm already feeling depressed and hopeless. It'd better me jetlag, because I can not afford any self-pity right now. I have so much stuff to do. It's my dad's birthday tomorrow. I completely didn't know that. I'm a terrible daughter. "

Now, today was a new day as well as week, I went into town with my dad first thing and registered at the job office - she gave me a piece of paper with three dates for meetings with introductions to the job market and courses in how to write a CV and such, the very same meetings I've suffered through twice already in my life and really don't feel inclined to suffer through again, so with the first one being on the 31st I aim to get a job before that so I won't have to attend. I say down and wrote my CV as soon as I got home, then I went for a walk in the snow storm, I took my mum's camera with me and took some pictures in the woods and at the cemetery. It's become my daily ritual: when things get to negative and mind-numbing at the house I go for a walk and end up at the cemetery (ironic, I know) and as I was telling Ana, in Vancouver I would go to the nearest or nicest coffee shop and spend and few hours there, do some reading or writing, but here... well, we don't have a coffee shop. We have woods, deserted factories, the frozen sea side and the cemetery. Oh, and the grocery store. But I don't want to go there, I might run into some locals...

Ana actually called me today, that was great. So uplifting to actually speak to someone who speaks my language (and I don't mean english) I know it's only been a weekend but it feels like a month. Anyway, I'm going to do the dishes right now, then cook dinner, since there's no point in trying to do anything creative until They have gone to sleep, and I need to keep myself busy doing something.

Ana, Cesar, I miss you.