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Word of the day: hortative – \HOR-tuh-tiv\ – adjective : giving exhortation : advisory

Example: A hortative letter to Angela might read something like this “Dear Angela, if you are interested in completing your thesis, perhaps it would be best to stop reading the flippin’ Globe and Mail and get your ass in gear.”

> Lovely weekend.

Aynsley arrived Saturday morning, looking stunning in a spiffy béret. I love when I first see any of the Wallace Women after months of separation…even though none of us are 19 anymore, there’s something about us that never changes. Ayns and I spent the day in Wolfville discount shopping (Ayns found a plastic lobster plate with how-to-eat-lobster instructional pictures on it – the perfect present for any occasion). Met up with the fabulous Leah, her boyfriend David and of course the complicated Rivers for drinks and fun at the Library Pub. Multiple beverages were had, and rumour has it that Rivers had a duel with gravity and lost. A successful Saturday.

Sunday I slept in!! It was beautiful. Walked lackadaisically (my new favourite word) down Gaspereau Ave to Just Us for coffee and muffins, showed off the bunker, and spent the rest of the day preparing and eating food and drinking mass quantities of wine. Fell asleep for the second night in a row feeling satisfied.

Reality hit me in the face today. Said farewell to Toronto WW and as she boarded the Acadien bus bound for Halifax Airport I realized that I was in fact going to have to go home and finish the damn thesis. I’m not going to lie to you. I took the long way home.

Now I’ve just finished watching ‘Love Actually’ (hey! I did a bit of writing) and I am sipping the last of the wine and eating the last of the cheese and crackers.

Contented sigh with a hint of impending doom.

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Sigh.

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“I’ve learned that you can get through things that hurt. My pain was real, but nothing will kill you. Nothing. People are unbelieveable. We have such resilience.”

-Jennifer Aniston

I’ve never loved my thesis more. Seriously.

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Today was spent in the political science office (aka the bunker). The university has decided that political science honours/masters students are not worthy of heat (or windows for that matter) so I froze my buns off (thank you Rivers for the sweater – mucho appreciated). I congratulated myself on a day of writing with a massive chocolate bar which I told myself I would eat over a few days, thus justifying its expense. Who the hell was I kidding?

Odd things happening outside my apartment tonight. First there was the lady who pulled up in her car and essentially sat on her car horn for over a minute and then yelled out someone’s name impatiently and told the person to “bring her f*#!ing stuff” with her. This sort of thing always irritates me. Get out of the car and knock on the door people and for gods sake don’t shout out profanities. Yeesh. But oddest of odd was the police car that sat outside my apartment for 45 minutes, 15 of which the policeman was in the car along with some character, who lives in my building, in the backseat. What were they doing? Chatting?

I’m wondering if my neighbourhood is going to pot. Do I live in the seedy part of a town of 3000? Are there drug deals or something going on in my apartment? Huh. My imagination is now running wild and it’s unlikely that I will sleep tonight. I wish I had trained Zoe to attack on command. Unfortunately she’s more likely to lick the person. Sigh.

In other news, I’m under attack. By both baby ants and giant spiders (oddly you’d think that the latter would take care of the former but no). Both have decided that the element of surprise is best, which means that the neighbours probably think I’m crazy because I keep shouting AHH. Baby ants just creep me out because they seem to come from nowhere and where there’s one, there’s a billion. But giant spiders REALLY freak me out. These ones are particularly creepy. Most unnerving is that Zoe doesn’t eat ants and only plays with the giant spiders then let’s them get away. Sigh again.

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I don’t know who this is but this is how I feel. I’m not upset mind you. Just really want to scream. Scream with frustration at my life and where I’m at and where I’m going and scream with excitement over the new experiences I’m bound to have now and the endless possibilities. Scream with joy at the idea of being able to just live how I want, when I want. Scream with anger at the fact that my previous plans were ripped away from me (even though I realize that they probably weren’t the right plans anyways).

I just want to scream. But at 25, screaming for no reason, or too many reasons, is not as publicly acceptable as it was when I was 3. I need to sing again or something. Anything to let out the noise in my head.

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Ok seriously.

I’ve been dating properly since I was 12 years old.

I’ve had 4 serious relationships: highschool sweetheart, drug addict (everyone has to date at least one drug addict :S), messy emotional up and down fuckwit, and messy emotional up and down fuckwit times a billion.

I’ve dated a wide range of men and women from the lower to upper crust.

I’ve seen it all: bad loafers with steve urkel pants and voice higher than mine, the guy who forgot to mention that he had a gf and then didn’t see what the problem was, the guy who thought biting was cool (?), tonsil extractors (both male and female), the guy who gave a detailed play by play of his hockey game (2 hour conversation), the guy who spelt his name with the number 5 in the middle of it (Ro5b – seriously), the Australian who turned out to be gay, the Catholic guy who didn’t believe in sex before marriage or smoking but thought drinking like a madman was totally fine (last time I saw him, he was standing on Douglas St. with a giant sign that said ‘kiss the 20 year old virgin’…), the guy with the massive gun and knive collection hidden in his wardrobe, the guy who had to pee five times everytime we made out, the stalker who scared me so much that I couldn’t look at mountain bikers again for two years, the alcoholic girl who passed out everytime we went anywhere, the guy who left a 50 cent tip on a 50$ bill, the guy whose room was covered in pictures of himself taken by himself, the guy who forgot to mention he was homeless, the videogame addict who cancelled a date because he was winning an online battle, the guy who professed his undying love on the second date….and so much more.

The thing is, is that they all LOOK and ACT normal the first time you meet them. No one mentions the fact that they are cheap/with someone/gun obsessed/crazy/gay/homeless/narcissistic/alcoholic/drug addicted/etc right off. So then what happens? If you’re lucky, they drop some accidental hints on the first date but sometimes it takes two or three dates to realize the problem(s). And then what? You’ve wasted more bloody time. Sigh.

So where ARE you!? I’ve had it with this process of elimination. I’m physically and mentally exhausted. I refuse to go back out there and look for you. I’m done. You find me.

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Daycare:

Harper and the minority Conservative government have decided that the best form of daycare assistance that Canadians can get is 100$/month for every preschool age child. Let’s say I’m a single woman with a child of two. Now let’s say I have to work to support that child. 100$/month is going to afford me a teenage babysitter once a week if I’m lucky. And even if 100$/month was enough to cover daycare costs, or even a decent chunk of the daycare costs, my child would have to wait upwards of two-three years to get a spot in a daycare facility. Canada currently has enough daycare slots for about 1/4 of the kids. Fabulous. Now let’s say my child is seven and I’m still working to support that child. He/she goes to school from 8 until 3pm. What do you think the odds are of me getting a job that allows me to be home before 3pm? And now I don’t even get the 100$ to laugh at. Sigh.

Environment and Transit:

Harper and the minority Conservative government have devised a “made-in-Canada” solution to environmental issues. Instead of channeling money into useful environmental initiatives, Harper has decided to give Canadians who purchase monthly bus passes and so on an income tax credit which amounts to about 150$/year. Wow. There’s some incentive to ride the bus eh? A monthly bus pass, monthly, in Toronto will run you over 100$. Yeesh.

That’s my morning rant.

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I miss having a roommate for the following reasons: someone to talk to other than the cat (no offense Zoe), safety in numbers, and background noise. That being said, not having a roommate for the first time in three years has allowed me to return to some of my favourite pastimes, aptly named “secret single person behaviour” in an episode of SATC – the stuff you would never do while living with someone.

Some of my secret single person behaviour:

1) Mashing up avocado with lemon juice into a mask, applying this lumpy green goo to my face and then watching SATC while eating excess face mask with toasted pita.

2) Doing the above activity but also nuking some hand lotion in two bowls and sticking my hands and feet in said bowls.

3) Dancing to the “Footloose” soundtrack after a shower, dressed in a towel while munching on a peanut butter and honey sandwich.

4) Lying with cold teabags on my eyes while listening to Stewart MacLean.

5) Talking to the cat in bad German and even worse French.

The first four are old habits that I acquired when I was in highschool (replace SATC with Friends and Stewart MacLean with Alanis). The last one is new and useful I think…nothing like practicing the conjugation of verbs.

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Five things I’m going to do when I’m done my thesis:

1) Learn how to cook/bake well. I love cooking but I’m terrible at it. I’m a decent little baker but I need to expand my horizons (tackle pastry and so on).

2) Learn how to speak french and german.

3) Become a yoga instructor. This is something I’ve wanted to do for ages and I’m really getting into yoga again. I think that helping other people to get relaxed would be a wicked job and certainly better than listening people bitch about the temperature of their damned latte.

4) Take ballroom dancing lessons – any takers for a partner? guy or girl I don’t care.

5) Laundry.