Strangely Socialised

I haven’t forgotten you exist. No, that’s a lie. I have forgotten you exist. Frequently. But only because I had other things on my mind. Important things. Like boxers or briefs, and paper or plastic.

The truth is that I’ve written over a hundred thousand words in the past couple of months and I’m feeling pretty good about it, but there is a great deal of editing in my near future.

I think I know what I’m doing with my Christmas vacation.

My experiment in flowers has, sadly, ended in failure. I adore the tulips that adorned my kitchen table for two weeks in a row, then I supported the Cancer Society and bought some lovely daffodils and discovered that I am very, very allergic to them. My kitchen table is now bereft of flowers and looks so sad.

Spring cleaning has also been a massive failure so far, because I’m a lazy fuck, but that will inevitably have to change. They (I don’t really know who “they” is, actually; perhaps it’s “The Man”) will be painting three walls of my apartment to cover up floodstains and I have to make way for them since they aren’t really allowed to touch or move my personal property while they do it. I should seriously be getting a little bit knocked off my rent for putting up with this whole thing, since it was in no way my fault. But I’m too chickenshit of confrontation to ask for it.

Other things are happening. Easter weekend will be spent out at Mom’s farm, at which time I will finally give her all the Christmas gifts that have been accumulating in my apartment since November. The more time I have, the more I buy. There will now be Valentine’s Day and Easter candy in her stocking. It’s been a very strange/non-existant Christmas all around this year, probably due to the fact that neither of us celebrates Christmas. But presents! I’ll observe any holiday that involves presents.

Or pie.

Or both!

Class last night was lovely, even lovelier than normal, I think. Though it drives me nuts that I spend the twenty minutes before class setting up every computer in the room (not just the max seventeen that we need, but every computer) only to have people come in and sit down and immediately reboot the machine. Thus undoing everything I’d done to set it up.

Anab was using Word again, just typing whatever came into her head as always, starting with her name and the date. And then she wrote “I am came to Canada January 2002 Friday 1/45 30″

I came to Canada on Friday, January 30, 2002, at 1:45.

She knows exactly what time she arrived in this country. It really kind of hit me, and not for the first time, the kinds of situations some of these people left when they came to this country. Anab came here from Somalia.

Later on two of the students from Iraq (Khawla and Khalef, plus Khawla’s children), in the break between halves of the class, called up the news on Saddam on the Internet and were talking to each other in rapid Arabic. I would have loved to understand just what they were saying.

It’s the Christmas party today so even though it’s not my usual day to volunteer, I’m going to head over there after work. I wanted to bring something yesterday, candy canes or something, but I didn’t know if it would be appropriate for a class where I’m not sure a single one of the students celebrates Christmas. Turns out it’s fine, though, and they’re learning about Christmas in class, so I’ll bring some with me today. Even though I don’t celebrate Christmas really either, I do have fun with the trappings. And candy canes = good. (And an orange for Anab since she can’t have the candy.)