Confession time

I have a dirty little secret to share with you. Oh, the clever clogs among you already know what it is; some of you have suspected it for a while; and the rest of you might be really pissed at me when I tell you. But I had my reasons.

First, I must pause and take a moment to acknowledge myself for completing my MA thesis. It was handed in today. That's it, done. Over. The last year of my life culminating in the click of a "send" button. It's all over but the shouting now.

I'm exhausted. I said I wouldn't do it, but I wound up having to pull an all-nighter to meet the deadline. So I'm off to bed soon. It still hasn't sunk in; as I was saying to someone earlier today, I know I should feel elated, proud, relieved or SOMETHING, but I'm just kind of numb. Maybe it's the exhaustion, maybe it's knowing that my book isn't finished yet and I still have lots more work to do on it. But I'll save that for another day.

And here's my dirty little secret: I've been back in Vancouver for a couple of months now. Since mid-April, actually. After I had a sort of nervous breakdown I decided that once the course work was over at the end of March it might be a good idea to return home, where I could get necessary medical care and attention and perhaps even a good night's sleep. So I flew home and continued my work from here (Vancouver) without telling anyone but a select few that I had returned, so that I wouldn't subject myself to the temptation to goof off, hang out with friends I hadn't seen in a year, or otherwise spend time doing anything other than write my thesis/book.

Which doesn't mean to say that there weren't distractions. Oh, there were -- plenty big ones, too. Like moving house, for instance. Within two weeks of arriving home we had to move from our house on 20th Avenue to a smaller, 2-bedroom apartment nearby. Prior to leaving for England I had already packed up most of my worldly possessions thinking D. would move house while I was gone, since technically our lease was up when I left for the U.K. anyway. But work on the house kept getting postponed and our lease kept getting renewed month after month, until in a fit of impeccable timing we were told the property was finally going to be redeveloped in May. So we upped stakes and moved a few blocks away.

Even though I was already living out of boxes (and had lived out of a suitcase for the previous nine months), moving was still an enormous pain in the ass. I hate moving; I've done it often enough to know (about 20 times in 25 years, I think). We had to downscale our crap quotient radically, which is not necessarily a bad thing; we jettisoned several rooms full of stuff that was weighing us down in more ways than one. But it took time and energy which were in short supply. Two months later and we're still living amid boxes. What was supposed to be our office has become a storage room, crammed to the gunwales with stuff we haven't had time to organize yet. Soon!

Then, three weeks ago, Captain Klutz did it again. While playing basketball (hey, a guy's gotta do what he can to stay in shape) I tore a muscle in my calf and landed myself in hospital. Stop laughing. Ever torn a muscle before? It's painful, trust me. I've broken bones before and had loads of other injuries, but that's nowhere near as painful as a torn calf muscle. So I've been hobbling around on crutches since then which is a bitch because I'm already accident-prone as it is (apparently), and that's when I'm 'normal' and on two feet. Put a pair of crutches under my wings and I'm a slow-motion disaster area. Everything takes five times as long to do, too. Taking a slash requires careful advance planning. (Sorry if that was TMI.)

Anyway, this week was supposed to be a celebratory holiday for me in between finishing my thesis and starting my new job as of July. I was hoping to go camping, but the leg has kind of put the kibosh on that. Ah well. The weather here in Vancouver has been mostly craptastic anyway.

I'll offer my apologies to anyone I've inadvertently offended by not calling since my return, but believe me when I say it was a matter of sanity preservation and hard-nosed focus. At least I didn't lie to you. (I told everyone before I left for London that I'd be gone for anywhere between 8 or nine months to a year, which was exactly right.) I simply neglected to tell you that I had come home.

And now I have to drag myself off to bed.