Daffnee

Ack, marks are back today. Lesson for the year: since marks don't reflect the amount of effort a student puts into a course, it behooves said student to try as little as possible. Just don't tell my parents, or they'll think I'm turning into a slacker or something.

This house feels so empty. I spent the better part of the day reinventing my room by unloading all my dorm stuff, rearranging furniture and getting rid of Grade Six clothing (which I'm wondering if was a good idea, considering that my closet and drawers are practically empty -- still, that Daffy Duck shirt and unattractive black cords were becoming a fashion liability). Also moved the bed, and compared to my residence room it feels like there's enough room to do yoga, ballet, or something else requiring vast expanses of hardwood floor. But who am I kidding? It was a really lonely day.

I managed to get a hold of an old friend of mine from high school for awhile; she's taking (another) year off school to work at Waterton National Park, which should be fun to hear about if her last stint there is anything to go by. I'm just stoked that she lives close, will be around for a few more days, and most importantly, now has a car. Living in the middle of nowhere provides the strongest argument I've come across yet for why those gas-guzzling, ozone-depleting machines are worth every square inch of carbon monoxide pumped into the atmosphere. I missed one of my best friend's house party in East Van tonight. I hang my head in shame.

Tomorrow's already pencilled out as devoted to finding a summer job (crossing fingers for Starbucks -- the secret of great coffee shall be mine!), which means I get to be more depressive than usual! Mix that with a looming 20th birthday and no mobility, and the summer's really starting to shape up. And I miss Dan. Not to worry: cuamin linduva yassen megrille once again, if I have anything to do with it.

Does post-partum depression affect non-new mothers? The few days after the school year finishes are such depressing times -- especially if no sleep is to be had for 48 hours afterwards, and one particular Fine Arts student happens to schedule his freaking flight back to Alberta the day after! Never mind that the weather's beautiful outside, because my residence room is bare (even more so than the "jail-cell look" I cultivated during the year), I have no Internet, and have only Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose to remind me what literary happiness is. And I'm moving home tonight. And I have an alumni dinner on Friday, at which point I anticipate getting many questions about my change of major (again) and the inevitable "So, what are you going to do with an English degree?" Ignore me, I'll be over this soon enough when I have access to Kazaa and the Sims again.

I made tortilla chips with Suet this morning, bolstering my confidence that she's an excellent roommate, as roomates go. Tortilla chips are the true test of compatibility; if edible food can be made of three-month-old frozen Mexican foodstuffs when neither of us have any cooking utensils left in an empty house, I have no complaints. What I do have complaints about is the summer-job search, because I'm now an Arts student, woefully unemployable, and living in Anmore. Job prospects don't look much bleaker than that; and toss in the fact that I've never been successful at landing any position outside the campus gates, and the complete picture of post-exam futility emerges like the dust bunnies on top of my ignored shoeboxes.

I need tea and scones! And tea and scones I shall have soon when I finish moving, made by my own hands and consumed in memory of those who could not be here to mock me for it.

I've always been somewhat ambivalent about my official nationality; Joe Canada beer commercials aside, being Canadian does seem to be kind of beige and bland most of the time. Thank the National Film Board, then, for Canadian-funded anti-American American films. I'll be the first to admit that Bowling for Columbine suffers from some very bad handling of statistics (someone neglected to mention that Canada has 10 times fewer people than the States when comparing shooting deaths, eh?), but the movie probably gave me the biggest boost of nationalistic vitriol since Adrienne Clarkson became Governor-General. Between being the Queen's Chinese-Canadian representative and a potential consumer of K-Mart bullets who supposedly won't shoot my neighbour, being a Canadian doesn't seem like such a bad thing at the moment. This is an annoying revelation, because my homegirl instincts are being amped up even more, so much so that at this point it's looking likely that I will never leave this country, province, or city. I will live my life in this town and someday even convince myself I don't regret it, and that New York is a hole anyway. I worry about the power of self-delusion...

The end of the school year always bothers me, because it's never a real end; I dread that annoying space after the last exam, when you're staring into space and realise that there's nothing more you can do. All the chances are gone, the die has been cast, and a long, gaping summer of unemployment awaits. Not to worry, I'm not quite this insane in actuality -- it's just what I tell myself when I start asking who made me research the history of Canadian penal reform, and realise it was me. The brain begins to shrivel after eating out too much.

I'm home! For the first time in over a month, which is enough time to forget that the most distracting thing about this house isn't the PS2, family, books, or other conventional forms of entertainment; it's those bloody cookie jars on the kitchen table. I don't remember the last time I had cookies for breakfast.

I went to a "birthday party" for my uncle last night (he's 36?). To all those Asian parents out there, a small request: please let your kids have fun! The guy apparently never had a single birthday party when he was young, and has never had an ice cream cake. I may have been overweight for most of my life, but at least that's one area I was never deprived in!