The girl is back in town.

I have been home about six weeks now.
Well, five if you take into account that the day after I got home I left to visit friends in the UK for a week.

It still feels a little unreal, in a way. I spent two years working with the same bunch of terrific people, meeting the same wonderful friends at the same favourite bars, and now that's all over, gone. That's a weird feeling. I know a lot of people talk about life being a series of chapters and how things change, but I think for a lot of people that's a smoother, more gradual process. When you're someone like me -and I refuse to call myself a traveller, as that conjures up images of someone living out of a backpack and scuba diving and getting one of those real, traveller tans -and that's not what I do.  I move to cities and I find an apartment and an ordinary job and I meet ordinary people and do ordinary things. And I love that! I love ordinary. But sometimes people confuse air miles travelled for adventurousness. So I don't ever call myself a traveller, I call myself a mover. And when you're someone like me, a mover, you get used to the chapters ending abruptly. Most of my chapters have ended the exact same. My dad picking me up from the airport. My mom making a big fuss over me and asking me if she can make me a sandwich. Us all in the kitchen joking about how the dog still seems to remember me, anyway.  It's the exact same every time, and the similarity is more remarkable than the frequency.

The first few days are all novelty. The first bag of proper chipper chips, catching Reeling In The Years on TV over dinner, the first trip into Penneys that I've been looking forward to for months. And then it normally gets old very quickly for me. Even if I have psyched myself up for the return home, the enthusiasm usually fades within a week. I'm not going to talk shit about Ireland. I've been asked a hundred times by a hundred different people why I keep leaving, and I don't think I've ever done a good job of explaining myself. I have just always been happier when I'm elsewhere.

And now something has changed. And for the first time in my life, I don't have a plan to leave. My cards are laid out on the table and I don't have any more visas or one way flights up my sleeve. And I like it.

Or at least in theory, I like it. In reality, I have barely seen any of my friends -that is the few friends I have that are still in Ireland - and I am ridiculously busy with work and more stressed than I have ever been in my life. I'm also paying more for rent in Dublin than I have ever paid in any other city, while making less money than I've ever made in any other city, but shur, what can you do and all that.

Still, having a job and a place sorted within a month of getting home isn't anything to complain about. Seeing friends -and, perhaps more importantly at this stage, making friends will hopefully come in time. And with no plans to leave, time is one thing I have plenty of.  What I know is I'm very happy to be here. I want to get to know Dublin the way I knew Chicago, I want to spend weekends exploring it like I did Seoul. I want to become as nostalgic for the Liffey as I am for Lake Ontario.

And it's already happening.

Packing #onemoretime

Cut Corners.

“Alrighty, folks, welcome aboard American Airlines, we're currently reaching about 20,000 feet. Apologies for our delay on the ground, but we're going to do whatever it takes and cut any corners we can to get you there closer to schedule. For the moment, keep your seatbelts fastened as we're expecting a little turbulence for the next little bit and we hope you enjoy your flight.”

No. Thank you, but no, please, that's alright. There's no rush, really.

It's a very unsettling thing to hear. The term “cut corners” should not be used when referring to 500 people hurtling through the sky above the Atlantic ocean.

What does that even mean -"cut corners"? How does one speed up this process? We're already flying. What else is there?! Is it simply a matter of putting the pedal to the metal? Taking a shortcut?

I've seen enough movies. I watch the news. You go a few degrees off target so you can get Mr. Smith sitting up there in business class to his 10am board meeting? Throw in a little fog, next thing an engine gives out and you're gonna have little Suzy and Bobby Smith digging through rubble for bits of their father's body like they're looking for the toy in a box of cereal.

Is that what you want, you sick fucks? IS IT?

Look, let's just stick with the original plan. If we're twenty, thirty minutes late, what of it? What's the rush? Oh, is this view of blue skies and fluffy clouds boring you? Are you severely inconvenienced by having to sit on your ass watching movies while being brought free drinks? Oh, I'm sorry, are you in a terrible rush to get back to your job and your bills and your asshole of a cat?

Yeah, no, let's just sit here and be patient and we'll get there when we get there, in one piece, which is what really matters, right? Can we do that?

Thank you.

Hardcover.

Alexander's life was a history book. It took prize position on his coffee table and guests were invited to browse through it, as he brewed coffee, or boiled pasta. Now and then he would direct me to a particular article or a photograph, something he felt was important, and I would eagerly do as instructed, flipping through the pages trying to absorb it all, the words, the pictures, thirstily scanning for his name, his face -as desperate to know his past as he was to share it. He believed it said something about him, and I believe it did too, but perhaps not what he thought.

It took me a while to realise that this wasn't just his past. This was him. He was a series of anecdotes, of his exes and old friends and old tours past.  Being a sucker for nostalgia, it was something I found charming at first. I could relate, I thought. I knew what it was like to miss people and places and things. To be in love with a golden era. But he was still chasing that past. Any real extra time or money was spent in an attempt to re-visit it. Any extra wall space was dedicated to exhibiting it. I had been there too. 

The anecdotes became repetitive. The details, a little too familiar. The motives, obvious and boring.
Finally, I got it. I wasn't in that book, and I never would be. That's the thing with books, once they're published, out in the world, resting on bookshelves or tucked under pillows. They're final, they don't change.

I got it, but I'm not sure he did. Moving on requires more than a plane ticket and a new health card. Growing involves more than fucking someone new. "You are not your fucking khakis." Nor are you your vinyl collection nor your French press nor your very lovely coffee-table book, not even if you're in there.

The age of aquarius OR For she's a jolly good fellow Pt 2

I'm turning 30 this week, which simply means I've been alive for some abstract number of rotations around the sun, but culturally means I'm a legit grown-up. I'm no longer young enough to qualify for the cheap, youth tickets to the Canadian Opera Company but I'm not old enough to read their acronym without grinning. I'm in maturity limbo.

I had a potluck Saturday night to celebrate, and I kinda had a few words to say. Throughout the night when friends would ask how I felt about turning 30, I just smiled, shrugged and changed the subject because I didn't want to use up my nuggets of wisdom before it was time for my few words. I imagined I'd say them after everyone sang Happy Birthday while I blew out the candles on my Baskin Robbins ice-cream cake. Everyone would cheer and then I'd chime my fork against my champagne glass to hush them before humbly starting my speech. In my mind, there may have been a podium too. But in real life there was no ice-cream cake, thankfully, because nobody really needs ice-cream cake when your friends make you double-Bourbon cupcakes and apple pie and lobster dip and etc. Besides, I don't have a podium (how embarrassing), or a champagne glass for that matter. It was the loveliest night and so good to have so many of my favourite people in Toronto all together at once. But I didn't end up sharing my thoughts on the whole thing.
So.

All I know for sure about turning 30 is that I'll no longer be in my 20s. And my twenties were quite the decade for me. 

I broke Xstraight edgeX after an eight year run.

I "lost my virginity", at least in the oppressively heteronormative, cis-centric sense, at the tender age of 23.

I finally made the transition from pads to tampons, and I only did it two summers ago in the bathroom of Ronnie's Local before almost immediately passing out and fearing I had Toxic Shock Syndrome. (I didn't. I ate a burrito and felt better.)

And sure, some people might be a little freaked out at the idea of turning 30 and, say, not knowing how to drive.

Or turning 30 and not having a house.

Or a baby.

Or a real job.

Or any real career prospects to speak of whatsoever....

...or having no idea who's going to look after them when they're old and decrepit...

...

Pfft, but not me.

I'm just happy I made it out of my 20s without incurring any crippling debt, or catching any sexually transmitted diseases and in fact, really only having 3-4 consensually ambiguous sexual encounters tops and without having to get my wisdom teeth removed.

Plus, I learned a lot in my twenties. For example, that friendships get better with age.
 And yes, a good man is hard to find but they do exist.
That life is short, so say what you mean and mean what you say. 
And in the words of my old college roommate, Joanne, that nobody can make you feel inferior without your permission. 
And in the words of Eleanor Roosevelt, to always pee after sex. 
Sometimes I get those two mixed up.

But really, I don't feel anything about turning 30 other than it sounds weird. Like, "Hi, my name's Amanda, I'm thirty" sounds crazy to me. But it's a'ight, it's cool. And not just because I still get carded at the LCBO or still dress like I'm 21 or still pick the marshmallows out of my Lucky Charms or any cutesy nonsense that's meant to signify I'm still good ol', young-at-heart me inside. Barf. It's cool to be a grown-ass woman because experiences. Who would you rather have dinner with, an old broad who's lived through wars and revolutions, and probably has a few neat scars, or at least some good records you can steal, -or some dumb baby who just sits there with apple sauce on its face and hasn't done anything cool and only has a six word lexicon? I rest my case.

Anyway, they say "you're only as old as you feel", in which case I am slightly hungover years old. Or there's also "you're only as old as who you feel", in  which case I am still only 27-ish years old, I think. Whatever. Hey, in Korea, you're considered aged 1 from birth, meaning I'm already 31. Now, 31...that will be an appropriate birthday for a Baskin Robbins ice-cream cake, eh? Eh?

That's right, I just tied this post up in a fucking bow.