Prodigal Placement

Three weeks later, the prodigal blogger returns. For those of you that didn’t catch where I was, I’ve spent the last three weeks in Atlin, BC, visiting my mother and her household. It’s a beautifully lovely spot, tiny but picturesque. Anyone that knows me, though, knows how much the cold does not agree with me.

I do love the view of mountains, and I can get on a pair of downhill skis and have a blast—I even love outdoor skating (preferably on a pond/lake/river). However, these are short-lived pastimes for me—a few days is plenty skiing before I get sore and probably do some damage to the brain matter I have left, the way I knock it about. (Watching me fall has got to be hilarious, last time I fell so hard that, even though I fell head-first, down the hill, I ended up feet-first. My head apparently likes to fulcrum the rest of my body. Jolly good.)

If I’m going to be cold, I ought to be doing something exhilarating to make up for the steady stream of ‘coldcoldbloodybleepitiscold’ thoughts that run through my mind. Skating can do this, though I prefer that in moderately ‘warm’ temperatures (by sub-zero standards) so I can be lazy and meander, or pretend I know what I’m doing and go ‘fast.’ 

Cross-country skiing has never floated my boat—too plodding and slow, the way I learned—and walking in the snowy woods isn’t me cup of tea. Walking in snow is horrid, it’s like sand, the way it sucks your feet down and drags at you. The massive boots needed to stay marginally warm don’t help that, either.

All in all, I suppose what I’m saying is that, while cold is okay to visit if you have an activity to do, or a stack of good books and a fire (an unlimited internet connection can easily be subbed in place of books, I am a child of the information era after all), the lack of these makes it truly…miserable. Throw in a ‘family’ situation that is less than ideal, and you have Mahara, going stir crazy after a week. Three of them…hurgh.

To demonstrate my frustration, I wrote all this in about ten minutes on Thursday. I don’t even get to get on a plane for another four days. I don’t leave this house for three. I’ve literally read every book of interest here at least once, read all my pre-loaded internet fics as much as possible before a foolish keystroke quit my browser and lost the really good and long ones that I was saving for the next few days (somebody save me). I’ve watched nearly all the interesting movies, and rented more when that fails. I walked  half an hour into town (and another to get back) to spend half an hour on an internet-equipped computer before the local ‘uni’ campus (ha! If there’s more than five rooms I’ll be shocked!) closes.

I’m so bloody bored and exhausted, I’ve taken to sleeping ten, eleven, twelve hours a day, simply to while away as many hours as I can. This is the longest post I’ve written in months, and I don’t imagine it’ll be the only one I write in the next few days.

I want to go home. Now!!