If Grusinskaya was a graceless Canadian . . .

Dear oh dear, I'm in rather a bad way. I don't seem to have the same skill in shrugging off frustrations that I flatter myself I once did and anger is finding a way to bake inside me; last night I went to bed angry, angry, angry, congratulating myself for the small victory of restraining myself from kicking Lexie across the apartment after she left a big juicy hairball on the exact part of the floor we'd walk across when coming home tipsy late, far too late . . . Poor girl, obviously it's not her fault, and poor F-word, obviously it wasn't his fault when he horsed around a little too playfully by digging his finger into my ribs just as I'd gone into some closed-eyed-deep-breathing-get-it-together-get-it-togetherness whilst reflecting on the strains of the day, but in both cases I could have decapitated them and walked away smiling.

Counterintuitively, because I think a part of my frustration comes from being away from my family a little too long - it's been well over a year since I've seen them, besides Mum and Dad - I want to be alone. Just for a couple of days. Just a couple of days of not having to talk to anybody or do anything in a different place where I can be quiet, and not see any news, and not have to have an opinion, and not have to do a goddamn thing but sit and think and nap. Not have to struggle to express myself in a second or third language, and not have to listen to people struggle to express themselves to me in my own language. What I really want is to be utterly taken care of by someone I don't have to be grateful to, just for a couple of days. But I'd settle for just being alone.

I get it in a month when I go to Marseilles for work. It's the one conference I go to where there's absolutely no question but that I'll stay in the super swanky five star hotel and dine on the finest cuisine man has to offer. The conference itself won't be restful as I'll be obliged to network but then I'll have two days in Provence to chill and not have obligations. Hopefully it will be warm and sunny. Hopefully I can find myself a patch of something nice. But it's a month away, and by then I probably won't want to be alone anymore.