Fruit Basket Upset.

I can see a million tiny spots of beet juice dappling my tired face in the reflection of the mirror. I am sitting tall in an orange pulp splattered work shirt at my desk, balancing a bowl of instant noodles on a bare knee. Winter--along with all the mentalities that match the season--has settled in with a vengeance and thankfully, depression has not (save for those first three weeks where I barely left my apartment or had a decent meal). I have almost been a home a month and life is back on track. Thankfully, the Fresh birds have taken me back into the juicing coop and I am finally aboard the train out of poverty. Not working for ten weeks ALMOST killed me but in retrospect, it had to be this way. A lot of people would have killed to be in my European shoes-- even if I was dancing hand in hand with the devil of destitution for longer than necessary.

Not much has changed around town, save for a couple of new storefronts that have reared their ugly heads in the Village and the empty lot where my Little School used to lie back in the country. Come to think of it, I wish someone would have forewarned me that the petite school was set to be demolished; I would have liked to have one last look. (Or better yet, one last 13 year old summer evening spent with running around with Joeanne (Joel), Jenny, Kev and Patrick at dusk shooting barn swallows roosting in the Little School's ceiling with the aid of the BB guns slung around our backs). My childhood was a wild one, to say the least.

I am sorry all, I don't feel like writing anymore.

Here is what is different and what is not:

-Less than three months away and I forgot how to dance. On Boxing Day, I stood in the middle of the room like Helen Kellar: blind, deaf and mute to everything DANCE. I miss the natural ease of Thursday dance nights of yesteryears.
-I like to cook (still).
-Home IS where the heart is.
-Friendships can change overnight and it is okay to bow outgracefully and then get back in like a dirty shirt after a short hiatus.
-It is okay to have snobbishly high standards when it comes to men and coffee.
-If I was chosen for the television show Survivor (for some ungodly reason) and was guaranteed an electrical power source, I would choose to bring my record player and nothing less.
-Christmas was friendly on the Kroeker homestead, but I want to strangle innocent strangers every time Sarah McGlaughlan's "Wintersongs" CD comes on at work. Christmas is over, gems.
-The potential for love is on the rise; I have been channeling my inner Seventeen year old and faux European girl alias to the max and things are looking up.
-Last night in a room full of drunken underaged St. Mary's girls I remembered how to dance. God bless their wandering eyes filled with expectation. I am twenty one and already a Godfather of dance in these little babies eyes. Oh dear.

Fin. Out. Peace. Feliz. Gossip. Girl. Episode. Seven. To. Twelve. Book. Bed. Bath. Beyond.

Meg.