By Lucy

I’m moving up the dates of my posts so I can get back to posting them closer to the days they actually happened!

The bruises from my bike trip are finally healing.

Having Saturday and Sunday off seems incredibly luxurious. Especially having just had Thursday off.

I still wake up with my alarm and go feed the chickens. Refill the bins, collect the eggs, wash the eggs. I stop myself from tidying the kitchen; Kelly will be here, she can do it.

I’m in a bad mood when I get back to my desk. My work benefits emailed me. See, they take a certain amount off your paycheck towards your benefits, and there is a “bank” for when you are off work. When the bank runs out, you can opt to pay into it out of pocket, which I do cuz it’s not bad; just 200 a month, plus change. This email said I owed them 843, which means they should have contacted me four months ago and someone just realized I should have been paying out of pocket. The email ends, as it always does, by informing me I have to pay it by February 20th or I lose my benefits instantly.

Crap crap crap crap crap.

How am I supposed to get 800 dollars in 13 days? I suppose I could if I sell the bike tout de suite.

The concern, as always, is my surgery. I wouldn’t be able to afford having the odontomas removed without benefits. If I let the benefits lapse, I could probably work enough to get my benefits back before the surgery is scheduled, but it’s hard to say. The rule in Toronto’s union was 600 hours; Thunder Bay might be longer or shorter. I should email them and ask.

In the meantime, I start emailing dealerships. Even 1.5k of cold hard cash is better than 0.

Still, I could just about wring someone’s neck, I’m so pissed off.

Jeremy is free, so we chat for a bit. He has a big admission; he got laid off. He said he was avoiding telling me because the first few people offered him condolences when he was thrilled to be given two months paid and to be released from the job.

Since he’s been getting full pay but not working, he’s been working on his video game. He ran the story by me and we hashed out a few more details. I love being included in this. All the times I’ve been writing and the few times I work on a game, it was annoying to have everyone be positive but not really helpful or into it to the same level I was. He asked me about 3D modelling and I would love to, except my laptop probably couldn’t even open Blender. When I get back!

It occurs to me, if I’m leaving Canada for 3 years, I might as well sell my tower. I won’t be bringing it with me, and it will be last gen by the time I get back and might as well build a new rig. I will probably lose around 1k off what I paid for the parts barely more than a year ago, which is annoying, but that’s what I’ve decided. Maybe Jeremy will want it, or Hanuman. It’s nice to help out a friend.

Since Jeremy jobless, I joke that he could come to New Zealand and he’s more receptive this time. The conversation winds around to travel insurance, which I hadn’t bothered looking at since mine is included with my work benefits (hah). I randomly select Blue Cross, punch in a year into the calculator.

“The duration of the trip cannot exceed the limits of your provincial coverage.”

The limits of provincial coverage? More googling.

Turns out, if you leave the country for more than 7 months in a row, you lose OHIP.

Fan-fucking-tastic.

Wait, how long does it take to get OHIP back?

More furious typing.

So you can get OHIP back by working for an Ontario employer for 6 months.

Well, that’s not terrible. My condition isn’t currently dire. It’s just a bit of a gamble; if I let my OHIP coverage lapse and then something happens, it’s curtains for Lucy. I’d also be forgoing all my usual check-ups, which I would be anyway cuz I wasn’t planning on coming back for them. No scope, no MRI for three years-ish. I’d probably pay out of pocket for a dentist check-up in Germany or Italy or something. Or maybe a weekend trip to some place like Turkey where it’s cheaper.

Although according to Reddit, OHIP has no real way to check how long you were out of the country for, so in theory as long as you turn up every 2 years to renew it, nothing actually changes.

Well, I suppose they might wonder why I have no employment for the year in Canada…

Why do they kick you off? How does that make any sense? I’m not costing them anything if I’m not in the country. I guess the answer is exactly what I am doing; drawing benefits but not paying income tax. Except if I were, say, disabled, or a housewife, I wouldn’t be paying income tax either.

This system is just so absolutely dreadful.

That’s to say nothing of the fact that if I were a normal, healthy 29 year old, it would barely register on my radar. I’m not old enough to be concerned about my health, which is probably part of it.

Thanks again, parents. I really appreciate being born cursed. A mistake, a freak, deformed and unwanted. No wonder I identify with Gollum.

I should go for a run, before I really work myself up.

I manage 7 kilometers in 40 minutes on today’s run. Not running, but a mix of running and walking. How many people could do that? And it’s still not good enough for my ego.

It reminds me of Gattaca. Gattaca was such a nonsense movie, but it spoke to me; being held to account for genes not yet expressed. “Not saving anything for the return trip.” Would I rather live comfortably in Thunder Bay ’til 60, having never travelled, or see all of New Zealand and Europe and die before 40?

The second one.

Ethan took his little inflatable kayak out on the Rakaia. He came back mid-afternoon sour – he capsized and his phone drowned. Simo is worried about him getting hurt, but I’m not, if only because there are so many people on the Rakaia someone will notice him before he goes missing!

Gary has gone out for the night, so Simo decided to forgo cooking dinner and have a bath. She left a frozen pizza out for me and Ethan. I drenched mine in ranch sauce; these frozen pizzas are cheap and tastes like the cardboard box they came in.

Pete – he corrected me from Peter to Pete – suggested stopping in on his way back to Wellington. I think we could probably get away with him staying in my cabin. There is 2 beds, after all.

At 11PM I am disturbed by Gary getting dropped off.

Sunday I debated texting Kelly and asking her to do the chickens, cuz I couldn’t fall asleep ’til almost midnight and I woke up again around 4 and I was bone tired. I managed to force myself to get up anyway.

I’ve reached season 2 of The Bear. I don’t like Clair. I mean, no one did, but outside of the story problems I just don’t like her character. For the first few episodes every line of dialogue she says is a sarcastic one-liner. I also dislike how every character shills her to Carmy as “she’s hot now”, as if personality and interests have nothing to do with romantic attachment. And also, as everyone says, why is the ER doctor teaching the chef about work-life balance and why does she have so much free time?

I hated Richie until the episode 7 of season 2. He had basically no redeemable characteristics and no arc until then. That episode is possibly my favourite of the season, watching him learn and grow and that “eureka” moment when he finally realizes his life purpose, which was punching-the-air good!

I don’t like Mikey. For someone who was supposedly the life of the party he’s very angry and confrontational. I feel like his arc would have been better if they had shown him constantly going around the party putting out the fires and being affable, to underline the idea that people who seem to have it all can still be depressed. How much pressure perfectionists are under. Why people liked him!

A guest calls; they left behind a pair of socks and a hairbrush, did I find it? No. I go into the Granary to check under the beds – I don’t always – and find a used condom. Nope! I head back to the house.

“There’s a used condoms under the bed in the Granary, but no hairbrush or socks.” I tell Simo.

“Did you remove it?”

“Nope! I am off the clock and I’m not touching that with my bare hands!”

She laughs.

It’s cool and rainy, so I’ve had the fire going and been feeding it the surplus of cardboard Simonetta wanted gone. Some of the cardboard still has tape on it. I wonder if that’s good for my health.

Time to ask about my overnight guest. I am anxious; I can’t imagine her saying no, but my mind rolls over all the reasons she might anyway. Put away the eggs, tidy the kitchen, make her a tea. A guest called and left a voicemail she can’t find, so I help her find it. Finally…

“Can a friend stay in my cabin Tuesday night?”

“You’ll still work Tuesday?”

“Yes.”

“Gary’s away, so it’s just me and you for dinner…”

“Me and him can go out for dinner. Then you get the night to yourself.”

She seems pleased with that idea. “Sure.” She smiles. “Him?”

“Just a friend! A biker I met on the road.”

“A biker?”

“He has a respectable job in Wellington, he’s not that kind of biker…”

Once I am released, I head back to my cabin and open the door to let the heat out. It is warming up quickly today.

A demonic wind whips up out of nowhere. You can hear it as it starts to whistle through the trees, and then suddenly it is upon us, so fierce it’s almost bending the trees in half. I stick my head out to see if anything is at risk of being blown away.

A man covered in tattoos is sitting in the drivers’ seat of Gary’s truck. “Came on suddenly, didn’t it?”

I walk over to him. “Yeah, but that’s common around here. You’re Al?”

“Nah, I’m Gary’s son.”

I’m very tempted to reply, “ah, the criminal!”. He’s out on parole early; good behavior? I suppose I shouldn’t comment at all, I’m not supposed to know about it. I just smile and shake his hand, “Lucy.” It is tempting to talk about it with him because there are certain aspects to the Vagabond that only a fellow criminal would understand, but I must temper that desire.

The wind continues unabated; Simo and Kelly run out to grab the laundry and I follow them to help. Within 20 minutes, my peerlessly blue sky has clouded over. Rats.

My foot hurts. I’m not sure why; it was aching a bit when I woke up, but as the day progressed the pain has increased instead of decreased. I suppose I should take a couple days off jogging. Metatarsalgia. Is it because my shoes wore out, or did I give myself a stress fracture?

I should be writing, but I was exhausted from my wretched sleep the night before. I flaked on the bed, opening a random article titled “Anti-ageing jabs – they can rejuvenate mice, but will they work on humans?” I thought it would be some fluff piece about the latest “superfood”, or maybe more woo nonsense like colostrum.

I was surprised when the article dove right into discussing the destructive affects of chemotherapy. It’s not often discussed that surviving cancer is a pyrrhic victory, especially the younger the survivor is. It ravages you. Doctors sort of side-step it, because it’s hard to quantify, and because doctors don’t want to tell you you can’t do something.

“We discovered about a decade ago that this is because they’re ageing much faster than their chronological age.”

What did two years of chemo do to me?

The problem seems to be senescent cells – cells that doesn’t reproduce or function at all, they just hang around, clogging up the works and throwing out inflammatory markers. They’re working on a new class of drugs, called senolytics, which can force the body to clear senescent cells.

Could… could that help me? I know I have a constant background hum of pain and inflammation… could the senolytics clear my system and give me some function back?

Or, on a more mundane scale, is that how I am clawing back my youth? Are things like the keto diet and my jogging clearing my body of them anyway?

Hope, that dangerous, fanged creature. The thing with the wings. Taunting me.

On a whim, I send the article to Kevin. He surprises me – or maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, since I chose him to send it to – by understanding the article. He even sends me a few studies he found online using senolytics in FAP patients. Mostly in India or China, so of questionable quality, but a reminder that there is work being done on us. He mentions a doctor he knows in Thunder Bay who might be interested in helping me acquire them, but obviously that is a concern for another day.

The elderberries are ripe. Even with my sun gone, I should go out and pick them. I wander around to the easy-to-reach bushes, but the birds have gotten there first.

The bush by the chicken coop was full of them, probably cuz the chickens scare the birds away. The other day I was greeted by a chicken with a dead baby bird dangling from its beak. Yum.

Ugh, but I don’t want to have to go into the chicken coop to pick them, chickens pecking at my ankles and yelling at me. Maybe I can go around.

I loop around the woodshed. The weeds here are as tall as my shoulders, and quite a few thistles. What a mess…

As I get to the front of the woodshed, I noticed a gap in the weeds where some logs have fallen. I clamber over them. There’s another fence here, making it hard to get into the bush, but jackpot! Barely any bird action here, the berries so heavy on the branches that they sag under the weight. I use secateurs to cut down the bunches into a bowl and bring it back to my cabin, and pluck the berries off the branches that evening as I watch TV and the fire crackles across the room. This is a nice vacation.

Sunday night’s dinner is lasagna, homemade by the Italian herself. I scrape the leftovers into a bowl to have for lunch on Monday. When I go to put the dogs away, I couldn’t find Luigi. He was locked in the laundry room for some reason!

The offerings on my bike are slim and dumb. I had one guy offer me an 800$ Warehouse voucher (Warehouse being the NZ version of Home Depot). I have a follow-up question… why do you have that? Also, no. Another lady offered me some turbo kit thing that she says is valued at 3K. Ok, sell it and give me 2K cash, please. Next!

Worst comes to worst, I suppose I can just take it in to the dealership when I get to Christchurch.

Monday is fruit-picking day. The pears are as ripe as they’ll get, as are some of the apples. I actually enjoy fruit-picking and I feel like an idiot for not actually scoring any fruit-picking jobs. It has the same sort of zen quality as doing a wordsearch or Sudoku.

I tie my hoodie around my waist and use the hood as an apron for holding apples. I can fit quite a few in there before emptying it into the boxes. Luigi watches me enviously.

At one point, as I was working on the Golden Delicious tree, I spotted a perfect apple – large, round, the ripe golden hue. I fumbled it and it fell to the ground, where Luigi was waiting to pounce, and pounce he did! I tackled him to the ground, but he already had his teeth in it and I decided it was ruined and let him have it. Stupid old man Luigi.

Simo has pears, Russets, Golden Delicious, some unidentified red apple that weren’t quite ripe yet, and some kind of baking apple. I grabbed a large one of these and set it aside – it might be nice to toast over the fire.

Pete starts bugging me about my oil. It’s fine, the bike isn’t leaking. I take a look at the oil, remember you’re supposed to warm up the bike before checking, and wander off to do something else and come back with a clean rag, which I never do. The bike’s oil is fine. The chain is the problem.

She tells me to come at 7:30 for dinner like usual because the guests want dinner at 7, but she’s still busy at 7:30 so I eat by myself in the staff kitchen. These kind of dinners are the loneliest.

At least I won’t be lonely tomorrow!

Tuesday is the day. Too many possibilities spin around my head, enough to make anyone dizzy.

Two guests in the house to turn over. One of the guests brought Deutz, a medium-priced champagne.

There were 2 guests in the hut over the weekend. They cleaned thoroughly… a little too thoroughly. The sink is full of bubbles that I have to clear out.

Garden a bit, have lunch. Pete texts me around noon – he’s in Geraldine. He’ll be here for 2, then. I go back to my cabin to tidy it; sweep out the mice poop, throw my dirty laundry in the laundry bag, wash the dishes. I swap the sheets on the beds. I decided to give him the bed I usually sleep on, because it’s the longer part of the ‘L’ the beds are placed in, so he can stretch out cuz he is tall.

I take out the ladder to reach the fruit higher up on the tree. At 1:30 I put Earl on the chain and Luigi in the laundry, in case he shows up early.

Shortly after 2, Simo comes outside and waves at me, which is just as well because Pete texted me and I don’t have reception in the orchard. He was unsure if he was here. Silly.

Simo got an urgent call to go to Akaroa, and she may or may not stay there overnight. Will we be fine? Yeah, just as well I have a guest and dinner plans. There’s no guests in the house, so I don’t need to hang around, just remember to lock up before I leave.

I hang out in the driveway after she goes back inside to get ready, listening to the growl of the motorcycle as it winds its way down.

Saying hello is punctuated by Simo rushing in and out. She barely stops to say hi to Pete, which seems rude. We go inside to have a tea (and him a coffee, we had real coffee cuz the guests had breakfast) and discuss our plans. I prefer heading out ASAP, since we’re just getting take-out so there’s no time restrictions on eating. I dump out my Metamucil and count them; 2 days left.

Then I take him on a tour of the property. He has a real appreciation for the heritage of the building, the original kauri paneling, the features from an era past.

There’s a slight problem; his bike can’t take passengers. It doesn’t have pegs.

“You know, it is very hypocritical of you to complain women don’t want to go on a ride with you, when you don’t have the ability to take them on a drive!”

He complains that the real issue is that every woman he knows who’d want to ride just owns their own bike. I see no problems there!

I asked him to take a look at the chain on my bike, but his bike has a belt and so he’s not really experienced there. He thinks it will be fine.

I have a bad feeling about this.

Away we go, nonetheless!

Actually, it feels nice to be on my bike again.

We’re almost at Darfield when trouble strikes. We stopped at a construction zone. I was still in second gear when the light turned green and we went, but the bike didn’t like that. I kicked it back down to first and felt a ‘pop!’ and smelled smoke.

Ok, what did I do now? Still, we were less than 5 kilometers from the destination and Pete wasn’t trying to flag me down, so it wasn’t that bad. Onwards!

When we get to the grocery store, the bike is pouring smoke. Gah!

Pete points out the problem. The oil cap isn’t on, so it was leaking out onto the exhaust and making smoke. His concern is that it might have been slow-leaking since the rally. I turn crimson. Nope, just since that hard shift, cuz I never went back to close it properly after not even checking it yesterday. Stupid.

He laughs at this. He was concerned I might have some sort of long-term slow leak, but this is unlikely to have spilt a lot of oil, so it’s probably fine.

What to buy at the store? Yogurt tops the list – something to eat with my elderberry compote. Some crackers. I debated grabbing some blue cheese, but the figs are nowhere near ripe. He grabs some chips and dip, and granola. I also have to grab pads, iron and paracetamol cuz I’m running low. I stop at the shelf for Metamucil.

58$, 160 pills. 5 dollars a day.

When I turn away from the shelf, Pete grabs them.

“No! I can’t ask you to do that!” I protest.

“You’re not, I’m offering.”

“I… I…” This isn’t…. a large part of the reason I wanted him to stay was to pay him back for the oil, not to accrue more debt I can’t pay back! But as the thought pops into my head, it is quashed by a voice that points out he won’t see it as a debt and won’t ask me to pay it back.

But…

I decide to continue on without protesting further.

We wander down the alcohol aisle. It’s still weird to me to see an alcohol aisle in a grocery store, even though I know logically it’s the majority of countries.

“Do you want anything?”

What a dangerous question to ask an alcoholic. I wouldn’t mind the wine that helps me sleep, I’m almost a week into an insomniac streak. But I also know that I should just wait it out and let the insomnia break on its own. Or maybe something to act as a “social lubricant”…

I shake my head internally. I shouldn’t be forcing myself into this.

He grabs a bottle of prosecco.

When we get to the check-out line, he tells me to throw everything on the belt so he can pay for it. I don’t bother arguing, although I do regret not throwing some blue cheese on top. I miss blue cheese.

Once everything is tucked away, we go across the road to the take-out place. Mmmm, I do like going here. I order beef chow mein. He orders something Chinese and a “full scoop” of fries. He actually calls them fries and I tease him about not calling them chips, as if I don’t know what that is!

Once our food is ready, back to the estate!

Actually, I stopped in Coalgate to grab more of my precious black beech honey. I check Kelly’s driveway, but her car isn’t there so she isn’t home.

I make my compote so it’s fresh. The gas on this cooker is a little too high… even with it all the way down as low as it will go, the compote still boils over when I turn around for a second.

It’s yummy when it’s done, tart, the perfect companion to the too-sweet granola.

We talk into the evening as we get to know each other. Pete tells me about growing up in Oamaru, working at a tannery, and the move to Wellington. His friend Marianne, and her husband who is Inuit. He’s visited Italy and has a dream of touring around Southern France.

Tess texts me. “Just hungry for romantic gossip! How’s it going? Any sparks?”

Hmm…

Nope.

I text her back. “Sipping prosecco. No sparks, unfortunately.”

“OMG. The older gents know how to dine”

That is very true. One thing I learned from sugar dating is how to be wined and dined and how to insist on a basic level of luxury, even if I don’t always appreciate some of the nuance (like prosecco).

No sparks, though… you know, it is a curious circumstance that sexual attraction and romantic attraction are expected to go hand-in-hand, but don’t always. Outside of my brief interest in Jan, I can’t recall feeling sexual attraction to anyone since mid-August, which is very unlike me.

I could feel romantic attraction towards Pete. I could imagine enjoying going on a tour of southern France with him, or hanging out with him in Thunder Bay (he expressed an interest in seeing Canada in the winter), or living and working in Wellington for a bit. But I couldn’t imagine sleeping with him except forcing myself out of a sense of obligation.

See, this is why I recommend polyamory. Cuz the simple solution (to me) would be “let’s date, but go find someone else to have sex with”.

I don’t know, probably better just to hang the whole business. The Lucy shop is out of business for the foreseeable future.

Simonetta texts to let me know she isn’t coming back tonight. I go inside to make sure everything is locked up, put away, and the cats are taken care of.

I call it a night around 10:30, but still can’t sleep. It’s not ’til sometime after midnight that I finally drift off, but keep tossing and turning. I’m awoken around 7 by his phone going off.

Excellent.

I wasn’t sure what his plan was – if he’d help me a bit and drift off to do his own thing, hang out by himself until I’m done work, or help me. He goes with the third option, drifting around behind me all day.

Feed the chickens, weed a bit. The guests appear to be staying two nights, because they haven’t checked out. I give him the hedge trimmers, the hedge is hilariously overgrown and needs to be cut back. I take the rake to the front and rake around the fountain, then come back and rake up the cut branches from the hedge.

Around noon Simo texts and says she’ll be home in an hour. She comes home 3 hours later. I feel kind of guilty because I’m not getting much done, but there isn’t much to get done when she isn’t here to tell me what she wants done!

At one point he slaps my butt flirtatiously. I yelp “hey!” and then freeze.

Still nothing.

It’s really weird. Like the Covid people who lost their sense of smell. You know there aught to be some sort of sensation, but there’s nothing.

I realize I’ve waited too long to react and decide to continue as if nothing happened.

We decide to pick the pears. There are two pear trees; he says you need two. He also knows the Latin names of most plants, so he has some sort of gardener background he is hiding. The pears are splitting and don’t feel particularly soft, but Simo says they’re always like that. I let the chickens out since it’s the first nice, warm, sunny day in like 5 days, and some of them decide the apples look yummy as well.

When Simonetta gets back, she has a washing machine in the backseat of the SUV. Pete grabs it and moves it to the garage for her. That done, she hands me a letter. I recognize it right away; it’s Hanuman’s letter.

“This is for you!” I say to her, opening it.

“For me?”

“Yeah!” I pull out the Thunder Bay fridge magnet and hand it to her.

“Oh, thank you!”

There’s a letter in there as well, a letter for me. One line sticks out; “You’re going to be a very different person by the time you get back. Looking forward to it.”

Am I? I still feel like regular ol’ Lucy.

I mull this over as me and Pete go back to picking pears.

“So, what’s your plan?” I ask him, cuz I was only expecting him to stay Tuesday night.

“I thought I’d stay tonight and head out tomorrow.”

“You only asked for Tuesday night, you know.”

“I thought I asked for Tuesday and Wednesday.”

He did not. I asked. “Just Tuesday night then?” and he replied “Yeah is that ok?”

*grumble grumble*

I run back inside. Simo is on the phone again. When she’s done, I asked, “Can he stay another night?”

“You asked for just Tuesday.”

“Yes I know, but he likes it here.”

“I haven’t even met him!”

“You left for Akaroa the minute he got here and you’ve been on the phone since you got back! Would you like to come outside and say hi?” I say exasperatedly. Say you don’t want him to stay for no reason at all, but don’t give me a silly excuse!

“He can stay. You’re on your own for dinner.” She sniffs, turning back to her computer screen.

I head back outside to tell him he can stay. Then I go into the cabin to watch the Bear and unwind for a bit. The first episode of season 3 is odd; 40 minutes long, and mostly diegetic sound with a single vocal-less backing track. It’s kinda weird and artsy, but I dig it. I like that the Bear isn’t scared to do offbeat things; one episode, they’re listening to Pearl Jam, in another episode, Richie is belting out Taylor Swift’s “Love Story” in his car.

We decide to head out to Methven. We stop at the Rakaia gorge to do the touristy thing. I have a newfound appreciation for the road, the baby twisties and hills I cut my teeth on before the real stuff. I haven’t been on this road since the last day I left in early December, heading to Tekapo.

Once we’re in Methven, we park by the side of the road. Where to for dinner? He points to a nearby Irish pub, the Dubliner, and suggests that. I should have asked Simo where to go for dinner, but she wasn’t much for talking, clearly.

The Irish pub was a mistake. The menu is hilariously limited; pizza, burgers, salad, fish and chips. There is a venison and stout pie, but when we inquire they don’t have any… they forgot to order them. He goes for the steak and I have the salmon. Or, at least, I have mashed potatoes and veggies with a dream of salmon. Seriously, what a small piece of salmon!

After we’re done eating, it takes them nearly half an hour to come clear the table and ask if we want dessert. He gets the apple crumble, I get the tiramisu. I was half-dreading it, but it was actually pretty good. I did have a good laugh that the most expensive thing on the dessert menu is an affogato with Baileys instead of expresso… must be a lot of Baileys in it!

Gas up, head out. Since we’re already on bikes, I take him out to Lake Coleridge. There’s a nervous moment when we pass through the neck where the clouds are forced between Mount Hutt and Round Top, following the Rakaia down… and then the clouds parted and the setting sun scattered a thousand god-rays before us. Just as we crested the hill before descending into the valley, the field laid out before us like a patchwork quilt, the snowy mountains rising on the other side.

We stopped in Lake Coleridge Village for a bit, but it was almost 8PM, the sun was setting and it was still threatening rain. I wish I could have shown him the lake itself, but I was not doing 10kms of gravel road today.

So we headed back home.

I asked him if he me minded setting a fire. It wasn’t super cold out, but I felt chilly from being on the bike. He said he didn’t mind.

I wrestled with my emotions. I felt an urge to throw myself into his arms and start sobbing in gratitude, but that might be mistaken as flirtatious.

“Thanks for coming out here to visit.” I said finally. Maybe a little too muted. How much is too much, how much is not enough?

“You did seem kind of lonely.” He says.

Lonely? No, I’m not lonely. I have friends at my finger tips, and I could go out to find people to hang out with in Hororata or Coalgate. Hell, I think most days of the week I could go spend the evening with Kelly if I wanted to. No, I felt… unwitnessed, if that makes any sense. I wanted someone to come here and see how special this place was, so I wasn’t just ranting into the void.

“So, what’s the plan for after you’re done vagabonding?”

Who says there needs to be an “after vagabonding”? I went from “travels to Dryden for work twice a year” to “let’s go see New Zealand for the winter” to “let’s just wander Europe until they kick me out” in the space of less than 2 years. The further I’ve gone, the more I’ve realize I didn’t really need or want anything I’ve left behind. The beauty of the union is that as long as I pay my monthly dues, I can always just pick up work when I get back, no questions asked, no awkward gaps in my resume to explain. At this point, the only thing that would recall me from my travels is my father’s death, because I’d want to attend his funeral.

It’s like when people ask if you are an introvert or an extrovert. Why can’t I be both? Or neither? Why must you put me in a little box?

But sure, the life unexamined and all that jazz.

I tried taking a “what kind of traveler are you” quiz and the best it could come up with was “social traveler”, because apparently it is as lost as I am.

I’ve come to feel it’s some sort of need for independence. All my life, I’ve never been able to rely on the people I was supposed to (I won’t say no one, Paul, Jeremy and Andrej have been very reliable and I appreciate you), not to mention all the ways my parents took away my independence. But even beyond that… like from the first moment I started renting, I hated the standard one year lease. Life does not happen in convenient one year chunks and I disliked the idea of being chained to one location for no real reason. When I was 14 and started dating I hated the idea of having to commit to one person. This is just finding out how deep that independent streak goes.

It’s not just pushing people away cuz they wronged me, thought, it’s something deeper than that, broader than that, harder to put into words.

The insomnia finally broke. I was exhausted. I couldn’t even make it ’til 10.