Last Evening at Home for a While

Oh, I'm feeling MUCH more aligned with the universe tonight than I was yesterday evening. Maybe it WAS the Larium after all. I felt downright twitchy and I had those wild dreams again mixed with early morning insomnia. But other than feeling sleepy tonight I feel much better.

I've spent the evening alternately tidying the house and chatting with friends on the telephone.

Pol, I didn't get hold of you in person, but just know I'm taking you with me in spirit to the beaches of Zanzibar because I KNOW you need a vacation.

I also didn't talk to my brother, but you know, it always seems as if one or the other of us is in the midst of planning to leave the country whenever we see one another. I'll just get back from Africa and then he leaves for Laos and Cambodia. He's a lot smarter at planning his trips to be elsewhere at Christmas-time. Sigh, one of these years I'd like to be in Cambodia for the holiday rush. Also, he's very lucky that his job lets him take off for a few months at a time instead of a few weeks.

My German friend, Claudia, informed me that our government's practice of giving Canadians only two or three weeks holiday a year is downright barbaric. Apparently in other places in the world like Europe and Australia, six to eight weeks paid holidays is the norm.

However, I think Americans also have only two weeks, and I've heard that in Japan a single week of holidays (or less) is the encouraged norm. No wonder you see North American/Japanese tourists rushing around in photo-taking, sight-seeing, mad-dash see-it-all frenzies. They have a lot of living to do in only a very little time.

Me,I feel a deep need to see new places and stand on far-away soil. It's frustrating that I have so little time to do it in.

Even if I live to be very old and travel somewhere for a few weeks every year, that's still a lot of travelling left undone. And criminy, if I go somewhere every year I'm going to have to win the lottery or pen something that's best-selling or I'm going to have very empty coffers indeed.

Ah woe! I know, I know...cry me a river. I actually feel very lucky that I've travelled so much already when lots of people I know haven't been able to find a way to do it.