|
|
december 16, 2000.Jesus God, we spent a lot of money today. For a couple that nets less than 12 grand a year (and a significant portion of that is frittered away on higher education), we went through a positively obscene amount of lucre in our Christmas shopping: more than 600 dollars in 6 hours. "Do you know what the loss of a hundred and fifty bucks is like to a guy that goes broke Tuesdays and alternate Thursdays? It's like--like--really bad!" Why am I dwelling on this? Queasy fascination, I guess. I've known since September that out imputs don't match our outputs. We've been living on wedding money so far, but we'll be getting an old skool bank loan next year at the very latest. I'm not terribly worried. If we run up a monstrous debt during our stay in NS, I can always go teach in an unpleasant (and lucrative) part of the world. Still. It's pretty amazing to a girl who used to go for days in university without pulling out her wallet, because once the summer savings were gone, that was it for the year. In those days Agamemnon and Paris constantly bought the pitchers, but all they seemed to require was my company. That's always a good bargain - just being me is one of the few things I unselfconsciously excel in. We spent all of our energy and most of our cash in local businesses this year. That was almost the best part, actually - not only could we find wonderful things close-by that eliminated the need to finance a megacorp, but it signifies our connection to our environment. Superficial as it sounds, my biggest problem in moving here was not knowing where to shop. It's a little thing but it really matters - at least, if you're even vaguely a materialist. For someone with my admittedly eccentric tastes, a foreign commercial environment was a terrible cross to bear, almost worse than the social cost of our big move. Speaking of social cost, I'm having trouble with Christmas gifts this year because a fair number of my Toronto contacts haven't returned phone calls or emails in weeks. Are we still an emotional item or what? Should I be on the lookout for whimsical fridge magnets? Throw me a bone here, people! (The above was not meant as direct comment to the readership; it was simply what passes for a focussing of will in my house.) The best thing about shopping was running into a couple peers from the ed department in the town's fabulous second-hand bookstore. They're both in the program, he in secondary she in elementary, and we talked shop for twenty minutes. There's such an amazing commonality of experience between the department now that we're deep in the schools. One of my frustrations is that no one understands the depth of this experience except other first-year teachers. I'm so consumed by the experience that I can think of little else, yet the Boy or Dirk or even my brother can't really understand where my head and heart are. I could almost wish for classes to start in a week, just to meet up with the others and swap war stories...but I'd rather go home. This weekend is rushing by. I have one more day to clean and tidy before the busy work week begins and pushes me into our Friday night departure. So much tidying!! It's disheartening, 'tis. Makes me long for my days of lonely single squalor. (Well, no it doesn't really.) |
|
