I'm feeling a bit homesick today, something that may or may not have something to do with my period (I hate the idea that I'm a little hormone puppet, but I can't ignore the idea that estrogen just might be pulling my strings). The strangest things are making me sad. I hear people talking about going home for Thanksgiving & I get all nostalgic for a big, slightly boring family gathering where I stuff myself with turkey and spend most of the afternoon regretting it. I think about the Nightshade family in P.E.I. and I get depressed that I can't even call Dirk because he's not in Toronto (...stuffing himself with poultry, but that's a different narrative altogether). Today we discussed the ethical dilemma of assigning sex to mixed genitalia children & getting cochlear implants for hard-of-hearing children, and I'm just so paralyzed by the possibility of making decisions like these that I'm at the point of getting myself fixed so that it never comes up.

It's been that kind of day: anxious, unhappy, inscrutable.

To put the cherry on my sad little sundae, I came home to a message from Nic that asked me to help a hitchhiking friend in Truro. Now, "friend" to my brother can mean a lot of things, from someone with whom he's exchanged 4 emails to a blood brother that he knows better than himself. Immediately I began to fret. What was I being asked here? Should I offer money? Directions? My home? What exactly did they want from me?

I couldn't get a hold of Nic, so I was left with these questions dancing like sugarplums in my head. It made me a little angry: why is it that he only calls me when he wants something? Why can't anything about being his sister be easy? After a few minutes of this, I realized that I was just transferring self-disgust onto my brother - I had already decided to ignore this girl and I was feeling guilty about it. But why should I feel guilty? I thought angrily. What reasonable person would open up their home to a stranger? I wondered if he were testing my Christian principles, and then I concluded that if this were such a test, I was failing magnificently.

So I called her. Well, what would you do?

Think about it. I'll tell you how it turned out tomorrow.