substitute

And not just snowing... accumulating. It is early November right? Okay, well, mid November I suppose, but still... not a good sign.

It started out as a weird sleet/slush mixture, which I had to DRIVE through, which, considering I'm still getting used to driving on the right sight of the road in big ass cars, was not a very good thing.

The bad thing about getting up at dawn (besides the obvious lack of a lie-in) is that there are so many extra hours to fill. Come noon, and I'm nearly ready for bed. I'm restless and creeped out at the fact that there are at least 10 more hours until bedtime. In previous week, it would be a feat to be awake for 10 hours total. Okay, I exhaggerate. But seriously... I feel like I've been here a month already, and I'm biting my nails because I haven't started working yet. It's been four days.

Today I spent the morning trying to remedy the situation. I re-registered with my old temp agency, which involved the aforementioned scary drive and an hour of computer skills tests. I aced the Word test, of course, and supposedly did very well on Excel, which is surprising as I was convinced I failed as I couldn't even do the sum of a range of three cells, which is surely the purpose of the programme, non?

I also headed downtown to the department of education to pick up an application for - brace yourself here - becoming a substitute teacher. Yes, yes, you heard me correctly. Moi, me, Ms Timid and Shy and Doormat Extraordinaire, large and in charge of classrooms full of crazy ghetto hooligans. You may be picturing Dangerous Minds or something, but trust me, I am not nearly as qualified as Ms Pfeiffer to step into an inner city school and transform the lives of a bunch of gangsters with hearts of gold. Yeah. Somehow I don't see this particular career choice panning out.

It was all my mother's crazy idea. Or rather, her crazy friend, who happens to be a teacher, and informed my mother of their desperate need for subs and willingness to take anyone with a degree and pay them shitloads of money to babysit brats in some of the state's finest educational institutions. At $175 for a few hours work every day, it is a tempting prospect. And it would be great experience... yeah. Yet somehow I remain scared shitless.

I told my dad of the hairbrain scheme over dinner last night - parsnip and sweet potato au gratin with peas and fake chicken, my own yummy delish concoction to prove I can in fact cook... totally unappreciated - and he immediately grunted and said 'Don't think that's worth the effort.' Yeah Dad. HE gets it. My sister thinks it's brilliant, however, and good old mom insists. Even Richard was encouraging. So I actually took the step of going downtown to pick up the application. Fortunately, it would involve having to get an official copy of my college transcript, and by the time that arrives, hopefully I'll have found something else. Fingers crossed!

The post office is hiring mail sorters at $12 an hour. Sounds perfect. Some of you may not realise, but I actually delivered mail one summer. Yup, I srove a windowless van with the steering on the wrong side, and hauled a huge rucksack overflowing with post around the finest neighbourhoods of East Providence. It wasn't too bad actually. Lots of independence and time on my own, getting some exercise, if not a bit dehydrated. Except for the fact that I started a few hours later than everyone else and had to run from house to house in an attempt to finish by 5pm, only to confront angry residents of houses at the end of the route, waiting at the mailbox with a phone in their hand, threatening to call my supervisor. Then there were social security and welfare cheque days... I would be literally chased down the street by the elderly. Dogs.. I won't even go there. And it's amazing where people decide to place some of their mailboxes, and how much time I wasted trying to locate them. At any rate, the prospect of a job inside the post office, sorting mail, is very appealing, even if it starts at some ungodly early hour.

Then there's the newspaper. I phoned the copy editor tonight to see if they hire part time staff, and he said they did, and suggested I call the deputy managing editor on Monday. He gave me a name and number and was super friendly. Fingers crossed. That would be the ideal nighttime job. And actually related to what I want to do for a living. Bonus.

So... progress made. Kinda. No job landed yet, but bags of effort put in. If worse comes to worse, there's always retail. Or waitressing. I'll give it one more week and see what happens.

Tonight I went out to dinner and a movie with my sister and her best friend. We went to a pretty posh place to eat, and I felt guilty because it was Sandy's treat as I have no money. She's had to pay for everything. It's like she's paying for my services as companion or something, and I don't come cheap. Not my fault, though, I do try to keep expenses down. Hmmm...

The other good news is, my appetite seems to have diminished. I seem to remember a time when I could easily devour an entire strawberry festival waffle, or have half a bowl of nachos, three slices of bread AND an entire entree for dinner. But lately I find myself full after the bread. I couldn't even finish the nachos - which were shared three-way - and when my entree came - a salad no less, as I was anticipating some fullness - I was already stuffed to the brim. Even more shocking is that I've hardly even tucked into all those delightful treats I bought at the supermarket the other day, including a bag of the best potato chips in the world. I wonder why. I'm not complaining, however. I just hope it lasts.

Tomorrow I've got yet another lunch date, this time with my friend Emilie. I'm a busy little bee, eh? It's a bit overwhelming. But it beats boredom, hands down. And it will be great to see her. I have a lot of catching up to do, with a lot of people, and I should be excited about getting on with it. But I find myself hestitant. I'm still trying to adjust to the shock of being here, and how I am while here. It's hard to explain, but I don't feel myself at all, in the one place where surely I should be myself. I feel very guarded and out of place. I feel like I'm trying to prove something, while also being careful not to offend, even though I'm not in a situation where I'm likely to offend, or be judged... I feel withdrawn and scared and.. I dunno. Perhaps I'm just talking rubbish. But I thought about it a bit last night, when I went to visit Evil Grandma. She was very excited indeed, and kept going on about how lovely it was to see me, and how she missed me, and all that. And I asked her a bit about the grandfather I never met, after realising I actually know very little about her past. It got me thinking about how much she really knows me, too. I'm not exactly myself when I see her. I'm just a polite girl who happens to be related. We don't share much history together. We've only ever really skimmed the surface when it comes to dialogue and getting-to-know-you stuff. There's no great personality dynamic there. What exactly did she miss about me, besides the company?

I'm not going to go into a whole Who Am I and Who Really KNOWS Me type exploration, because I've gone there before and it was a scary trip with no final destination. Suffice it to say, I'm having a bit of back home identity crisis, and have really begun to appreciate my relationship with Richard that much more, because it's the one scenario in which I really feel I am myself.

Of course, it doesn't help that I've just returned from a brilliant rom com and I'm reading one of my sister's trashy happy ending relationship fantasy novels. Plus, the entire dinner conversation was about how hard it is to find the right man, and as I listened to Sandy and Sabrina go on at length listing all the faults of their respective failed relationships, it made me think maybe I have found the perfect guy. Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww. I know, gag me with a jagged little spoon. Sorry.

Bedtime.