It's been slowly creeping into my busy life that I'm sad and I miss people and I miss all the relationships I had and I miss my job. I've been trying to keep busy and avoid all those feelings. There was no way to deal with them because they aren't irrational or bad for me so I did the only thing I could think of - be busy enough to not have time to think about all those feelings. No one died, but being suddenly removed from the daily lives of so many people is really hard.

So, in short, I'm sorry I haven't written and kept in touch. I haven't wanted to be sad.

While I've been avoiding all those sad feelings, I've been flying to Fort McMurray and Calgary a lot. And working and playing video games and having house guests.

The first set of house guests were a bunch of fabulous people from Edmonton that I totally love. I'm so glad that they came to visit and that they stay with me. I do so enjoy their company. And I played in a game on the weekend which was kind of based on Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere market of the forgotten. It was a lot of fun. I played the pigeon keeper, but couldn't find a stuffed pigeon. So I found a 10 second clip of pigeon sounds which I put on repeat on my iPod and little speakers. For 4 hours. Heh. It was awesome. Of course, even more awesome was Cheruby's portrayal of a bible-thumping do-gooder who was trying to save everyone. He had one other characters yelling, "I love Jesus," several times. I sat in the corner of the room laughing really hard with another player when that happened. Later, the game was ending and we were all disappearing and he fell to his knees yelling, "I'm coming, Jesus! I'm coming!" It was brilliantly funny.

Then two days after the fabulous Edmonton peeps left, two more excellent folks showed up. Matt, who you might remember from our Vancouver trip last year, surprised us with the news he was staying with us. Of course, this was just fair play since Cheruby and I did that to him last year when we showed up at his doorstep. Not my fault. [grin] Earlier in the evening, we received another of Cheruby's high school friends, Nitra. She always makes me laugh and has a fresh perspective on life and her relationship with the world. I enjoy her quite a bit.

And we had a party last night for Cheruby and Matt's birthdays and it was awesome!!! I woke up this morning feeling better than I have in a really long time. I was relaxed which I think is what brought about the realization of the sadness which I was avoiding.

And today, I got to speak with Siochain for a long time today. And it was really, really good.

And I also got to try on my corset today that my friend from high school is making for me. Then we went out for supper with her family including her parents and brother and his wife. It was a good evening. I'm happy to such great people in my life.

Other than the sadness, I truly am well. Life is good.

I was so happy this morning to be walking my mom out of the hospital after her successful surgery. She's doing so well and is finally closing the book on her breast cancer. It's been six years since she was first diagnosed and had her mastectomy. And as of Tuesday, she has two boobs. Of course, they're very monster of Frankenstein-esque still, but that will eventually pass in the healing process. Of course, no one really needed to know that. Heh.

And now, I'm sitting at a friends house watching some critters because there was an emergency and I was needed. My mom, of course, is sleeping upstairs because she's still tired from her week of laying around with a morphine button. I'm thinking about how fragile we all are. I knew in my brain that my mom would be better than okay, but my emotional stress this week as I worried about her constantly has been very high. It doesn't matter how non-life-threatening the surgery was, someone was still cutting into her with a very sharp thing and moving bits around and removing bits. It's just not natural and I was worried. I won't be done worrying until I see the healed incisions and all the relocated skin bits are the colour that they are supposed to be.

A new colleague is off dealing with some family emergency as well. Things are actually pretty good at work other than that. I could have been very busy last week, but I just didn't have what I needed to do the job. Not such a bad thing since I was able to spend much more time with my mom and taking care of myself.

Now, rampant geekery rears its beautiful head. I received my Wii in the mail yesterday. So excited!! I played for an hour last night after a friend left. Of course, he'd brought beer and the new 4th Edition D&D books. Squee! The art is so much better. Then we started to make characters to make them fight. And it took me much too long and it was almost one by the time I was done so we didn't get to fight them. [pout]

Lastly, today is the first Exalted game with a full complement and I won't be there for the beginning. I'm really looking forward to playing and hanging out with my dear friend, AJ.

And with all this going on, I didn't get a chance to RSVP to the tongue birthday house warming party at Chez Relaxo. It was yesterday. I'm sure a good time was had by all.