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.