It's been hard to remember that less than a week ago my parents were still here. I think that, for so long their impending visit marked a certain point in the duration of our time here-- and now that it's past, we no longer have it as a point of reference. At the end of this week, we have three months of life in Sydney left, only three and a half months before we come home. And yet, home seems so unbearably far away sometimes, so unreachable...
On Friday morning (Thursday evening US time), D's parents called to say that they had arrived home late Wednesday night, slept most of the day on Thursday, and then taken D's childhood cat Jinx to the vet's office. While they were visiting us, Jinx, one of two 18-year old cats in their household, had taken a definitive turn for the worse: she had stopped eating, more or less stopped moving, and was just barely hanging on. It was time to let her go gracefully, in thanks and love for the 18 years of companionship she had given us. The cat colony is down to four.
Knowing the end was not far away (Jinx had been ailing for the past three years or so1), D said her goodbyes to Jinx before we left. Still, the news has cast something of a shadow over this week. As we tried to recover from our visitors and reexpand into the full space of our small apartment2, we finally lost patience with not having a DVD player3 and spent a good four hours and $150 to get one working, during which process every single piece of purchased equipment was either returned or exchanged before the faulty $4 cable was located.
On the upside of things, we've also learned that Chad's friend Mark is coming to visit the first two weeks of September, and we've started making plans for our trip to Alice Springs, Uluru, and Adelaide, for which Mark will be joining us. And on Saturday, D got to go back to the Blue Mtns and to Featherdale Wildlife Park with her friend Mary, a visiting PhD student in Performance Studies from UC-Davis.
The fact that August is half over already has brought on D's habitual "taking stock and making plans" that happens every August and September with the start of the US academic year. It feels positively odd to be midway through the winter term here while this is happening. And it's not all good news: in a year's time, D is supposed to have finished writing half her thesis, defended it, graduated, found a job, moved once if not twice, planned a wedding, and gotten married. With a plan and determination, it can all be done... but determination is a bit lacking these days, and the plan seems to have some bodgy bits in it.
So, what's to be done but get back to work, try to channel this general malaise and ennui into some semblance of motivation? Buffy on DVD needs to be a reward not a distraction. Here goes...
;)
- D
PS: New photos up on the blog under "features"-- I'm trying to get caught up, I swear!
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NOTES
1For photos and more details, follow the link above on "Jinx" or just click here.
2We had no idea the bedroom was so large. Really, we didn't!
3It wasn't really the need to watch movies that was bothering us... really, it was the TV we were desperate to see. We left Buffy halfway through season two-- however will it end?!?
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