So, as I was saying... I took the entire month of July off and went home and and forced my way into every photo taken so as to avoid a repeat of the "replacement" nonsense from last summer when I stayed in Prague and my place in the sibling photo was taken by crouching man, clutching beer bottle. (Above: Find me in the photo. Hint: I'm under the raft.)
That's my excuse for July, as for August, I seem to have spent it as an intern in a Seattle hospital, and what a crazy time that was. Gosh, between saving people and accidentally scraping their hearts with my fingernail (God I hate when that happens! It's not like I can afford to LIVE at the nail salon!) and sleeping with the boss and performing unsanctioned autopsies and hiding my demented mother from EVERYONE and just generally trying to be sweet and above all CAUCASIAN to balance out all the cranky Asians and bossy black women on staff, I was EXHAUSTED. I think I'm going to go back to being a rock 'n roll undertaker from Los Angeles this fall. At least then the dead people are dead when you get them and there's no chance of relatives pointing their fingers at you and saying, "Hey, if you had paid attention in defibrillator class instead of writing 'Mrs. Dr. McDreamy' over and over again in your scribbler, you could have saved my father!"
Actually, I might try to get out of the death/illness game altogether. It starts to wear on you. Especially in Seattle, where people die of the darnedest things. I thought the most exotic cause of death there was caffeine overdose, or grunge, but apparently it's not unusual in a single day in a Seattle hospital to come across a 120-pound tumor AND a case of Munchausen syndrome. It must be the climate.
I'm thinking of returning to the viewing of my childhood, back when we only had two channels and one, I seem to recall, often showed nothing but the test pattern. I may spend the winter as Nick Adonidas, a beachcomber in British Columbia -- searching for stray logs in my trusty old boat, the Persephone, celebrating my Greek heritage, and counting the days until I get to leave this life behind and go on to host Celebrity Chefs (or what passes for a celebrity chef in Canada -- "And today, we'll be making rice pilaf with the national chairperson of the Council of Canadians, Maude Barlow!")
Or maybe I'll just read a book.
