Homesickness

Posted on April 16, 2013 by Hannah

It’s not like I haven’t cried at all since leaving Australia. I teared up on the phone to my parents on December 23rd because it was a sunny family-filled Christmas Eve in Canberra for them while, for me, it was a grey winter’s day on my own in a place where the taste of cigarette smoke tendrilled through me almost as soon as I stepped onto the balcony.

There was another night, months and months ago now, where I shook silently in bed and awoke to find smudges of mascara on my pillow. And, once, I started crying in the middle of an Anthropologie store, but luckily the place was so packed with praying mantis-painted plates and lace-strewn teatowels that no one saw me falter.

For all that, today marked the first time I found myself curled up powerlessly, tremblingly, in as tiny a ball as my body could make, sobbing with homesickness, helpless.

I miss my friends back home. I miss the people who have known me all my life (or at least for many years), and I miss being able to call someone and arrange a coffee or dinner catch-up within the hour. I miss the softness of my grandma’s clothes and the perfume of my grandpa’s homegrown roses, and I miss the perfect contentedness of making coffee on the weekend to sip with my parents while we talk and laugh and talk.

I miss hugs. I really yearningly miss having people to hug every day. I miss the cocoon of arms and I miss familiar animated faces. Familiar names on an animated screen, while wonderful, are not quite the same.

I know this will pass. Or, at least, the intensity will pass. I am happy in my current life, my current world, my current challenges, successes, and adventures. I am chuffed that it’s taken eight months for homesickness to knock me down this completely.

I’m still happy, still excited, still thrilling to the touch of a new morning.

But I do miss having people to hug every day.

How Little I Knew, and Ritter Sport Dark Chocolate Marzipan

Posted on March 22, 2013 by Hannah

Remember that time I proclaimed winter had broken me?

Oh, how little I knew. How little I knew.

Here’s the truth: you haven’t been broken by winter until you find yourself hunched over in a packed-to-bursting streetcar on March 21^st, the official second day of spring, having realised that the first time you saw snow in Canada was five months ago (almost half a year) and that, because of travelling across hemispheres, in the past ten months you’ve had only three months of warmth/not-winter, and you’re sitting there, alone amongst many, hunched over in the streetcar, and it’s snowing outside, it’s still snowing outside, and so you hunch over more and pull the hood of your winter jacket further past your face because it’s grey and cold and it’s snowing and you’re tired, you’re really tired, and you cry hunched over behind your hood without sound and without trembling so that no one knows but you, because you feel like you can’t bear it, because you feel like you can’t bear the dark winter a moment longer.

That’s when you know that winter has broken you.

Thankfully, there’s always chocolate to bring comfort to a frayed soul.

Even if the weather is forecasting more snow next week.

Ritter Sport Dark Chocolate Marzipan

Ritter Sport’s Dark Chocolate with Marzipan is a chocolate block that I’ve bought and gobbled up frequently over the years, yet have never quite got around to blogging for you.

This is likely because my thoughts on this chocolate can be summed up as follows:

Vegan. Vegan good.

Sweet. Easy silky smooth sweet dark chocolate. Dark chocolate good.

Mmm, amaretto aroma. Chocolate syrup too. Like thick sweet almond chocolate milkshake. Mmm good.

In other words, this Ritter Sport Dark Chocolate with Marzipan is a simple and pleasant dark chocolate bar that errs on the side of sweet and is filled with a thick, slightly grainy, and subtly almond extract-tinged marzipan. At a stretch, I could say the dark chocolate has woodsy and praline notes, but that really would be stretching. In truth, this is a straightforward dark chocolate treat that, as long as you like marzipan, is very easy to eat and enjoy.

Even after you’ve been secretly crying on the streetcar like a dang melodramatic fool.

News Update: Concussion Fun, Work Joy, and Sneak Peeks

Posted on February 21, 2013 by Hannah

Sneak peek #1!

Thank you all for your lovely (and horrified) comments following my post about The Great Big Valentine’s Day Concussion of 2013.

On the one hand, I’m doing better.

On the other hand, I severely underestimated how long it takes to fully recover from a concussion.

Particularly when you add the fact that, four days after the first fall, faint, and memory lapse, I kind of maybe slightly let’s-not-dwell-on-this-for-too-long-eh? fell down part of the stairs again and, um, kind of maybe let’s-not-dwell-on-this-for-too-long-eh? fainted again. But this time, the fainting was purely the result of my absolute terror and frustration at myself, and one of my housemates was there to catch me so that I didn’t smack my head again.

It’s quite funny, really, if you think about it.

Sneak peek #2!

All is well, but I do need to keep making myself take it easy. Except for, you know, going to work, because I love it there and wild concussion horses couldn’t keep me away.

If you’d like to see a bit of what I’ve been up to at work this past week (when I haven’t been resting wrapped up in blankets like a sad baby llama on the couch, that is), then feel free to take a gander at the following:

9 creative indoor forts - Words cannot express the glee I felt while creating and writing this gallery of nine different indoor forts. Best. Job. Ever.

9 gluten-free (but not taste-free) desserts - A whole gallery of gluten-free (and also nut-free, dairy-free, and vegan) desserts from this very blog! The joy! The joy!

Will we ever stop needing our parents to tell us everything’s OK? – My very first piece for the Today’s Parent On Our Minds blog. Best. Job. Ever. Still.

Sneak peak #3!

Until next time, magical ones!

Tumbledown Dora, or Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway

Posted on February 15, 2013 by Hannah

I’ve always found it difficult to stand up tall and say “Hey! Hey world! I’m happy!” because to do so feels like daring the universe to immediately send me crashing to the ground.

I say this for two reasons.

1. You now know that publishing these proclamations of exhilaration was a triumph for me. For once, I felt strong enough to say that At This Moment I Am Happy, not “back then, things were good” or “I hope things will be great later”. I knew I was daring the universe to send me spiraling and crashing, but I did it anyway.

2. The universe did indeed send me spiraling and crashing, just as I’ve always feared. The surprise factor, though, was that the crashing was literal.

On Valentine’s Day morning, I had just poured boiling water over the coffee grounds in my French Press when I decided to run upstairs to get a band-aid for my foot. (Hah!)

On the way back down, band-aid in hand, my thick socks slipped on the seventh wooden step and thump thump thump thump thump thump thump thump. With smooth slippery clothes on every part of my body and no handrail to grab to slow my descent, I recall flashes of dread and fear as my back, head, and elbow hit hard edges and I slid and crashed down onto the hallway tiles at the bottom of the stairs.

I lay still, aching, willing myself to be fine. I tried to move and then stopped. No. Not yet. Not yet. Everything felt paused.

The timer in the kitchen beeped, signaling the end of the coffee brewing time. I remember thinking: Need to push the French Press down. Need to stop the coffee brewing.

The next thing I remember is opening my eyes on the floor of the kitchen with everything spinning, a cacophony of nonsensical thoughts swirling in my mind, all underpinned by a sense of urgency. Science class in high school. Puppy. Trim the agapanthus. Mum and Dad. Need to be somewhere. Have to do something. Where am I? Room is different. Snow? Snow. Why is there snow? Why am I in Canada? This doesn’t look right. I have to be somewhere. I’m scared. I’m scared. This isn’t right.

I pulled myself into a standing position, and with a jolt knew again that I lived in Toronto and was due at my internship in an hour. Somehow, I walked to the couch in the living room and crawled amongst the cushions, listening to the steady tune ringing in my ears. Bells. Slowly, they faded. Hurting. Have to call Mum and Dad. Have to tell them I fell. That I’m okay. Get to the computer. I’m slared. No. Snared? No. Word. Scared.

As I tottered towards the laptop on the dining table, I caught a glimpse of the kitchen behind it and noticed that the freezer door was wide open, and postcards and fridge magnets were scattered all over the floor.

That’s not right, I thought to myself. What happened over there? Let’s look. Close the door. Close the frozen. Get the magnets – oops no! Don’t get the magnets! No bendybendy right now. Hurting.

Postcards and magnets can stay on the floor. Shinyshiny floor.

After all, they look so pretty there.

Let this be a lesson to you all: never run down shiny wooden stairs in thick socks after telling the universe that you are exceedingly happy with the way each day of your life is progressing. If you do, you might end up with a host of iridescent bruises, a back that looks like a three-clawed creature swiped at it, and a concussion serious enough that your physiotherapist housemate stares at you in disbelief when she finds out you went to work anyway (in my defense, I didn’t want to be alone and later got a taxi home as soon as I started shaking), and then orders you to Total Bedrest for the next few days.

However, never stop shouting from the rooftops that you are happy. Because you deserve to be, and the world deserves to know.

Imaginary heel click,
Hannah

An Ode to Black Futzu and Sweet Dumpling Squash

Posted on December 5, 2012 by Hannah

December 4^th 2012 was not the kindest of days.

I woke up unsettled from a dream of fragmented sadness, then found myself tangled in technological terror as my blog floundered around me and my host’s support team responded to my cries for help in Computer Language that whooshed right over my head like so much icing sugar placed in front of a fan.

However, no day is allowed to end without at least a few moments of shimmering glory. Moments such as reading emails from Lisa that I’ll treasure always, or walking for an hour through dustings of rain in the darkening evening to meet wonderful potential (hopefully, hopefully, fingers crossed!) housemates in one of my favourite areas of Toronto.

It also helps to simply focus on the gloriousness that is sweet nutty creamy heavenly roasted winter squash drizzled with incredible Canadian nut butter.