::triple-layer truffle::

It's beem a while. I'm pen-weary. Writing is so final sometimes - or is it just my own fatalism kicking in more than it's necessary? I've always had the same dilemma with keeping a journal - I had always been unable to keep neutral entries, finding satisfaction only in the most intense of emtions. I had to be devastingly miserable, or unreasonably happy; days of paper-plain neutrality I found useless to keep track.

Today? I'm a blank. I woke up sick, my throat burning with the alien pain of an infection. My head felt brick-heavy, and my eyes were glazed. The doctor's verdict was very close to my self-dianogsis: swollen tonsils, a nasty infection, congested nasal passages. I was given five different types of drugs; nothing modern medicine can't cure, unless it's - oh look here's the cryptic gore spilling out of my soul - cancer.

Quiet office. Me, my cranberry muffin, and a grey, listless sky.

::truffles::

I needed to get away. Abandon all the emotional baggages, if only for a while. So when Stella suggested a girls' night in, I jumped to say yes.

***

Stella. Stylish, single - well, sort of - and always ready for a laugh. She lives with a roommate at the Bayshore, so staying in for her is a scenario right out of any Hollywood movie involving a single chick with cash to spare. We were to have her private manicurist to come and fix up our nails; it was a bit of treat, really, to have someone cutting dead skin off your digits while you sip a very good glass of white and snacked off Italian Christmas cookies. We gossiped and giggled and propped our feet up on her posh coffee table.

I had to hand it to Stella; while getting a full-fledged manicure and manicure she managed to whip up a little Italian feast. We had veal and sauteed vegetables for starters, and a very good pasta for the entre. For dessert, well, we ching-chinged to a bottle of dessert wine, which we promptly finished, in between sifting through her photographs and bitching about life.

It was a good escape, a brief chasm in which I leaped into with little ease, but much determination.

***

Birte drove us to Ikea today during lunch, and I happily carted back bits and pieces of useless knick-knacks to the office. My fav buys: a plant in a funky purple pot (with a very stylish water-spray to go with it, might I add), and a cutesy little table lamp for the office. The best part: I don't have to pay a single cent. It's all claimable under 'personal office stationary'. Yes. I'm cheap. No prize for guessing what we had for lunch - yes, the very famous Swedish meatballs. Escape. Ignorance. I wish.

::those really cheap ones with the wafer biscuit::

Happy New Year. Or so the saying goes. Greetings have become so routine they roll off your tongue with little meaning or comprehension. Merry Christmas, happy new year. Welcome to Hallmark Kingdom.

***

2004. I'll be twenty-two in a couple of weeks. Birthdays have lost their significance for me long ago; I spent a very quiet and private 21st, refusing offers of parties and barbeques and potlucks, choosing instead to spend it like any other birthday, with the proverbial chocolate etoil cake (have been my birthday tradition since I was ten) and my grandmother's signature dishes. With Sam I had another 'celebration' - though I hesitate to call it that - and with the girls I had another. I couldn't see the importance of a birthday celebration; morbid as I am I consider it another step to an inevitable death. So. I'll be 22, just as I had scribble in it my journal years and years before: I'll be 12, 15, 18, 21. I hope it brings with it added wisdom and the necessary strength, humour and good-nature to see me through until I'm 23. At least.

***

My aunt is coming back from America next week. Sad and final as it may sound, I know - and we all know - it's her last visit to come home to the family as she has left it 13 years before, to the complete family unit, to her father still sitting in his favourite sofa.

We all have to grow up. Peter Pan was wrong: there is no Never Land.