I realized today how much I miss everyone in the US. And by everyone, I mostly mean all of you people reading this. I talk to my family just about every week, but it was you guys who I actually spent every minute of the last four years with, and I miss you all terribly!
This was brought home today by the fact that Cal has a friend over and they're playing video games, which is all well and good, but it makes me want to go out and conquer some stuff. With you guys. Frolicking through the fields and ducking when we see a car, hopping over the creek and getting a flip-flop full of mud (or finding a jaw!), running around the soccer field in the rain--it's the kind of stuff you need to do with a really good friend.
It's not that there aren't opportunities to make friends here. Okay, actually, no, it is. It is that. How do real-life adult people make new friends if they don't have school to do it for them? I have come up with the following ways:
1) At a bar. This seems to be a logical explanation for where people meet, especially at our age. But it just seems like the kind of people I'm going to want to hang out with I'm not GOING to find at a bar. Am I right? I mean, there are just so many creepy people who end up in bars. It's the kind of place I'd want to go WITH a giant group of friends. How could you tell the difference between the creepers and the people who are being friendly?
2) Your apartment neighbors. A la Friends. But we live in a house. And my housemates are very nice, but the connection I had with you guys simply isn't there. And they're not so into conquering.
3) Play Dates. I mean, I am going to play group as a nanny, which is actually pretty fun. The adults don't get to interact all that much, but the few people I met were very nice. They were just all roughly a decade older than I am. Which isn't horrible, but you know, we probably wouldn't be hanging out or anything. What I need is another child with a nanny to join up. I bet another nanny and I could bond. Maybe I'll scour a park next time we go, see if there are any there...
4) NaNo meet-ups. I would definitely meet some people there who I would like, I'm sure. Cal actually suggested this when I brought up how much I missed hanging out with people. Brisbane actually does have a very lively NaNo population. I'm on their FB page. I'm kind of waiting for a meet-up day when Cal and I can both go. I'm so nervous about it!
Actually, I did get an e-mail from another American who's also over here, living with her husband. I'm not sure how old she is or really what she's like. She found me on Gumtree and we've just e-mailed back and forth a couple of times. I'd like to meet her since I've never met someone who did the long distance thing US-Australia before!
So I guess there are opportunities. But how in the WORLD do I find someone willing to be as weird as all of you? There is absolutely NO replacement. Not that I'm trying to find one. But I just feel like no one even going to come close! Anyone else having this problem?
Anyway, off that topic: a few other notes. Firstly, I do have some video I need to put up but I haven't gotten around to actually making a video to go with the clips, so it may be a project for the weekend. It was going to be a project for this past weekend, but totally didn't happen.
Secondly, I wrote almost six handwritten pages today during nap time! It was wonderful! I have other handwritten pages I'll be typing up after this. Will edit with my word count. It's under where it should be (way under!) but I've changed my goal from 50,000 to "write every day" which is a much higher goal than my not-writing that I was doing before. So, yeah. Hopefully I get to at least 25,000--pretty sure that's possible--but if not, well, at least I'll have written something every day.
((Update: My total is now 3938, a bit under half today's goal. Not too bad. I actually wrote just over 1100 words during nap time today. I was on a roll, so I don't expect that every day--writing by hand is NOT my forte--but still!))
OH BAI. (And Long Live.)
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