Ran into friend yesterday, L*****, known her almost 40 years, an early girlfriend from Edmonton. I'm due to have dinner with her that evening, but here she is grabbing weed...
She's in tears. Moving back to Saskatchewan to look after her ailing parents, after 15 years in Nelson she just can't make it work. She has a great place, 3 bedroom, 2 bath, high ceilings, 2 floors, reasonable rent ... an enviable situation, only...
She hasn't worked for a year. And in the year she's been putting out resumes, setting the bar high, looking for those 100K+ jobs, and finally she realized she wasn't getting them, it wasn't going to happen, and so she bit the bullet, swallowed her pride, and decided to return.
The town, in the middle of Saskatchewan, nowhere really, hours to Saskatoon, more hours to Edmonton, I've been through, know the name although I can't picture it, probably a gas pump, general store, and buggerdly fuck else...
Seas of waving grass...
Over dinner I try and cheer her up. Brainstorm business ideas, like a mini-golf, or "The World's Biggest..." although what hasn't been done yet. I reassure her the dating scene out there is fabulous, (although, clearly, I'm no expert on this but that's a different post), the name of the town rings a bell and I Google - sure enough, one of the boundaries of a famous meteor fall, probably a few others that aren't recorded, plus in the coulee's you could find dinosaurs and every farmer I've ever met out there had a whoop-ass collection of arrowheads and if she wouldn't mind checking the thrift shops for watches...
She's favouring beekeeping.
I'm pretty good at finding the silver lining in things but I gotta admit, I'd be devastated as well...
I feel her pain.