fancy seeing you here

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Well, it's been a while.

We can do that awkward half-hug where we both tilt to the same side, let go of a shy giggle, readjust, tap out light pats on the back and abruptedly step back to a safer distance.

Or I can strut up with a snappy one-liner to make us forget all the negative space and skip that self-awareness all together ... take us to a place that usually requires some warm-up laps of small talk, gossip and maybe a cocktail.

Let's play catch(up).

I'm loving my job; loving the lifestyle -- it's actually kind of fun not being stingy and poor. I've got a phat pad, if you will, and pretty things. I can afford to shop organic and play poker. I get pedicures and have my laundry washed and ironed every Sunday. When I walk into the shop around the corner, there's a newspaper -- folded to the crossword page -- a pen, and a pot of hilltribe green tea waiting for me. I can go on vacation from my vacation and hide out in a bamboo hut, swim laps in a pool bordering rice paddies and mountains, order as many banana lassies as my little sweaty heart desires.

Not that it doesn't feel as routine as life on the other side of the world -- and it often does -- I still catch myself and sneak a rough sketch of a smile and think "Cool. Thailand."

Of course I miss bare branches and throwing snow balls at my dog. And I miss wearing scarves and socks. Annnd I miss movie theaters. And driving. And 80s nights. And cooking. And people who know my dirty secrets. People who get why I'm so mean to boys. People who appreciate the only joke I know. Ya know, the one about the dead monkeys.

So it goes.

I caught the end of a documentary on the Australian Network last night and after shredding a last hope I've held on to fiercely ever since that paper I wrote about monogamous love in penguins when I was 17 (there's actually a penguin-equivalent of men monopolizing resources and bribing married penguin ladies into motels ... can you believe it; my last hope in lasting love is harboring a prostitution ring), they concluded with the one surefire specimen of lifelong committment. Ya know where they found it? In the gut of a fish.

Parasitic flatworms in the guts of fresh water fish have to actually morph into one to reproduce and once they are -- quite literally -- attatched at the hip, they're stuck for life. So that's the answer. Surgical attatchment. Location, location, location.

So give a shout, will you. I'm a wandering flatworm, with well-manicured toes, in need of hellos.

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