Babcias don’t like me.

The turtle is like the neck part of the turtleneck. Or a very warm necklace.

Emma and I were walking home from the village shop when a babcia – a grandmother – stopped us, stared at Emma as if she were the strangest thing since sliced bread, and peppered her with questions, completely ignoring me all the while. Emma had her turtle on, over her mouth and nose, and the babcia asked, “Are you Polish?” Emma doesn’t speak or understand a whole lot of Polish, so I interrupted, and said, “No, she’s American.” The babcia looked impatiently at me and then back to Emma, and asked “Isn’t there winter where you come from?” Emma was stuttering helplessly, so I said, “Well, she has bad lungs.” That’s when the babcia looked at me contemptuously and said, “Stop explaining; I’m not talking to you.” She slapped Emma’s ass as she walked away, muttering.

Cats and snow don’t like me.

The snow’s melted away, for the moment, and with it my angry blues. Apparently I don’t take well to snow, or winter, or cats in snow during winter. There are four cats here and I hated all of them for the two weeks it was snowing. Getting dark at three in the afternoon I can handle; being trapped in a village in the woods with the same people all day, every day, I cannot. So I was mean to the cats, and maybe to the people. Now that I’m not deprrressed anymore, I’m sorry for having been mean to the cats.

Straight girls don’t like me.

I got dumped by my straight girlfriend three days ago, I think on account of my having been mean to people (she said something about sharp words and sharp jokes), and consequently I’m spending my Christmas holiday alone. I suspect, in all honesty, I would have preferred this anyway, to being dragged around everywhere, living by her schedule, ogled at by her family, and force fed by her grandparents. And I never liked the eating Jesus part of Christmas, either.

Before Christmas dinner, everyone talks to every other person individually, cheek kissing (I violently dislike cheek kissing) and giving and receiving Christmas greetings and wishes. Then you break off a piece of wax Jesus, hand it to your partner, and she or he eats it. Then vice versa. Jesus, my friends, does not taste good. In wax form or any other.

Getting dumped by a straight girl, while hardly waxy...more like socked in the stomach-ey, also does not taste good. I’m glad, though, that I’m past the wan, liver-y green stage of sadness that I spent curled up in fetus position, shivering in the cold. I am no longer debating whether or not I should make the banana chocolate walnut cookies with or without raisins. She hates raisins. Today I’m angry. I’m definitely throwing in the raisins.

Gay boys...well, they like me plenty but they’re useless when overseas.

My gay boyfriend has not dumped me, but he also has not returned my email requesting a current address. Tim is the best gay boyfriend a person could ever ask for except for the keeping in touch thing. We see each other every day when we live in the same city, and talk to each other not at all when we’re apart. The problem is, of course, I don’t know when I’ll be in the States again, let alone when I’ll be wherever he is. I made him a Christmas card with my own bare hands, and I can’t even send it to him.

I started drawing all of a sudden this autumn, which surprised me because I haven’t really done much of it before, and to some extent I am pretty alright at it. It’s starting to feel like I am a jack of all trades and a master of none – there’s a whole bunch of crap that I can do, and if I were motivated, to perfect until I might be considered somewhat talented, but I never stick around that long. I’m ok with that, I think. Travelers don’t often stick around for long. But then again, maybe traveling is just one more of those things that won’t stick.

My Christmas cards are sea-life themed. Tim might eventually get a giant squid in the mail.

The nineties warms my legs. Which means the nineties probably likes me a lot.

This week I brought back the nineties by wearing my plaid pajamas under my trousers. The plaid peeks out at top and bottom. It reminds me, fondly, of Clueless. And the nineties. At first it wasn’t really protecting against the cold, but the more days I wear the trousers concoction, the more leg warming it gets. Ah, the nineties. It warms my legs, and not in the terribly destructive Al Gore power point presentation global warming sort of way.

Turkeys definitely like me.

Thanksgiving was only two weeks ago but it feels like years. Back then, I had a straight girlfriend. Today I have a small tear in the voracious black hole where my heart should be. (I dunno why, it must be me, but my students like to say that I have no heart, only some sort of black hole, ha...ha...) We had a vegan Thanksgiving. (I cannot emphasize how difficult it is to be vegan in Poland.) Natalie said, “No meat?!” But there were turkeys.