january 7, 2001. The sea squirt, also known as dead men's fingers, is a small sluglike sea creature...once it has found an appropriate rock to set up home on, it has no further use for its brain, and digests it. - the globe & mail, from november 24, 2000. My weekend cabin fever has graduated to full-scale funk, and will probably continue until we schedule another date to return to my beloved Toronto. No matter how irrational it is, I can't help wanting to go home. Who cares about teacher's ed, I've already done the hard stuff. Emotionally I'd like to go home & start teaching in Ontario...never mind that Ontario is a very bad place for teachers right now. The id doesn't care about minutia like provincial government - it just wants to go back to the land of joy. The idea of school doesn't thrill me either. I'm pretty apprehensive; I don't know if I can handle another 10 weeks of social isolation like the last. At least in the schools I didn't have to worry about the social pecking order - what I didn't realize going in was that a teacher transcends all that crap. Your only social equals are other teachers, and I was too busy to notice them most of the time. Blah. I'm just working myself into a state with no end in sight. Today wasn't a great day, but I can state with assurance that it was mostly my own fault. A significant part of my cabin fever is that the Boy is getting on my nerves in a serious way. I'd say that we were getting on each other's nerves, but that wouldn't be accurate: he's been puttering around happily in his natural state of Boy-ness while I've been fidgeting and muttering and yearning for a change of scene. It takes quite a bit of effort on my part to make a dent in his happy disposition, but I'm quite happy to make an asshole of myself in a bad cause. So I've been doing the passive-angry thing, making myself more and more miserable as the day wanes. I am the product of such an advanced civilization that I've never harvested or prepared my own meat; yet I waste hours of comfort being nasty to myself & my beloved. One wonders at the point. I think I'm going to bed now. There's really no point in prolonging this day.