nostalgic

My female owner says that she has been skiving for a good part of this year. After pia-ing for the whole of last year, she is taking things easier this time round. And for her, she finds it difficult (or unnecessary?) to work as hard as she did previously.

So as I was saying, my female owner has been skiving. She spent a good part of Sunday night (recall that she was supposed to be doing research) looking at photos on Facebook. Thanks to Facebook, she found out that her previous church held a fundraising funfair on Saturday. Photos, heaps of them, taken by different individuals, flooded her FB.

She saw many of her “old friends”. People whom she grew up with, people whom she knew since she was in Sunday School, or in her teenage years. Couples who started out as friends but are now married to each other. Her ex-girls to whom she committed her time and energy, when once upon a time, she was not commitment-phobic. My female owner also saw new faces of the next few generations after her ex-girls. Though many were unknown faces, she saw in them, the same zest and passion she had when she was their age.

Nostalgic.

She also saw how her peers have aged. Many have ballooned, and some have auntified. Those images hit her hard as she wondered if people also had the same reaction when they see her photos “oh my god! She was once so skinny. Now she is so fat and auntie!”

Well, time to do something about it then!

suppressed

My female owner had an unexpected MSN chat a few nights ago with a fellow animal lover who had been a tremendous source of help when she was down and out because of, humph, me!

Anyway, talking to him, my female owner realised that she had suppressed so many unhappy memories and experiences of that period, to the point that she couldn’t remember the people who were in her team during the deployment, the kind of fun (or anguish) they had as a team, the specific episodes that “made her face turn black”, the stupid decisions that she had to implement etc.

She only remembered global things – that I fell sick (and that she had so many friends who came round to support her), that she was activated at night and left pretty much in the lurch to kick in crisis intervention for a distraught family and groups of colleagues, that she fell out with her bosses over differences in ethical views, that the period was the last straw that broke her back and caused her to say no to her organisation.