I am glad I didn't start this off with a countdown. I mean, I kept a list of the days and numbers to tick off (like in prison, as my dad pointed out, although it should have been scratched into a wall rather than written out on hotel paper), but it was a list TO 14, not downwards. A count up, rather than down, to steal a phrase that was intended to lessen exam anxiety for kids. But now it's so very close to the end, and I am making necessary plans for how I am leaving and what I need to do afterwards, that countdown feeling is inching its way into my brain. Simultaneously excited and also apprehensive, I know that I should be busying myself with logistical details, but there is still so much actual time and I am finding it harder and harder to convince myself not to order massive banquets to the hotel room (yolo, right?) and lay around glorying in this enforced 5-star hotel stay.
It is possible I have slightly overdone the fitness workouts. My joints are mildly unhappy with me, and it doesn't help, I suppose, that they don't have the regular but incremental lubrication of incidental walking around to get to things. Its absolute stillness (how much movement does needlework take?) and then extreme arms-waving, body-rolling, high-kicking, squat-repping, high-intensity action for an hour and a half. I may be getting too old for this...
The excitement of planning things and treating myself to chimney cake last night has given way to the realisation this morning that there are still two, maybe three, more days of this soft-humming existence. I miss the sound of birdcall (and Aussie bird call in particular - none of that super sweet and vaguely polite British stuff), and the door slamming and engine revving of the suburbs. It's not silent here, and I can't decide if that would be better or worse. There is a neverending mechanical hum of machinery emanating from the city, the whoosh of occasional planes or trucks, and the sounds of the hotel - extractor fans, aircon, vacuums. But it all sounds distant and unrelated to me. There's nothing I can do to affect any of those noises. I can't even get away from them. Uh-oh, is this my lady in the wallpaper moment?
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