Installment Three

I had barely managed to comfort my daughter on the phone (stop worrying about me! No wait, someone should worry about me!) when she asked: "Did you start writing the blog yet?”

She has a quaint idea that I can become a menopausal Tina Fey. LOL. Did I get that right or is it just too pathetic?

"As a matter of fact, I've been fiddling with some words..."

"Blog postings don't need to be literate, Mom," she interrupted me. "Have you even read any blogs? It's all about creating a platform and getting people to follow you."

I had sighed at that bloody word again. Platform. Could I just jump off one and be done with it all?

And it's not as if I want to write anything else. I'm not even a writer! This blog is just a stop-gap measure to help me unload. That's what blogs seem to be anyway: writing feelings out loud.

Mind you, most bloggers should keep their feelings to themselves.

Too old geezer sounding? Okay, I will add myself to that list of people who should really, for everyone's sake, shut the fuck up. Please. (Hurray, a chance to sound politely Canadian!)

According to my new psychiatrist, I'm in transition. I can't start a new life without venting about the old one. That's what a transition year is all about says my medical oracle.

And here I thought it was just a get-out-of-jail-free card to do whatever the hell I want.

Unfortunately, I don't think the good head doctor has a clue about my life despite the books and articles I presented him with at our first meeting. How could he understand what it's like to not only leave a husband, but an entire way of living?

Here I now am, isolated, in a city with long and brutal winters which even the Russians consider a hardship posting for their diplomats.

So, back to what I started out to say. See? This menopause thing means never remembering anything, even when it's written down!

Allow me to introduce myself in a slightly more coherent way.

My name is Joelly Schuster. For almost three decades I lived overseas as an expatriate wife. We moved every three years for my husband's job in the oil industry.

The constant international relocations came to me naturally, though.

I grew up moving around the world. My late father represented Canada abroad before he and my mother were tragically killed in a car accident when I was attending high school, here, in Ottawa. I lived in five countries before I even got that far. I was actually born in Manila because my father was posted there at the time.

When my marriage was recently torn apart by a young gold-digger, I took the decision to come 'home' wherever the hell that's supposed to be in the world. Since I went to high school here, I chose Ottawa.

I'm learning very quickly why expats are positively phobic about the idea of repatriation. And most of my friends have done it with money!

They should try it broke and broken.