Lessons of Self, Travel and Life.

The things a week trip to Toronto taught me, in no particular order.

Lesson 1: You are very very small, in the grand scale of things. 

Lesson 2: Pack light.

Lesson 3: In order to lose your mother, go to airport souvenir shops. 

Lesson 4: How to smuggle things over the US/Canada border. 

Lesson 5: Pigeons are pedestrians too. 

Lesson 6: Hobos in Edmonton do not keep dogs, or have signs that say "So sexy it hurts." 

Lesson 7: Almond Oil leaks... put it in a different container.

Lesson 8: Art galleries are best enjoyed alone. Museums are better done in company.

Lesson 9: Dry shampoo is a very useful invention. 

Lesson 10: Maps are the most useful things, ever.

Lesson 11: Though the hotel air conditioning vents sound like jet engines at 3 in the morning, you are not in a plane experiencing turbulence, no matter what your sleep deprived body is telling you. 

Lesson 12: My Mother snores. 

Lesson 13: The snoring does stop, once REM sets in. (Thankfully.) 

Lesson 14: My Mother will not believe me when I tell her she snores. 

Lesson 15: A trip for bubblewrap can turn into a fiasco as two Dollaramas are out of it, as you walk up to Staples, a power outage hits, then the Wal-Mart gets hit by lightening and the cash resisters are out... so you just go to the post office a few blocks away from home in the end. 

Lesson 16: Plane takeoff makes me want to vomit. Do not eat directly beforehand.

Lesson 17: Not eating breakfast food in the morning gives me morning sickness. God did not forget to send me an angel. 

Lesson 18: Artists, writers, etc are perhaps the most divided and restless souls on the planet as they leave behind so much of themselves. And Voldemort though he had it set with his Horcruxes... He never met Degas.

Lesson 19: Never let inexperience stop you from doing something spontaneous.

Lesson 20: When feeling homesick, find some Ukrainians, preferably with some seniority in tow. 

Lesson 21: There will always be someone dressed weirder than you.

Lesson 22: Being 30,000+ feet in the air makes me want to skydive. 

Lesson 23: One must decide one's age on a daily basis.

Lesson 24: Pre-boarding is not a meditational practice to prepare oneself for getting on the plane, though it should be.