Enough seriousness. Re: the job I want, they called today and asked me to come down and fill out a few forms. This turned out to be for security clearance, and the first one is probably ten pages long. I have been trying for three hours to fill it out. You have to list all possible family members, including inlaws, and all their biographical data. So far I've had to call my mother-in-law (she has FOUR middle names and I didn't remember all of them, nor did I know where she was born) my brother in Calgary (left a message, don't know his new address) and email my other brother in Australia (what exactly do you do?). My parents are away for their anniversary, so I'll have to call them tomorrow. I know we arrived in Canada in 1975, but I don't remember the exact date, and it's needed. Heck, I was seven years old. I've also been racking my brains trying to remember old addresses going back ten years. I went upstairs to ask Kirsten if she recalled the name of the road we lived on in Lake Louise when she was six, and she said, "All I remember is that the house was brown. You should just put that."

But it looks like I've got the job, they asked me when I could start and I said, "I'm ready whenever you are." Although I've enjoyed my stint at the health centre, there are, as I mentioned before, a lot of politics operating, and while I'm immune because I'm just casual, I feel as if I'll get drawn in if I work there too long. At this point, when I'm asked for opinions on different staff members, I just say, "Don't ask me, I don't really work here..."

"Worry is usually about the future and most people are extremely good at worrying and often fail to stop and think how useless and absurd it is. Worrying about the future is meaningless. The person who's worrying is not the person who is going to experience the future. There will be change, not just having grown older and hopefully a bit wiser, but a totally different set of circumstances with different thoughts and different feelings. Quite useless to worry about the future... That doesn't mean one can't plan. Planning and worrying are not the same thing. Planning turns into worrying when one starts thinking whether the plan is going to materialize. Planning is fine, and then dropping the plan until one can actually put it into action, without being concerned with the future results." -- Ayya Khema, Being Nobody, Going Nowhere

"Over the years, I've noticed that sometimes the Dalai Lama is asked to boil his philosophy down to a single fundamental principle. To this difficult question, he often replies, 'If you can, serve others. If not, at least refrain from harming them.'" -- Howard Cutler and the Dalai Lama, The Art of Happiness at Work

"When two people talk, they don't just fall into physical and aural harmony. They also engage in what is called motor mimicry. If you show people pictures of a smiling face or a frowning face, they'll smile or frown back, although perhaps only in muscular changes so fleeting that they can only be captured with electronic sensors. If I hit my thumb with a hammer, most people watching will grimace: they'll mimic my emotional state. This is what is meant, in the technical sense, by empathy. we imitate each other's emotions as a way of expressing support and caring and, even more basically, as a way of communicating with each other... Emotion is contagious. In a way, this is perfectly intuitive. All of us have had our spirits picked up by being around somebody in a good mood. If you think about this closely, though, it's quite a radical notion. We normally think of the expressions on our face as the reflection of an inner state. I feel happy, so I smile. I feel sad, so I frown. Emotion goes inside-out. Emotional contagion, though, suggests that the opposite is also true. If I can make you smile, I can make you happy. If I can make you frown, I can make you sad. Emotion, in this sense, goes inside out." -- Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point

The first quote, the Ayya Khema, is one I return to when I start worrying too much about what's going to happen... Miguel is concerned about what will happen with my employment (as it's all over the map at the moment) but I keep telling him I'll deal with it when I have to.

The second quote has been rattling around in my head since I read it a few weeks ago. Is it enough to serve? It's all I'm really doing at the moment.

The third quote made me think that it's possible that we're wasting our time trying to convince our program participants that "you have to take responsibility for your own feelings, no-one can make you feel anything you don't want to". The men especially always argue this point, and I know that on some levels I agree with them. Someone who knows you well, who knows all the right things to say, can piss you off whenever their little heart desires....

I miss the sun. I miss rain, water shushing in the ditches, running to the sea.

I miss trees. The sound of wind cracking branches, leaves bursting mint-green in spring.

I chafe against the winter clothing, that narrows my view to a fur tunnel and holds my head forward when I want to look around at the sky.

I want to nap in the afternoons, when the sky is black at three, like a bird with its head under a downy wing.

And yet, the sky is limitless and streaked with aurora borealis, twisting and writhing overhead, shaken ribbons of light.

And then, the silence feeds me and envelops me, broken only by children playing hockey in the street, ravens barking on telephone poles and dogs singing in the evening.

Time moves sluggishly, becomes meaningless. My dreams are long and convoluted, like childhood dreams and just as colourful. I thought I had stopped dreaming. I thought nothing more would ever happen to me, and yet it does. I live in the Arctic.

Last year, while I was trying to cook Christmas dinner, Rachel was driving a remote controlled Bratz car around my feet. This year, my in-laws very kindly sent EACH of the children a tiny remote controlled car, and so I had three little cars buzzing round in the kitchen. Which isn't a big space at the best of times. But I only stepped on one, dinner got made and was eaten, we all wore our paper hats from the crackers and now we have enough leftover turkey to feed us for a few days. Kirsten emerged at nine this morning saying, "I think I'll have turkey for breakfast".

Miguel got us a satellite radio, which we've been trying to persuade to pick up some signals. No luck yet. I think we'll need a more powerful antenna. The radio here is limited to two CBC stations, one from here and one from Iqaluit. The station here plays requests, and they are eclectic to say the least. I actually heard the Numa Numa song a couple of weeks ago, followed by King of the Road. The one from Iqaluit is mostly Inuktitut talk shows. My vocabulary is not developed to the point where I could get anything out of the programming. I know a few words in Innuinaqtun, the local dialect: kinmik is dog, nutakat is children, an office is lunit, koana is thank-you, qallunaat is what I am (white folk), ilihakvik is school, tuktu is caribou, nattiq is seal, umingmak is muskox, kamik is boots, hivajaut is telephone... so unless the conversation is about putting your boots on and telephoning the school to tell them that your children are bringing muskox to the office, I'm pretty much lost... If someone calls the health centre when I'm answering the phone and launches into Innuinaqtun, I say "tatjaygu" which is phonetically what I've been told is "please hold" and I pass them to one of the staff members who understands the language. For all I know, I could be telling them to "shut the f*** up", but I'm hoping not. My son knows a lot of body part names (typical for 12 year old boys) and it doesn't sound like any of them...

Books this week:

The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell. This is a book I've been reading about in the newspapers for a long time, fits into my fascination with chaos theory, and I'm reading it slowly with pauses for thought.

A Million Little Pieces, by James Frey. First thing I did when this came in the mail was pick off the "Oprah's Book Club" sticker. I don't care what Oprah thinks about it, it's a good book anyway, and I got it because my brother recommended it.

The Idea of Perfection, by Kate Grenville. I'd never heard of her, but the book jacket had the typeface I associate with books published in England. Turns out she's Australian, and it was a very thoughtful book. It features a very well-rendered dog as almost a main character; it adopts the heroine and follows her around. I always like books that can do dogs properly.

Well, I made it through another week. And all the presents are wrapped, the cookies are baked, Mr. Turkey is thawing nicely in the fridge, having been sitting in the freezer since the middle of November as we weren't sure of the reliability of the food mail... We even got squash and yams from foodmail, for casserole, and I have all the ingredients for trifle except the sponge cake, and I'm off in search of that shortly.

Last night we made our usual garish Christmas cookies; blue snowmen, green stars, yellow and red Santas, etc. Molasses cookies have been made, and we have nuts and chocolate. My dad sent us Christmas crackers, as he felt we wouldn't be able to find good ones up here and he was right. We're all set.

We only got invited to two parties, one at work and one at a friend's house, we skipped the work one because of an emergency at the health center and we skipped the friend's one because we were just too tired. The Cubs Christmas party was very low-key and fun, and no-one asked me to bake for a school party. All of the things that I associate with Christmas in the city; crowded malls with Christmas hype, 'open houses' and the elaborate parties of various children's and adult's social groups, Christmas muzak everywhere, people giving us poinsettias and stuff from Starbucks, being asked to swap cookies, my parents showing up on Christmas Day with the contents of a decent-sized liquor store, all of that is non-existent here. Which has meant that I can concentrate on doing only the things that my family wants. And I'm really enjoying it. I have none of the dread that I usually feel at this time of year. We were talking about it this morning, and it's a bit like going back twenty or thirty years in time, to how I remember Christmas when I was a kid. Tomorrow we can have our dinner, and then play poker or StockTicker all evening.

Merry Christmas everyone!

One of my friends from prison called yesterday. He had been out on a pass to attend his mother's funeral. He's in the process of being recommended for parole just after Christmas, after 25 years.

About halfway down this page is a link to a song my friend Carley has recorded. I like it. Unfortunately there's no picture...

This week I am trying to tie up loose ends. Got my Nunavut driver's license, as my BC one expired on my birthday. This was a fun process, the man doing it printed it up first with a misspelling in my name. I also called the bank to explain why my account was overdrawn: when I left Nanaimo there was no money in it, and they keep taking off service fees but I can't deposit any money as there's only a different bank's machine up here. They were very understanding, and suggested some ways I could remedy this situation. Today I'm going to write some letters and get some tax documents ready to send out. Although I don't have nearly the number of responsibilities up here, no volunteer stuff, no university courses, I seem to have almost lost the ability to get things done... In the evenings, if I don't have to go anywhere, I just read or surf, and go to bed early. We were in bed last night by 9:30, and as we were lying there Miguel said to me, "Didn't we used to stay up on Saturday nights and watch Saturday Night Live until 1:30 in the morning..." However, we were both awake before seven this morning, drinking coffee and talking about things in general.

As I was walking to work the other day, people were buzzing by on snowmobiles, and it occurred to me that I've stopped thinking of that as strange. We went to the Christmas concert at school on Wednesday, and Miguel mentioned afterwards that it surprised him to see that Rachel was the only white kid in her class... Although, with her dark straight hair she doesn't look really out of place.

A movie we were told to watch, The Snow Walker, was on yesterday, so we watched it. If you get a chance, it's a good movie and it was filmed not far from here, so you can see not only what the terrain looks like, but the skills the Inuit have.

Books I'm currently reading:

Anger-Free, by W. Doyle Gentry. An interesting thing: "The intensity of a hangover after an evening of drinking may to a large extent reflect how angry the person was while drinking" (p. 132).

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time: A Novel, by Mark Haddon. There's a good review here

It Takes A Village and other lessons children teach us, by Hillary Rodham Clinton. This probably wouldn't have been my choice, but the librarian had put it on one side for me (before he got hauled off to jail for trying to strangle his son. or so I heard. I have yet to establish the truth of this)

I heard yesterday that I'm most likely wanted for the other job I mentioned last week... Good stuff.

I've been working for the last few days on a whole bunch of statistics for the Health Centre. A time-consuming study of maternal ages from 2001 to the present, and tabulating appointments made and kept over the last three months (on Mondays, interestingly enough, only half of the folks who make appointments actually show up). The maternal ages thing was complicated because: there's a database with birthdates of children. Ok, print that out. Then, on cards in the immunization files, I had to find each child's mother's name. Then, armed with mother's names, find their birthdates in a different database. Then figure out how old mom was when baby was born. I made cool tables. I guess the stats course earlier this year was useful for something.

Kids are off school now for Christmas break. Kirsten is dogsitting Kaylar, the dog next door. (we call the dog Teflon or Kevlar, and she's confused) Rachel is pigsitting her friend Liam's guinea pig, and Ian is ratsitting one of his teachers' degu. Apparently these are like large gerbils with tufty tails. In other words, everyone gets to go somewhere else for Christmas (Ontario) and we stay here and look after the animals. Still, kids are getting paid so they're happy, but Kaylar the wonder dog needs to be let out at 7am and Kirsten's not the biggest fan of that.

The internet has been... intermittent... all week, perhaps due to the temperature... I was standing on the porch on Friday morning getting ready to go to work and a truck pulled up. It was two of the folks who work at the health centre, and they yelled "get in!" and when I did the driver said to me, "It's -49 this morning, too cold to walk".

So anyway. I had a very different week, I did about four different jobs all over the hospital: filing charts and immunization cards; reception for the nursing station; assistant to the director (this was fun, I'm researching oxygen concentrators and other supplies); transcribing translated documents. Two women from the Arctic College had made handwritten translations of various forms into Innuinaqtun, and I had to make the Innu versions look like the English versions. Which is more difficult than it sounds, as the words are really long and full of Q's. At one point one of the translators was looking over my shoulder as I typed, and I typed "kanok" because that's what the word looked like, and she said "No, that's a 'U', we don't use 'O'" and I looked through all the other stuff I'd already typed and saw that yes, indeed, there were no 'O's. But it's really tedious to proofread it myself, because I don't know how to spell a single word. This is partly because rather than having articles and adjectives, each root word gets added onto (as if they weren't long enough to start with). Our town is called Iqaluktutiaq, and someone who lives here is called Iqaluktutiaqmi, and the whole population is Iqaluktiaqmiut, for instance... Some of the documents were a rabies advisory, someone's puppies have rabies and the health director wanted a flyer to put in people's mailboxes.

So it was a fun week, although I did miss Miguel, who was in Rankin Inlet all week. When I left work on Friday I went to the bank and the store, to get some supplies and a chocolate cake for dessert. I was cutting through the school field, and it occurred to me that I was alone in the Arctic with the children, and yet I'd coped fine all week. We had the Cubs Christmas party on Tuesday, and I ran the craft table, taught thirty little kids how to make God's Eyes. You know, the popsicle sticks with the wool artfully woven around to make a square around a cross. Everyone seems to have made them at some summer camp in the course of their lives.

My brother Roy and his new wife are going on their honeymoon to Peru shortly. I told Roy I wanted to come, but he laughed and said, "I can't see that really fitting the definition of a honeymoon: Oh, by the way, my sister's coming with us." Personally I think it's only fair, he was at the hospital when Kirsten, my first child, was born, helped me take her home in a taxi and everyone thought he was the father... Ok, so maybe that's a bit of a weak argument. I just wanna go to Peru.

Some cool words:

Schadenfreude: glee at another's misfortune
Vituperative: given to speaking abusively, berating, reviling
Hebetude: the quality or condition of being dull or lethargic

Leaving the house requires dressing for an Arctic expedition. Toque, scarf, snow-pants, parka, mittens, make sure there are no cracks between clothing. My toque is recalcitrant, and gets stuck somehow, so that when I walk my hood pushes the toque over my eyes. Which then means that my glasses fog up. If I stop to adjust things and take my mittens off, my hands start to turn numb within seconds. Add to this that it's dark and you can't see the dips in the snow, and you have a picture of me, the crazy white woman lurching around the streets with my hat over my eyes and my glasses frozen up. When I come inside, the dogs rush me, and I either can't see to fight them off, or, if I took off my glasses and put them in the front pocket of my parka, I'm worried Joeby will put his paw on them and break them. So I generally come in yelling, my hair frozen, trying to get my mittens off. (The ATV will no longer start and anyway the streets are too icy, so we're all on foot unless my kindly neighbours offer to drive us, as they did to Cubs the other night, luxury).

After my fantastic day last Friday, I figured it would be hard to go back to being second banana, and it was. I've been fighting the urge to tell my boss to take a long walk off a short pier, in not so nice language... Interestingly enough, one of the evaluations at the end of the workshop had the answer to the question "What would you like to see done differently in the workshop" that he would have liked to have heard more from me...

Anyway. There are no more workshops until the middle of January, so I'm off to work for the Government of Nunavut again, doing HR stuff on contract for a few weeks. Apparently I even get an office. Not someone else's this time. So that should be fun. I also followed another lead on a full-time job today, and had a promising response, but I'm not going to say anything else about it lest I jinx myself. Although I love the clients, I'm unsure as to the long-term viability of working there, and when my co-worker advised me to take any full-time employment that was offered to me elsewhere, earlier on this week, I decided to take his advice.

We had a graduation ceremony for our three-week program today, and it left me very drained. I'm looking forward to the weekend, to decompress and watch the Tragically Hip concert DVD that came in the mail this week from my in-laws for my birthday.

Books this week:

Primo Levi -- The Drowned and the Saved Heavy stuff. He survived Auschwitz.
Introduction to the Lotus Sutra
Anne Rice -- Blood and Gold For some reason I'm finding this slow to get into.
Howard Cutler and The Dalai Lama -- The Art of Happiness at Work I'm reading this bit by bit at bedtime, it's lovely.
Alice Munro -- Open Secrets
Michael Caine -- What's It All About This is a biography, and I don't know how good it will be later on, but his childhood in London and as a child evacuee is very funny.
William Fleeman -- Anger Management Workbook
This one's interesting, with some good stuff on anger as an addiction in itself.
Daniel Sonkin and Michael Durphy -- Learning to Live without Violence.
Stephan Pastis -- Sergeant Piggy's Lonely Hearts Club Comic Pearls Before Swine, Rachel's favourite.

Yesterday my co-worker was sick. He had been making fun of the rest of us who got sick, saying, "I never get sick, I'm too healthy." Cursed himself, I guess. But anyway, I arrived in the morning to find a note telling me what to do for the day, as he couldn't get out of bed. So I was in charge. I had a few moments of nervousness in the morning, these are mostly older men with really long rap sheets, and some of them are very resistant to the things we're trying to tell them. In the morning I went through some cognitive anger stuff -- along the lines of 'no-one can make you mad unless you allow them' but a couple of them weren't buying it. They truly believe that they are subject to external forces and the manipulations of women (who they cast as pretty cold-blooded) and they argued with me. It was fun.

I also debriefed with them a movie we watched on Thursday, the story of Tina Turner, her relationship with Ike was particularly stormy. I've felt, since we've been doing these workshops and showing the movie, that we should debrief it because it's pretty intense. Got my feeling validated, as the men shared a lot of emotion surrounding the video, in fact we talked about it for over an hour. Although I admire my co-worker's style in some ways, I personally like to let the participants get their own realizations, rather than trying to feed them 'program'. A couple of the guys were crying, when one man said he recognized himself in Ike Turner's abusive behaviour, and that's something we would have missed if we hadn't debriefed...

Needless to say, I was high as a kite by the end of the day, and when I went back to the centre to talk to the family violence coordinator about schedules for the shelter, one of the supervisors said to me "How are you" and I said, "I'm fantastic" and she laughed and asked me what I'd been smoking. Then she said to me, "You always seem so happy, do you like your work?". I told her I love it... then she proceeded to offer me more. Doing women's empowerment and self-esteem workshops on a continuing basis, for those who've taken the two week programs and need follow up. Which is funny, because it's something I've been thinking about, that we give them two intense weeks and then there's no more contact.

Anyway. Enough about work. I'm lazy this weekend. I was on call all week, had meetings after work almost every day, and so today I did very little. Well, other than clean house and watch The Witches of Eastwick. (Miguel's comment when he came home and found me on the couch was "Not that again..." It seems to get shown on tv about once a month, and I generally watch at least some of it. I've seen it so many times now I can come in at any point. It's not even so much the plot, it's just such a beautiful movie, lush. The tv guide channel teased me by saying The Last Remake of Beau Geste was on, too, but it wasn't. When I changed the channel it was a cooking show.

It is going to be completely dark here very soon. I seem to be wandering around in the dark, dusk, or twilight an awful lot. At certain times in the day, the sky and the land are exactly the same shade of dusty grey. At other times, there are long blue and pink shadows, and the smoke from the chimneys picks up a salmon colour from the low sun. I'm disoriented, when it's getting dark when I'm going back to work after lunch I feel as if I should be heading back to make supper instead...

This men's workshop is very intense... I'm coming home and needing to play my music really loudly, afterwards. At the moment I'm craving Santana, especially. Nice warm music. And the sun is disappearing, it rises about ten thirty and is setting again when I'm heading back to work after lunch at one. This afternoon as I was going down our street, the sun was dripping down the horizon like a giant russet teardrop. Something to do with the curvature of the earth.

Things move along... I'm on call again this week for the shelter. The phone rang, quite late, after I went to sleep last night, and I got up to answer it thinking, "gotta go out in the cold, where did I put the shelter keys", steeling myself for the emotions on the other end of the phone, but it was Kirsten's boyfriend, calling to apologize to her for something. She said, "I'm sorry he woke you up, Mum" but I was so happy that it wasn't a crisis situation that I just said, "Oh, no problem, at least I don't have to go anywhere" and I went back to my warm bed.

This morning we got a call from a little friend of Rachel's. She spoke to him briefly and then said, matter-of-factly, "He's coming over because his parents haven't come home and he's hungry." So he came, he and Rachel played video games for a while, we made KD, he wolfed it down and went back home to wait for his folks. Poor little sweetie.

The bake sale yesterday was fun. We had a table in the gym at the school, along with everyone else who had crafts or MLM or baking to sell. I made turtle cookies and date squares, like I used to make when I had the coffee shop, and we sold everything we had. I made tons, I've never gotten the hang of small batch baking again after the coffee shop, if I make cookies I make ten dozen, but it was good because only one other lady baked. I saw lots of people who've taken workshops over the last couple of months, and they introduced me to their spouses and babies.

This bookcrossing site looks like a lot of fun... (you were right, delia, it is my kind of thing) I used to live in an apartment building where people would leave books on a table downstairs, for others to pick up and read, and I would always look when I came home from work to see if there was anything interesting.

On the radio yesterday, there was a man talking about how he feels that writing in books is a good idea, marginal comments in pencil. Then what he does is give the book to someone else to read, and encourage them to write marginal notes and pass it on. So by the time he gets the book back, he has the thoughts of five or six other readers in the margins... I thought that sounded like a neat idea too, except that I'd want to have control over who got the books... no philistines...

Oof. Not long after I wrote the last entry in here on Saturday, I came down with the same flu Rachel had. A nasty one, I'll spare you the details, but although I managed to drag myself to work on Monday for the start of the men's workshop, I've been able to do little else. My stomach still hated me until this morning (and it's touchy at the best of times) and I was dog-tired. So, not much else got done around here. I'm very very lucky that Miguel was here this week and not away like last week, or else I think everyone would have been living on what they could cook for themselves, because I couldn't even look at food.

This workshop is a three-week intensive men's program. Hard core. Many of the participants have looming court dates and are trying to convince all involved that they are capable of change in their lives. They have so many emotional issues... In a very real way, this is a crossroads. Either they change and take responsibility for their actions, or their lives will be changed for them, through prison and all the associated losses. The question of whether the sexual offenders can be successfully treated hangs in the back of my mind. Depends on them, I guess. One of the things that I accept is that change is personal, people can only change themselves... A more cynical mind would say that they're only doing this now because they're scared, but I think it's a fact of humankind that we only change after we've had a shock. Hence the power of near-death experiences. Call these near-jail experiences, perhaps.

Just as a side note, it will be minus 48 with the wind chill tomorrow. It's minus 40 now, and my breath was freezing in my lungs on the way home tonight. At 4pm, in the pitch dark with the stars out. Wild. There are wolves around town, I woke up in the night to hear them howling out on the tundra, a sound that raises the hair on the back of your neck. We had a note home from school telling us not to let our kids play outside alone after dark. (Which is most of the time). The men in the workshop were complaining that they wanted to be out hunting the wolves and not sitting in with us...

Tomorrow night I'm baking for a bake sale to raise money for the shelter. The original plan was that we would get together at the centre and bake together, which I wasn't tremendously happy about (it being my birthday and all) but in the end there's only three of us and we decided to bake at home instead. So I'm going to make turtle cookies and molasses raisin cookies and date squares. Yum. I imagine I'll have plenty of help with the testing, here. I used to make the turtle cookies when I ran the coffee shop, and they sold really well. Faster than I could make them, mostly.

Miguel brought me back a box from Yellowknife. It contained a desk for me, which he put together while I was at the candle party, and set up in the cupboard under the stairs. So now I have a little corner to myself, with my books and my buddhas and my frogs. The postcard of Turner's Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus that I've had on my walls since university is up again, and I've got space for my papers and binders and daybook. Prior to this, due to the size of the house and the lack of furniture, I've been working either on the dining room table (I have to move everything when people want to eat) or in the armchair in the living room (tv is being watched and I have no workspace). I keep paper journals besides this on-line one, two at the moment: one for my day-to-day efforts to keep the world from overwhelming me, and the other for my ongoing project to find links between justice and mindfulness. It's silly how much pleasure I get from seeing my thoughts and stuff copied from books, in my handwriting, on the pages of my journals... I write a lot of letters, too, some of my friends don't have email for various reasons (imprisonment / paranoia / general poverty). I'm sitting here in my cupboard right now with my notebooks and letters beside me, I won't have to pack up when dinner's ready, and I've got a new book on the Holocaust and two crossword puzzles waiting courtesy of the Globe and Mails Miguel brought me back from his trip to the real world...

We're having a blizzard today. The wind is up, and (surprise surprise) it's cold. This is the view from our front steps. Not sure if you can see my neighbour's pile of caribou heads now, they're kind of covered in snow.

Miguel's back from Rankin Inlet, where he was working all week. He took this picture there.

Rachel's sick tonight. She and I are watching the Simpson's episode where Bart wins an elephant... I think she's got the flu everyone else's kids had, and since she sleeps on the top bunk she doesn't want to go to bed. Can't say I blame her, and Kirsten's not tremendously keen to have someone sleeping over top of her who might throw up.

I went to a candle party tonight. And won the door prize, twelve candles. I haven't shown them to Ian, because I think he bought me candles for my birthday. As I was leaving he said, in a very worried voice, "You're not going to buy any candles, are you Mum?" I told him you could never have enough candles. I actually ordered something, because it was so cool, a wooden lantern-type thing with sandalwood candles. And used Miguel's credit card... (seems to me that's what you're supposed to do, right?)

This week I'm working for the government, filling in for someone who's on leave from the health department... such a lot of different things I've done since I've been here, it's hard to believe it's only been just over two months. It's been very interesting, I'm working with a nice young man and we're trying to sort out a bunch of requisitions and orders for medical supplies, in a quiet little office. He makes the phone calls, which I like. It reminds me a lot of when I first started going into Miguel's other workplace, and trying to sort out their financials, same sort of working backwards with tons of unrelated papers. Tomorrow's my last day, though, as there's a men's program starting Monday. Although, they did say they might be able to use me for the better part of December, if there's no programs, which might be the case.

But anyway. I'm tired tonight. Gonna go to the library. The librarian is very kind to me, he lets me take out more than my allowed two books, and lets me borrow the uncatalogued donated books before he puts cards in them.

Today it got dark at 2:40....

One more Cheers quote:

Norm: It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear.

(Ok, I'm done now, really...)

Long day yesterday, twelve hours at the shelter... I'm still kinda dazed.

Today I am a slug. I slept on the couch for most of the morning, and now I'm contemplating leftover pizza. But it's in the kitchen, which is a long way away. Sigh.

Things I have done this week while I've been off:

-- Hung out with the dogs and watched tv.
Cheers... Rebecca (Wearing her wedding gown, she's about to marry Robin): Ok, I’m almost done, now I just need something old, something borrowed, and something blue.
Carla: How about Norm’s liver?
Norm: (reasonably) I am almost done with it.

The dogs really like old sitcoms...

-- Gone to appointments that weren't appointments. (this is when people say to you, "come see me at 10:15" so you schlepp on down there to find the door locked and a sign saying 'closed due to a staff meeting)

-- Won 500 dollars at solitaire. Then lost it all.

-- Written reports on workshops and worked on program materials. Jealousy. And a self-assessment for violence. The questions are so bland -- 'Have you ever struck your partner with an object.' Somehow the words don't communicate the terrifying nature of the things I've heard in the workshops...

-- This morning I wrapped Ian's birthday presents. In the absence of wrapping paper I used tinfoil. In my half asleep state, I wrapped an empty graphics card box that was in the bottom of Miguel's closet, thinking that it was something he'd bought for Ian.

-- Cleaned the workshop rooms. It's a very quiet building when I'm the only one in it.

-- Went to a meeting for the shelter. This was actually fun, we laughed a lot. Not sure the co-ordinator appreciated that, though... I really like the other women who work for the shelter, they say what they think.

-- Started organizing fundraising efforts for the shelter. (hence the appointments that weren't appointments.

-- Went down and put my name on the 'casual list'. Have been told there's probably a week of work for me next week doing filing for the government.

-- Taking care of my bonsai potato. (yup, yup)

-- Finished the book of Kingsley Amis' letters. In a way it's depressing to read all someone's letters chronologically like that. Makes life less sprawling and more... finite.

-- Eaten a lot of toast.

Further to a long-running and sometimes heated argument that the adults in this household have been dragging behind us for many years, this from Steve Maich in Macleans magazine:

Neil French, an advertising director, a Canadian, Maich calls him a "legend in the ad industry" with "more money than the Almighty himself" apparently said that women "don't make it to the top because they don't deserve to". Because, Maich paraphrases, "most are unwilling to make the personal sacrifices of time and energy required to be the boss".

Statistics tell us that women are very under-represented in the upper echelons of the workforce. And this is where we argue vociferously here at home, because statistics cannot tell us exactly why this is. Steve Maich has a theory.

"Today's working woman is presented with an inescapable dilemma: if you sacrifice your family, in any way, for the sake of your career, then you're a lousy mother. If you sacrifice career for family, then you're letting down the generations of feminists who fought to give you a shot at a decent career. To deal with this impasse, modern society has served up a set of handy myths built around the idea that no sacrifice is necessary. There are 50 hours in every day. Emotional energy is limitless. And with proper planning and enough effort one can have a fabulous, lucrative career and an idyllic family life. If this balance eludes you, then you've failed, and should buy more self-help books. Anybody who dares challenge the myth is a misogynist." (the full text is here, if you're interested)

I personally think (and I'm willing to discuss, have been for years) that part of the problem lies in the question of the value of work. As far as the human race is concerned, what is worth more, really, than the capacity to reproduce? Heck, if men did it, they'd figure out a way to get paid for it. Probably set up ways to sell their offspring. EBaby, maybe. Men make the rules of the game, the rules were set many years ago: work is only important if it MAKES MONEY. The business world is set up in such a way that anyone who wants to succeed has to be able to (as men traditionally have been able to because women were holding down the fort) drop everything and go to long meetings and fly off to see clients and suppliers. If no-one's left at home to do the laundry and take care of the kids, things soon begin to fall apart... As Maich says, "we've established a system in which employers must make up for the lack of gender equality in the home."

Legal equality, as my law professor used to say, is not the same as substantive equality. Although we have every legal right to pursue high-echelon management jobs, we have choices to make. Men don't have to make these choices between work and family. No-one expects them to.

My neighbour is back from hunting. He's out in his yard throwing caribou heads around. I could hear clunking, when I was putting my coat on this morning in the hall, and when I got outside I saw he was standing on top of his shed throwing the heads, some with fur and some just kind of bloody, down onto the ground. I'll be interested to see what he does with them, looks like about a dozen. He also has a pile of furs.

From our back windows, you can see the DEW line station... In the bottom right hand corner of this picture, Jazz is rolling on her back in the snow.

Halloween. I was sitting at the dining room table working on program materials, and it began to get dark. I wondered where everyone was, they're usually home before it gets dark, then I looked at the clock and realized that it was only 3:15... The hour change has taken a bite out of the afternoon. By the time the kids were ready to go trick-or-treating, it was pitch black and frigid outside. Kirsten's friend came over, bringing the two pre-schoolers she was chaperoning, little cuties, one dressed as an owl and the other as a zebra, full body furry costumes. Joeby was very intrigued by these small animals, went and sniffed them thoroughly, which the little guys thought was hilarious.

We had a steady stream of kids at the door, we closed the inner door and stood by the front door in our parkas, and dispensed candy to probably a hundred kids. Some of them were being pulled around on sleds behind snowmobiles, others were walking in noisy groups. One tiny boy, during a lull where I had gone to sit on the couch, opened the door and barged in, yelling "Hello!" Everyone seemed in good spirits, despite the cold, and lots more said thank-you than last year in Nanaimo. The streets are usually pretty quiet here in the evenings, and it was different to see them full of kids and parents and sleds. We ran out of candy in about an hour, something we attributed to having bought it too early and eaten too much of it ourselves.

The cable is out this weekend. However, by fiddling diligently with the radio tuner I have finally found a CBC One station that is playing music tonight. I miss CBC Two, though, it was the sympathetic background to my days for seven years in Nanaimo. The station I found tonight seems to be broadcasting from somewhere East, the World at Six came on at 4 while I was cooking supper, freaked me out a little. I thought maybe I had screwed up the time change thing... I've done that before.

I got called out early this morning, to the shelter. Client was watching Coronation Street when I got there. I sat for a while thinking how strange it was to be sitting in the Arctic watching people with British accents arguing about their dramatic lives. I have been confronted with my own little preconceived notions a fair bit, here, as with my surprise when the two Inuit gentlemen came to fix my closet door and started talking about "While You Were Out"... Did I imagine they all sat around watching North of Sixty all the time or something? I can't say.

Some things I have learned since I've been here:

Lemmings look like little hamsters, and they burrow in the snow.
In a power outage here, it's darker than you can imagine.
It is possible for wind to blow so hard that you can't walk into it.
The generator that runs the town electricity is not constant, and digital clocks are rarely accurate.
"Sybo" is an insult. (but I don't know what it means)
Dried caribou is very chewy.
A 'sled' is a snowmobile. This was confusing... (What size engine does your sled have?)
The Innuinaqtun words for "I'm fine" (in response to How Are You?) sound a lot like "Not so much tuna."
My daughters can manage to share a room without maiming each other!!!

Ian had his birthday party today. Five 12-yr-old boys playing poker and watching movies and eating. I made a cake and caramel corn, we provided them with chips and pop and let them get on with it. (I typed 'pot' in there, had to change it, that's a very different type of party...) Tonight I'm just sitting and enjoying the quiet. Ahhh. It is minus 31. My neighbour (mentioned the other day) is camping in his TENT out on the tundra.

Time changes tonight. The sun doesn't get very high in the sky during the day now. It travels horizontally, even at noon today it was in such a position that I expected it to be setting, but it kept moving along the horizon until about 4 pm. I guess since it's been so cloudy the last few weeks I didn't notice.

I'm still trying not to smoke. As I don't smoke in the house, my wanting to be on the porch in my parka is not strong.

I woke up in the night to the sound of the wind. Miguel has been in Iqaluit all week (hence the lack of additions to this log, he took my laptop) and was due to fly back this afternoon. When I went outside with the dogs this morning, the wind was whipping snow down the street and the clouds were ominous and seemed close enough to touch on tiptoes. This is a hazard of travel in the Arctic -- having reservations does not guarantee that you will be flying anywhere, even in October. Conveniently, however, the cloud cover lifted during the morning, and his plane came in.

He brought A&W, at Rachel's request, and donuts... mmm donuts.

My neighbour is gearing up to go hunting. He's got his sleds out, and tonight he's putting up his tent, a large white army-looking structure. I've heard he's an excellent hunter. The caribou are migrating.

An emotional week. The group of women in this program are amazing, they've had such hard lives in many ways, but they can still maintain hope and humour. I am very privileged to get to work with them.

The continuing process of settling in... We voice our regrets, the things we miss. The Wallace and Gromit movie is opening "everywhere", says the tv. Mmm. Not here. The librarian is out of town, so the library is closed. I miss coffee that is made by someone else, and a store that sells Mars bars at midnight when I'm craving. I miss my friend Jane, and bookstores. Email is good, but getting together to eat licorice and talk all afternoon would be better. Ordering books on the net is fun, but you can't browse as easily. I miss my mum and dad.

The sea is frozen now, and everyone's buzzing around on snowmobiles. The programs I'm helping with are going well, school is good for the kids, Miguel likes his job. The snow is fun, it drifts around alarmingly when the wind blows. One of the neighbours said that with us being on the edge of town, when there's a really big blow there will be 15 foot drifts in the road.

Some things save my sanity: Macleans magazine in the mail, really good cable, having brought the breadmaker, the friendliness and incredible sense of humour of everyone who lives here, sunrises like Monet paintings, the quiet of this snow desert, Miguel's support during my growing pains in my new occupation, phone calls and letters from friends, the internet.

Also, recently, a big book of Kingsley Amis' letters, and the revelation that he has shares my objections to Henry James... "I find the trouble is that he can't tell a story, and can't gather his observations, some of which I don't mind, round any central idea. These enormous wodges of undramatised family-background, she-was-a-woman-who, he-had-first-been-attracted-to-his-present-profession-when-travelling-to balls confound me and make me not want to have any more. I find he gives me more information about what he is telling me about than I care to have..." Yup, that's what I think too. Plus he uses the word "vague" too much, which may be telling in itself. I can back this up, if anyone cares to play:
Here...

we find this classic passage:

"She heard no knock, but at the time the darkness began vaguely to grow grey she started up from her pillow as abruptly as if she had received a summons. It seemed to her for an instant that he was standing there—a vague, hovering figure in the vagueness of the room. She stared a moment; she saw his white face—his kind eyes; then she saw there was nothing. She was not afraid; she was only sure. She quitted the place and in her certainty passed through dark corridors and down a flight of oaken steps that shone in the vague light of a hall-window."

Yeah, yeah, I know. English degree worth all that, etc... (but seriously, 'the vagueness of the room'? sheesh.)

It's cold. Minus 23 today. The days are drawing in, it's light at 8 am and dark at 6 pm, but by November 30th it will be dark all the time. The sun won't come up again until the 11th of January. And then, according to those who have been gleefully telling me this, it will come up above the horizon at noon, and then promptly set again ten minutes later. Stuff to look forward to.

We had turkey dinner yesterday, courtesy of foodmail. I discovered that our oven is smaller here, and the enormous turkey only just fit in it. But it cooked beautifully and we've got masses of leftovers. Last night Rachel and I were thinking of what to make with them: turkey waffles, turkey smoothies, turkey cheesecake, turkey oatmeal, turkey-and-custard... But we did pretty good, for where we are, I made stuffing with our own bread, we got cranberry sauce, and although the only potatoes available were tiny they roasted up nice.

Our parkas are all here, and just in time. Mark's Work Wearhouse in Yellowknife managed to get them to us in three days, and so we're all warm when we venture outside now. The locals have been muttering darkly about frostbite, looking at what we were wearing.

It continues to snow. Big lazy flakes, and the sky is the colour of coffee with cream, overhead, shading to grey at the horizon. It's hard to tell where the tundra ends and the sky begins. Miguel came home this morning with a parka for me that he found on sale at the hardware store. I will be warm. Yesterday it was minus 20 with the windchill...

A co-worker of Miguel's has offered to take him hunting for caribou tomorrow. He can't actually shoot anything, but he's interested to go watch. I'm on call for the shelter this weekend, so I'm sticking close to home.

I went down yesterday to pick up the keys to the shelter, and ended up sitting in the reception area of the centre for half an hour, waiting for the family violence coordinator to return from her errands. A couple of other women were waiting to see her as well, and we were gossiping with the receptionist. I continue to be amazed at how much I've been accepted, it felt very comfortable to sit and talk.

Although the last weekend I was on call I found it a bit hard to sleep, I went to sleep quite quickly last night and didn't wake until my usual time (5:30). I guess you get used to anything.

Spent yesterday filling in for the receptionist at the centre that sponsors the programs I've been helping with. Phone was the same model as at my last place of employment, and I kept having to remind myself what to say when answering the phone. The cultural differences are still a challenge, accents are hard to understand over the phone and last names are amazing... I was in charge of the Food Bank for the afternoon, and I was supposed to get names from those who came for food. They start spelling, and they don't stop til they've given you about twelve letters... I was interested to see that most of the food given out consists of the ingredients for bannock. It was an exhilarating day, in a way, I hung around in the reception area and answered the phone, bagged food in the back room for the Food Bank, chatted to clients and visitors, it's all very laid back.

Last night, to my amazement, the public library was finally open. It has been closed due to the retirement of the former librarian and a general lack of folk willing to take over. There are computers in there, and last night they were all full of hyperactive adolescent boys surfing the net. I can kind of see why it would be difficult to find staff, I can't see most librarians being willing to run the equivalent of a youth centre. However, I was there for the books, and they had a brand-new copy of Peter Robinson's last book. I now have a library card for the May Hakongak Public Library, and a book about local history. Life may be liveable, this winter. People keep shaking their head at me when I say I've only been here since the end of August, saying, "Oh, you're going to find it cold." One man said this to me yesterday and then added, "Just you wait." He even repeated it a couple of times, when I laughed.

Today I went to clean the rooms where we hold the programs. There's supposed to be a janitor, but I noticed that during the two weeks the only cleaning that was getting done was our own efforts. I inquired of my boss, and she said that there was a janitor, but he was... not reliable... My co-worker had cleaned the washroom and kitchen before he went back home, but I wanted to vacuum and wash the floors. Put the radio on and opened all the drapes, found that there was a good mop, begged a vacuum cleaner from the receptionist (at her post today) and made it all nice and clean. Very satisfying. It really is a lovely building, I feel very lucky to be working there. Although I'm technically 'off' this week, with no program until next week, I put in a full day yesterday, half a day today, I'm on call for the shelter again this weekend (get paid for that too) and I'm supposed to go in and help plan the new workshop on the weekend.

Adjusting. Kids have their moments where they talk of missing their friends, our old house, fast food. Miguel is in Yellowknife this weekend, for a meeting. Yesterday since we figured Miguel would be eating out, we talked about going out for dinner to the Lodge, and then to a movie they were showing at the school, War of the Worlds, but at the last minute Kirsten decided she didn't feel well. So I made pancakes for dinner and we watched Shrek on tv. Me and all the kids, on the couch.

Sometimes we go to the store and they don't have what we need. And if both stores don't have it, we can't get it. Cream for coffee is often in short supply. We've gotten the hang of ordering food to be sent up from Yellowknife through food mail. It's good to have fruit and vegetables again. We make our own bread. Somedays most of the bread on the shelves is moldy in the stores, or past its expiry date. My co-worker went to open a package of crackers he had bought for the workshop, and when we started eating them they tasted terrible: two years past their expiry date...

I love cleaning this house. Takes about two hours and everything's clean and tidy. Our old house was too big. And no yard work here! No car, walk to work, no remembering what day is garbage day, no inane free newspapers being delivered, no phone or door-to-door solicitors, no traffic... I can walk around the corner with the dogs and let them run free on the tundra.

The tundra is changing, taking on pockets of snow, and the lakes are frozen crunchy white. The light comes from different and ever-changing angles, the sun seems to move almost visibly in the sky and show different rocks and hollows daily. One night last week I sat on the deck and the sky was bright lime green with northern lights, it felt peaceful, sitting there, and it occurred to me (something I need reminding of periodically) that my concerns are very small, my residual anger and my worries...

Workshops go well. I am learning about a culture that gives high priority to family and kin, and struggles to exist in an encroaching world. We prayed a lot, together, something I haven't done for years, but it felt comforting. The women graduated on Friday, with tears and hugs, next is men for two weeks. I begin to see people I know around town, can't get in and out of anywhere without having to talk to someone.

A lot of emphasis in the workshops on thinking positively (but realistically) and taking one day at a time. Both messages I welcome...

This afternoon one of the workshop participants brought raw frozen char for a snack. It was quite tasty, very sweet. The other thing that happened this afternoon is that I got asked to be on call for the women's shelter for the weekend. I said yes, filled out a form, got the tour, was given the keys, and now if anyone needs to go stay at the shelter the police or social services will call me, and I'll go down and get them settled in. I think that sometime this week I passed whatever test was being given, because I have also been approached to help with youth anti-violence programs at the school and family support groups during the weeks I'm not helping with workshops. I'm hoping I can live up to their expectations...... time will tell.

And so, it snows. Big flakes blowing around. Kids are wearing parkas. The wind blows me helpfully to work in the morning, then freezes my face on the way home. At the post office today, three packages. Kurt Cobain's Journals, Micheal Palin's Himalaya and a gift from the real estate agents. This last provokes much hilarity at home, being a full set of barbecue implements.

Work is painful and beautiful at the same time. A women's group, and their lives have been unimaginably hard. Substance abuse, violence, children taken away, residential schools... and yet, they love to laugh, and to make others laugh. I realize, as always, that I am swallowing everyone's emotions and can't eat. A weekend workshop usually caused me to lose about five pounds. Don't know how much i'll lose in two weeks. Today my co-worker left me alone with the group, and we did some circle work. Lots of tears. At the end of the day he said to me, "I swear 9am was about an hour ago." I replied, "Maybe that's what tells us we're doing what we're supposed to be doing, that we don't watch the clock." I also know that compared to 12 hour days at the prison, 9-4 and going home for lunch seems like a picnic.

One of the men I worked with at the prison tried to kill himself on the weekend. And he was quite close to getting out.

Work was good. Very laid back, we spent a lot of time sitting in other people's offices, talking. Planned and organized all the materials for Monday, when a two-week women's treatment program starts. Another facilitator was supposed to be coming from Calgary to help, and I was just supposed to be observing, but she couldn't get her stuff together so she's not coming. Can't say I'm tremendously sorry.

The building I'm going to be working in looks like a shack from the outside, but turned out to be light and airy with high ceilings and lots of wood. My new co-worker and I seem to be on much the same page, we had no difficulty selecting which exercises to do. We laid all the ones we wanted out on a big table, so we could decide which order to do them in, and then there were quite a few times when he said, "Where's that..." and before he could finish I'd handed him the one he was thinking of. He said that we will do an afternoon of circle work this week, and that since the participants are all women he will sit out and let me facilitate by myself. I love circles.

Tomorrow I will have been here three weeks. Friday I start work. I've been lazy this week, hanging out at home in the peace and quiet, reading the books I got at a garage sale on the weekend. I've walked on the tundra, with the dogs, and sat with the kids after school while they talked about their days. Very laid back. Miguel and our neighbour helped the kids make a fort out back with scrap lumber.

This morning two guys from the housing department came to fix a closet door that was jamming up against the wall. They wandered in, two impassive gentlemen looking like fifty-something repairmen everywhere, in coveralls and baseball caps, and said to me, "This was supposed to be done in April, but we didn't get around to it." I chatted for a bit with one of them while the other was out in the truck looking for a hammer. He told me that it's usually winter by now... Then his partner came back in, and they fixed the closet door, and then the one I hadn't been talking to to said to me, with a straight face, "Can you just move out for 3 weeks so we can paint your house". The guy I had been talking to said, "It would be just like 'While You Were Out'.

Saturday night we went for dinner next door, with our new neighbours, and met some friends of theirs. Funny, really, we lived for seven years in the same house in Nanaimo, and I never set foot in any of the neighbours' houses. It was fun, lots of kids, and they told us stories about travelling in the Arctic and trying to come to terms with life up here. One of the men told a story about staying in a hotel in a small community, he's a lawyer and has to do the court circuit, and he said that the window in his room was broken, and the room was about 5 degrees. So he took all the bedding off the bed he wasn't trying to sleep in (fully dressed) and stuffed it into the window, which raised the temperature enough for him to sleep. He was funny when he told it, and Miguel said to him, "You seem so calm about this," and he replied, "Well, I wasn't at the time..."

My parents are dealing relatively well with this. It's not the first time we've lived a fair distance from them, and we've been talking on the phone. I feel released from their expectations about my life... they had, while we lived in Nanaimo, a habit of dropping in on the weekends and criticizing my housekeeping, yard maintenance, the behaviour of my children, etc. As I think I've mentioned before here, I'm not much of a housekeeper, and over the last few years while I've been working/volunteering/going to school it has been almost impossible to maintain any sort of standards. This year I didn't even plant a garden, as I was dealing with final exams and then we went to England, and after that working a lot on the Celtic Music Festival, and it didn't happen. They had plenty to say about my lack of ambition. Which I find a bit strange, as it's only since all of us left home that they themselves did any gardening. It's as if they think everyone has as much time as they do... While Kirsten and Rachel and I were staying with them, before we left Nanaimo, they harassed the girls almost unmercifully, calling them lazy and stupid and ungrateful. At one point, while we were eating breakfast, my father started saying, belligerently, that Rachel and Kirsten weren't worth cooking for because they were unappreciative, and I got up and left the table, quite abruptly. They must have known I was upset, but nothing was said. I've always found it much easier to deal with them in a phone relationship...........

We saw the northern lights a couple of nights ago, while we were sitting on the porch after midnight. Beautiful ethereal green ribbons. Miguel and Rachel went out to Mount Pelly to fish yesterday, and Rachel caught a lake trout. She's pretty happy about that.

Miguel and I went fishing, the other night, and I fell in. We were down by the creek, where it joins the ocean. The tide was high, and there's a little rocky island that is only separated from the shore by a few feet of water. I wanted to go out on it so I could cast into the deep water, so I asked Miguel to give me a piggy-back. We were trying to carry fishing rods, as well, so I was kind of precariously perched, and we were giggling about me falling in... Well, of course, I did. Luckily we were almost there, and I only got wet to the ankles, but the water is... well... Arctic. But we stayed fishing, until I couldn't feel my wet/cold feet any more. Still no luck, I think the fish are pretty safe from us.

I'm still living in the awe and "I'm really here" state. and meanwhile, fuzzy husky pups come to visit, muskox can be seen from our upstairs windows, and when the sun goes down the sky turns salmon-coloured. standing on the banks of the creek, or the bridge, and watching the locals pull out char after char, lining the fish up on the bank until they're ready to clean them. riding around in the cutting wind on the ATV. catalogues come in the mail offering wolverine fur, moose leather, boots that are good to minus 50. in the evening when we walk the dogs and the sun is low, all the fluffy white tundra plants, rust and blood coloured lichen and half-buried rocks for miles and miles.

We are slowly equipping ourselves, here. Garage sales, a constant due to transient workers, have yielded some good stuff; a pressure cooker, a computer monitor to replace one we left in storage, snow hoods, some kitchen bits and pieces. A co-worker of Miguel's is going to sell us a tv and a computer desk. We bought some real dishes, and we've started to stock the cupboards. The house itself is furnished, couch and armchair, coffee tables and lamps, dining table and chairs, beds and dressers, and the furniture is much nicer than the stuff I sent away to Goodwill. The kids think it's funny, though, I'm encouraging them to eat at the table rather than on the living room furniture. It's ok, though, as they can still see the little tv we're currently using.

Jane says I sound very domestic, when I wrote and told her I'd made bread and pea soup. It's been hard to leave my friends, but the people I wanted to keep in contact with have all been emailing and/or calling so I think it'll be ok.

Well. I seem to have a job. Last week I went down, following a suggestion from Miguel's supervisor, to see the director of the community wellness centre, but she was out of town. Yesterday I went back again, in the morning, and she was in court. So I left my resume. About four o'clock I went back, expecting to be told she wasn't there, but she was and she said she had read my resume and showed it to the man who was the facilitator for their treatment programs, and he wanted me to go back and talk to him. She told me what they were doing, and it sounds very similar to AVP; community building, communications, childhood issues, drugs/alcohol, family violence, etc.

This morning I called down and got the man in question, and he asked me to come talk to him at 11. Again I went without any expectations, and was very surprised when in the first five minutes he basically offered me a job being a co-facilitator. The upshot of the discussion, about an hour's worth, is that he wants me to come and be there for the next treatment program, a two-week women's program, which we will start setting up on September 9th, to start on the 12th...

So, very cool.

Also, my little brother is engaged. I told him they can't get married quite yet, because I don't have enough money to get out to Australia for the wedding. (yeah, it's all about me. got a problem with that?)

This afternoon, I watched General Hospital (guilty pleasures) and had a nap. I find it very difficult to sell myself in the way needed to get through a job interview. Draining. But now I can enjoy my time off until the 9th, without thinking I need to get out there and find work.

And here, for your amusement, the song currently playing in my head, I heard it on the radio on the weekend and it seems apropos:

Got my suitcase
Got my dog
I'm packing up my life so far
Got my pictures
Got some cash
I'm getting out of here at last

Got my hands on the wheel
Got my foot on the pedal
Gonna drive 'til I drop
'Til the tires turn to metal
Gonna sleep when I'm dead
Gonna laugh like the devil
Gonna find some place where no one knows me

Gonna stop when the last drop of gas turns to vapor
Gonna ride 'til I can't even seem to remember
Who I was when I left and it don't even matter
Gonna find some place where no one knows me

Jann Arden -- Where No One Knows Me

I'm starting to get used to being here. It feels as if we are perched on the edge of a vast expanse of wilderness, and the wind blows hard because there's nothing to stop it. I don't get lost walking around anymore. I was looking at a notice in the post office this morning, when I went to check the mail, and it was addressed to "Residents" and I thought, "hey, I'm a resident. I live here." Tomorrow our house sale goes through. The phone, which was silent for the first week or so that I was here, has begun to ring again, now that the children's new friends have our phone number. A girl has been visiting Ian, who has developed an increased interest in brushing his teeth. I feel as if he is too young for this, but he's in grade seven, so I guess not.

It is cold today. We have been assessing the state of our winter clothes stock, and I've been mending the holes and tears, but we all need boots and some of us need coats. One of Ian's friends suggested we might want to make a coat for Joeby, as he's got very short fur and will be cold... Miguel let two young boys in the other day, and then went to tell Ian they were here. Joeby came to check them out, and Miguel said, as he walked away, "He's friendly." There was silence for a moment, then one of the boys said, "Hello, friendly."

I saw a weasel, yesterday, darting back and forth across the road outside the house. This morning, when I was on my way to the post office, two Arctic Swans flew over, talking to each other. I had heard that it was possible to see them. They were snow white, and bigger than I thought, but they fly very gracefully, long necks fully extended into the wind.

sunsets... they last for hours

Went fishing last night. The char are running. Stood on the bridge over Freshwater Creek with Ian's fishing friend Harry, and suddenly he said, "The char are coming up, do you see them?" and down in the water were about twenty big greenish fish swimming together. They ignored our hooks. Harry said he had a 25lb fish on the line, but it took his hook. I didn't catch anything, and the wind was cold, but we didn't go home until they sounded the 10 o'clock siren. Miguel got up early this morning and went back to try again, but no luck. I stayed in bed and listened to the wind.

One adjustment that has to be made here is coming to terms with the price of food, since everything has to be flown in the stores have to charge more to make up for the freight. We went grocery shopping last night and I roamed around the store in a daze. Makes for hard decisions. Do I really like frozen corn enough to pay $8.00 a bag? If I buy a $10.00 5kg bag of flour, will I be able to make enough bread to make it worth it? Pop is $8.00 for a 2L bottle, and Miguel is rationing himself. We've been drinking iced tea from crystals, but it's not very nice. Our neighbours have told us that Yellowknife Co-op will mail food up here, but it is necessary to collect the food at the airport. So what we could order would be limited by the cargo capacity of the ATV. (It's a red Honda, Miguel bought it before I got up here). I've been doing what I remember my mother doing in England, making dessert with dinner every night so that when I produce the food and there's not that much of it, I can say, "There's brownies too" (or apple crumble, or chocolate chip loaf...) I bought four bananas yesterday, for $2.50, and this morning when I went to get one, all their stalks fell off, so I guess I'll be eating bananas today. Five pounds of potatoes were $9.99, but lettuce was on sale at $2.00 a head. Milk is the worst, $7.00 for 2L. Eggs are $3.99 a dozen, and we've been getting creative with them. Strangely enough, chicken is cheaper than in Nanaimo, so we've had some chicken, and we had stopped buying it in Nanaimo because it was about $5.00 a breast. We've been kind of looking at it all as a game: how can we eat reasonably well without spending all Miguel's paycheque on food?

Today I don't have a whole lot to do. One letter to mail, and a trip to the store to see if I can find more notebooks for Ian, he needs them for school and so far the hunt has been without success. Kids have settled in at school quite nicely so far, even Kirsten has made friends and likes her teacher. In some bizarre way, I think coming here has made her realize that her life is actually very good... in her gym class yesterday, two girls sat out of the activities because they're pregnant. Kirsten said that the teacher talked to them about it very matter-of-factly, asking the girls when they were due. I was glad that I had warned her, based on my own experience in junior high in Northern Quebec, that most of the kids would probably smoke and drink and be very casual about school in general. She said that out of her class of twenty there are four who don't smoke. Which is better than my grade 8 class, we had thirty-some-odd kids and only five of us didn't smoke.

Yesterday there was a funeral for a young man, 19, who committed suicide on the weekend. The service was in the high school gym, and then everyone headed out of town on ATVs and in the back of pick-up trucks to the cemetery, which is situated on a hill near Freshwater Creek. It is one thing to read, as I did in a few classes at SFU that the North has a problem with suicide, and that causes are thought to be deep-rooted in cultural alienation... being here when everyone is mourning, lots of hugging in the stores and downcast eyes, is something else. I feel as if I am intruding, in a way, a representative of those who make it difficult for young Inuit men to get ahead.

I've met the grade 2 teacher at the elementary school, he's a sweet man, and when I sat with Rachel while they formed classes I noticed he had a huge class. I saw him on the street yesterday, and waved. He came over and we were chatting, and I commented on his class size. He told me he was sorting them into groups, but he has a big span of ability levels, some can barely read a word, and so I said, "Well, I used to go volunteer at Rachel's old school, helping the little ones with their reading, so if you need a hand any time, I'm not doing much at the moment" and he took my phone number.

Husky dogs and pups are tethered everywhere here. There are also a lot of sleds, and people have harnesses hanging from their porches. (and furs, and fish drying) I'll be very interested to see the dogs hooked up to the sleds when it snows. Yesterday I saw a group of people watching someone drive a snowmobile across a lake nearby. Out back of the house there is a caribou carcass. Dogs or something have dragged its head quite a distance from its body...

my first fish ever!

Kids started school today. Yesterday we went down to the Northern store to get indoor school shoes for Rachel and Ian, and an elder in the post office lobby told us there was an icebreaker in the harbour. So we went down to see, and it turned out to be a gigantic red coastguard boat with a pointed front. The yearly barge bringing supplies is expected today, I'm told, and there will be a party on Friday to celebrate, a community barbecue. Rachel and Ian went to a back-to-school barbecue on Monday, and had muskox burgers. Miguel and I have been invited to play in a poker tournament this weekend, (we spent a fair amount of time this winter playing Texas Hold 'Em with Miguel's parents and the kids) but it costs 150 dollars each to enter so we think it might be a bit too rich for our blood.

I've been enjoying walking down to the post office to check the mail. It was never quite such a thrill to have it delivered to the door. I'm finding I really like it here, and don't mind the isolation at all. The only thing I've found that I miss is the Globe and Mail on Saturdays. I'll have to find a new source for my crossword fix...

The dogs like it here, too, we can walk out the door and around the corner and be out on the tundra, and they can dash about chasing lemmings to their hearts' content. Kids can wander around town unaccompanied, too, what traffic there is seems accustomed to looking out for kids.

Muskox don't like it when you try to take their pictures. They run away. As they are doing here.

I'm here. It's hard to know where to start....

We had a good trip, the girls and I. Stayed overnight in Edmonton, although none of us could sleep. It was rainy and cold, and we were impatient to get to Cambridge Bay. The plane that took us up went through cloud and wind, but emerged into a beautiful day. Blue sky stretching for miles, we flew in over the water and landed abruptly at the Cambridge Bay airport. (It's a gravel runway, and we were on a jet) I thought we had a lot of luggage, but everyone seemed to have similar amounts as we stood in the little building and it came in on a conveyor belt. All the boxes I had packed and sent by cargo a week earlier also arrived that day, so we had all our stuff. The house we have been allotted is on the edge of town, with a view of the Distant Early Warning station and a lot of tundra. Very cosy, and quite new. 1500 people or so live in town, so it's similar size to Vulcan, but different. Very few cars, everyone walks or drives ATVs, there are no lawns or gardens, just rocks and dirt. Apparently the snow only melted in May, and it's expected again soon. No trees, we're above the treeline. Everyone has been very friendly, so far, lots of waving.

Thursday night we went down to Freshwater Creek to fish, Rachel made a friend, and one of the locals was standing in the water next to Ian, helping him with his casting. On Friday after I stowed all the stuff, Ian took me down to the store, and as we passed through town we were followed by a chorus of kids yelling "Hi Ian!" He is in his element here, full days of fishing, riding a bike he was given by one of Miguel's new co-workers, playing tag endlessly with the neighbourhood kids in the long evenings. Rachel also has an entourage of little girls already, but she's a little alarmed that some of them are younger than her and smoke. Every time I go out, I come home to find the deck out back occupied by Rachel and her new friends.

Yesterday we went 'out on the land' to Mount Pelly, and climbed it. The view from up top was magnificent, out to the Arctic Ocean, and it was completely quiet. Just as if a giant hand had come down and stilled everything, even the things going around in my head. I find I'm not too worried about the future, I'm going to take it as it comes. I caught a fish, out at Grenier Lake, something I've never done, and it's now in the freezer. I apologized to it, when I got it up on land, which Miguel thought was funny.

Today Rachel and I went for a long walk, just ambling along, out to the river and then down the other side of the estuary, where everyone keeps their sled dogs. Ian and Miguel went back to Grenier Lake and caught a trout, which we ate for supper. This evening Miguel and I headed out past the DEW station so I could try driving the ATV. The road follows the coast, and as I was driving along with Miguel on the back, it occurred to me that if you'd told me a few months ago that before the end of the summer I'd be tearing along gravel roads above the Arctic Ocean on an ATV I'd not have believed it. It's good to be alive.

tying up loose ends, now. Today Jane and I dragged all the remaining furniture into the driveway and watched as it was loaded onto the back of a truck, to be disposed of somehow. The guy who picked it up said he wasn't sure that any charities would want it, as it's in rough shape. Considering that one of the couches we purchased from the Salvation Army in Calgary in 1998 for 25 dollars, I can't say I'm surprised. Tonight we have two lawnchairs and the tv downstairs, two stools in the kitchen upstairs, one airmattress and three foam mattresses. (airmattress for me, foams for Kirsten, Rachel, and Jane, who is staying at the moment) By Sunday I need to have everything either stored or shipped, then the girls and I are off to my mum and dad's for a couple of days. On Wednesday we leave for Cambridge Bay. Miguel sent me a picture the other day, taken from just out of town:








I went to a graduation on Friday, a friend from prison had been attending a residential program at a treatment centre near here. It was a very emotional ceremony, attended by numerous family members of the centre's clients. One of the men who spoke went on too long, and halfway through I was feeling guilty, because I realized I had stopped listening and was running my endless to-do lists through my head, but afterwards when we were having lunch with some of the guests and clients, my friend said, "Geez, I was really wondering when that guy with the bandanna would shut up and sit down" so I guess it wasn't just me.

I only have a few things left on my list, but such is the nature of moving that I'm sure more issues will present themselves in the time I have left here. I had a garage sale on the weekend, made 900 dollars, which was awesome, but quite instructive. At one point, people were buying such strange things (a teapot in the shape of a snowman, that someone gave my mother for Christmas one year, a bent shovel, half a bag of dog food, a used battery, an opened package of Winnie-The-Pooh Christmas cards) that Kirsten turned to Rachel and said, "Maybe you better go back in the house before someone tries to buy you." A little old lady bought two milk crates full of Archie comics....

Well, anyway. It's a bit hard to know where to start. Long story short, I guess, contacts in the Government of Nunavut have yielded a job for Miguel in Cambridge Bay. (Google Earth would show you where that is...) He and Ian are up there now, Miguel starts work tomorrow as computer and telecommunications guy for a new hospital. I've also got a lead on a job, but we'll see what happens. We've sold the house and sent most of the furniture to auction, dogs have gone with Miguel and Ian, so Rachel and Kirsten and I are camping in a mostly empty house until the middle of August.

This was all necessary because Miguel's boss has lost control of his business, due to machinations on the part of his former business associate. It's all very complicated, I can't say I understand it completely, but the bottom line is that we are both out of a job. And Nanaimo has proven in the past to be a very difficult place to find a job.

So, a bit of excitement. (to say the least.) I'll miss my volunteer work, but I spent last weekend leading a facilitator's training workshop, so I'm now qualified to do all facets of violence prevention workshops. That may come in handy... I'm enjoying telling people where we're going, the responses are funny. Most people say, "Why would you want to do that?" except for those who have lived up there, and they go on and on about how much they loved it. Strange days.

Gee. I got an email today saying "you haven't updated in a long time"... this is true. I've been working full time, and spending my spare time doing all my volunteer stuff and applying for jobs. Bit of a theme, here.

The poster child for financial mismanagement (otherwise known as M's boss, and mine for the last few months) has gotten himself evicted from the offices we were occupying, so we spent the weekend ferrying everything across town to his garage. Yesterday the phones got hooked up in his basement, which is where the new 'office' is going to be. However, despite the fact that they were hooked up, they didn't ring, due to some glitch at the phone company. Anyone calling our number got a message telling them the number was out of service. Wonder how many customers we scared off today? Jane and I were pretty much sitting around watching soaps, because we couldn't make any calls. When the phones finally got going and started to ring, there was much scurrying around trying to figure out which one rang for which number. As two of them are dedicated to different projects and must be answered differently, we kept saying the wrong thing. We were commenting on the fact that stirring up one's routine keeps the brain young. At one point a phone was ringing in the upstairs of the house, and we stared at each other blankly, trying to decide whether we should go and answer that one...

At lunch time Jane plugged the kettle in, in the room she has a desk in (which also contains a tv and a pool table) and we made tea. Then I went looking for sugar in all the boxes in the garage and got nothing for my trouble except a black hand from a leaky printer cartridge and a bump on my head from a precariously balanced coat rack. Later on Jane asked me for a number from an invoice, and although I have my desk, it is missing the drawer where all the invoices are, and I can't find said drawer. Add to this the fact that the household dog and cat are very interested in all our doings, and we broke the coffee pot during the move, (which made Miguel very grumpy today), and perhaps the chaos is complete.

So. I was told today that my ongoing vision problems can be ameliorated with glasses. Apparently the problem is that my lenses are hardening, and so when I get tired the little muscles around them refuse to do their work, leaving me with blurry vision. The eye doctor thought it was funny, when he said "You seem to have trouble close up, does this get worse when you are tired" and I replied, "Yes, but I usually just take that as a sign that I should go to bed." I've gotten so used to having tired eyes, I'm really looking forward to the possibility of this being a less common thing!

I keep having the same dream, over and over. In my dream I am walking around a large and stately home, always a different house, but one that I know I have to move into. Sometimes there are locked doors, sometimes there are whole hidden floors accessed by strange passages, but a feeling of dread is pervasive. Sometimes I open the doors and rooms are full of manic ghosts or rotting bodies, boxes of spiders or snakes, unidentified ooze. Last night, it was staircases leading to nowhere, and ghosts walking up and down them dressed in old-time clothing. And lots of mirrors.

My friend Jane, who is interested in things metaphysical, says that a house in a dream represents one's psyche, and that I must have secrets I don't even reveal to myself.

On a more down-to-earth note, I am applying for jobs. I know, I do this all the time, but at least this time it's jobs I would like to do. One in particular in probation I'm finding very intriguing, although it would mean moving kinda far north. As in above the Arctic Circle. That north. I haven't said anything to anyone (well, except Miguel) because I don't want to get into discussions about the ramifications. I'll deal with all that if I have to. Although one thing that goes in my favour and makes me think it's not such a shot in the dark is the fact that Miguel's boss' sister lives in this particular town, and works for the Government of Nunavut. She's been trying to find me a job for a while, and she also has a project she wants Miguel to do... so we'll see.

Chalfont St. Peter

John met us at Gerrard's Cross and took us back to his house. I am now sitting in his lovely conservatory and Miguel is looking through the Telegraph. He talked a lot of politics with Mike -- well, Mike talked and Miguel made appropriate noises -- but he is interested. John took us into Amersham, where I worked in a hospital when I was seventten, and showed us the new town centre -- very old, and different from anything else Miguel has seen. Lots of half-timbered cottages. John has gone to fetch Jill from the doctors, and we've been sitting on Grandpa's bench, which is in the back garden here. In the morning we're going back home...

Regent's Park
London

Miguel has gone to see the Sherlock Holmes museum, I'm sitting in the park, surrounded by dog-walkers and ducks. We're going to catch a train to Gerrard's Cross this afternoon to go to John's, but we're decompressing at the moment. We've been sitting here discussing how I'd like to live in England again, but Miguel finds it claustrophobic and isn't sure he could bear it for very long.

I told him it's ok, and it's just how I always feel when I'm here. We had a good time at Jackie's in Sheffield, we went to Chatsworth and Miguel met the Duchess, wandered around the grounds and wondered how it would have felt to be born into money. Yesterday we went out for lunch at the Olde Cheshire Cheese in Castleton, I took the opportunity to have plaice. We walked up to Peveril Castle and inspected the fortifications. Miguel felt guilty, he said, because Ian would love it so much, so we bought the coloured book to take home to him. Then we went to Iyam, a plague village, and walked round a bit, saw the Celtic Cross which, I think, is the oldest "in place" thing we've seen yet -- 8th century. Then on to Bakewill but not for long, because Mike was cold and couldn't get warm. We actually had a beer in a pub, White Rabbit beer, very nice.

Got to sit with Grannie lots, although most of her conversation revolves around things that happened many eyars ago. She was very tired on Wednesday, hadn't slept well, and a couple of times she asked me if I remembered things that could only have been Mum -- putting violets on her father's coffin -- when I gently said that I didn't remember, she said, "Oh, no, you wouldn't, you would have been quite little, Jan was little." Considering Jan is my mother's older sister... She told me about Auntie Jess dying, and Uncle Harry, and said that she wishes she could just stop with all the medications and let nature take its course. Jackie got annoyed at her line of conversation and wanted her to talk about something else, but Grannie's pretty stubborn still and managed to steer the conversation to Auntie Nora, and how she died.

This morning we hopped a train back to London, and sleepily rode into town again. A few minutes from Marylebone and the train to John's, but first we need to feed Miguel.

We went to Montmartre. Miguel says when we retire he wants to go and sell paintings to tourists, in the square outside Sacre Coeur. It was a beautiful day and the view from up there was amazing, hazy Paris spread out to the horizon. And a minstel in a box on the terrace, playing a piece of music I recognized as one they often had on CBC when I was pregnant with Kirsten. Everyone up there jsut sitting quietly and listening, arms around each other.

Later, the Champs Elysee and the Arc de Triomphe at 11 pm, wavering flame on the tomb of the unknown soldier, cars honking around and around, as we sat out of the wind. We talked about how seeing it in person put everything in place, gave surroundings to all the often-seen pictures.

When we finally returned to the hotel, we found that we only had one (wet) towel -- and not any of the three we had been entrusted with. As we checked out, Miguel told them, as we didn't want to be charged, and the woman at the front desk proceeded to yell at the chambermaid...

Hotel Mauberge
Rue de Mauberge, Paris

It's a little old hotel, about 7 storeys high, only a block or so from the Gare du Nord. High windows and light wood floors, breakfast not included. Yesterday afternoon we set out to walk to Notre Dame, with the rest of the masses. Walked through an interested district -- all wig and hair extension shops, and black people speaking Caribbean-accented French.

Down at Notre Dame we lit a candle for Miguel's grandma at the shrine to Sainte-Jeanne-D'Arc. Then the Latin Quarter for dinner, including onion soup and escargots and very tasty red wine. Behind the bar a happy fellow who sang along to the music and tried out different languages on the patrons. Wandered to the Palais de Luxembourg and sat by the Medici fountain, then got kicked out later by the whistle-blowing gendarmes. "Fermeture, fermeture". So then, still pretty full of red wine, we decide to find the Eiffel Tower, and walk down by the river. When we reached the tower it was lit up magnificently, but we didn't go up, as although Miguel has not been travel-sick he felt the ride sideways up the legs, in the elevator might be too much.

Back across the river, to the Metro. We discuss strategy to get back to Gare du Nord and our hotel, and come up with changing at Strasbourg St-Denis. The machine refuses to take Miguel's visa card, so we scrabble through pockets, wondering if we will have to walk our weary feet all the way back to rue de Mauberge (and when we get there, will the front door be locked) when suddenly a little woman appears in the kiosk next to the machine and everyone who has been standing around doing the same as us rushes her to buy tickets. Miguel manages the transaction: Deux personnes s'il vous plait.

This morning we were slow to start. Pere Lachaise is mentioned, to see Jim Morrison's grave, but dismissed. So, the Louvre. Seasoned now, we take the Metro. 18th and 19th C paintings by French folk turn out to be closed onSundays. This, being our driving force for the visit, invokes no small amount of gloom. La Giaconda, the ubiquitous Mona Lisa, in her new home, is surrounded by bickering Americans. Miguel wonders why I don't want my picture taken in front of her, to prove I was there. I say, "If we've got you, (which we did) I was with you so that that would prove it. And anyway, who would I be telling who wouldn't believe me?"

My favourite bit is 17th C Italian memento mori cartoons -- "Le mort surprise une jeune femme a sa toilette" Death is holding an hourglass, the young woman is primping in a mirror. We take a picture of one cartoon, and then notice the sign saying that picture taking is forbidden in this room (everyone was happily snapping the Mona Lisa, so apparently not everywhere) so we scurry off. Contemplate visiting the Egyptians, but opt for lunch. Chevre sandwich and donair, then a little church where a choir is singing.

We've been trying out our French on people. Some respond in English, but a lot have humoured us, and the waiter at dinner last night told us that the coffee Miguel likes, espresso and hot water, is called "cafe allonge". I just ask for cafe au lait, and I get what I want every time... This afternoon we sat outside at a street cafe and managed to order our respective coffes, then sat in the sun and drank them with some smugness. A wonderful way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Miguel is napping, now, but in a bit we're off to see Sacre Coeur and Montmartre. Tomorrow is back to London and on to Sheffield.

There are homeless people here, sleeping over heating grates, and fleets of young Eastern European-looking girls begging, hands outstretched and beseeching noises, outside the stations and cafes.

When we were sitting eating our lunch, outside the little church in the Latin Quarter, we attracted a flock of pigeons. I was telling them to go away, but they weren't listening. A small boy, who had been in the church with his parents, came around the corner, saw the pigeons and set to -- running wildly through the flock and kicking, saying 'waa, waa' and they all flew away.