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...