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.