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.