I've got a toothache. Coincidentally, this week is one of the times there will be a real dentist in town, so I've got an appointment for Wednesday morning. When I was packing to leave Nanaimo, I came across a vial of Tylenol 3 with codeine that I was given the last time I had a major toothache. Something prompted me to pack it rather than put it in the box of household things that I was giving to my mother. At 3 am the other morning, when the tooth was keeping me awake, I suddenly had a little mental picture of putting it in the shipping box, and got out of bed to go down and look for it. There it was, a bottle hiding behind the bandaids, and it made the toothache recede and a comfortable fog descend within half an hour.

One of the things that is difficult to get used to here is the lack of options for obtaining things after hours or on the weekend. Just down the road from us in Nanaimo was a drugstore that was open 8am-midnight, and a 7-11 that never closed. Here, if advance planning is lacking, nothing can be obtained after 7pm or outside the limited store hours on the weekends. And even when the stores are open, you can guarantee that the thing you need badly will be sold out. Or there will only be a strange substitute, like long-life milk that tastes like (the kids say) goat hair. Look for bread, and you may end up with a choice between three-week-old hot dog buns and a little round loaf of rye bread... My point here, (yep, I'm assuming I have one) is that we got spoiled in Nanaimo. Our expectations are often out of whack with what's real up here.

I spent this week doing inventory at the health centre. Had some help one day, but mostly it was me. I had to spend a lot of time trying to figure out the difference between seemingly similar items. As in, I write down: Adult oxygen mask. Go upstairs and start entering things, and find out that the master list contains multiple types of adult oxygen masks -- rebreather, non-rebreather, latex-free, comes with tubing, comes without tubing... you get the idea. Ditto for bandages. Added to this is the fact that bandages are labeled capriciously; some with metric and imperial, some just with metric, some just with imperial. I went to sleep a couple of nights and dreamt confused dreams of trachea tubes and proctoscopes. The proctoscopes were in a box that the stores guy told me was 'stuff for asthma'. I asked a nurse who was in the storeroom at that moment, "What's a proctoscope used for?" She said, "It's for examining, um, uh," and her colleague, who had been listening, turned around and said, "Rectums". I said, "Oh. So, nothing to do with asthma, then." They both giggled, and one of them said, "No kind of asthma I've ever heard of."

Watched The Shining this morning, and it was still as good as I remember. I should add that I only got away with this because Rachel was next door and Ian was playing a game with Miguel. Usually I have to avoid the scary movies. Kirsten came down at one point, and sat for a while, but she got creeped out and went back upstairs. She's ok, though, mostly, she watched Saw with me while Miguel was out of town a while back.

I'm sitting in my closet with my headphones on (Nazareth and Nickelback...) and the kids keep coming and trying to say things to me. When The Shining was almost over (Jack chasing Danny through the maze), Ian and Miguel finished their game and Ian came and started asking questions. "Why is he chasing the boy with that axe?" I told him that Jack Nicholson's character had been stuck inside the hotel alone with his family for a cold winter and the boy drove him nuts. Ian said, "Are you trying to tell me something?"