Yesterday at work we had a report of a missing teenager, who, without going into too many details, had wandered out on to the tundra with intentions of self-harm. Bear in mind it's minus 35 and we only have about four hours of watery daylight. He was reported missing at 11am, just after the sun came up, and when they still hadn't found him at 1:30, we knew we only had about half an hour of daylight, and we were looking for a very cold boy.
I had so many people to worry about - his brothers had also gone off looking for him, his parents were waiting at home for updates, the guys I work with were driving around in trucks and on snowmobiles looking for him. I really wanted to go get a snowmobile and go look too - but someone had to answer the phones and relay radio messages to the parents and the forming search parties. I was kind of praying in the back of my mind, I realized, a repetitive prayer was going on, occasionally I tuned into it and said or sang a few words out loud while I was listening for the phone and the radio, and looking out the window at the frozen bay.
Eventually he was found safe but cold, and everyone came back to the detachment for coffee and chocolate bars and big sighs of relief.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Monday, January 21, 2008
My Chinese horoscope for today said:
"You may have had lots uncertainty concerning your job, however, you should see a period stability in the new future."
Stability, I suppose, could also mean that rather than the uncertainty I am just unemployed... I don't really want to talk about it, because it's out of my hands, but I don't have any status in my job and am in danger of being bumped out of it by someone with priority, at the end of March. Still, I've lived through this before.
We booked our holiday for March last night, we're going on a cruise to the Bahamas. We've been promising to take the kids, ever since we went when they were little (10 yrs ago). We also have a few days in Florida, and Kirsten's boyfriend David and his mom are maybe going to join us for that part. Which should be fun. This is actually the first time in a few years that we've all gone on a holiday together. Really, considering I'm likely to lose my job, we probably shouldn't go, but we're gonna anyway. Only live once, and all that.
I guess I've been thinking about it a lot, because I had a Florida dream the other day. In my dream we were staying at a hotel, and there was an outside buffet restaurant on the ground floor, a big circle. Miguel and I were looking through the food, he was filling his plate, but I couldn't really find anything I liked. Although I'm not still a complete vegetarian, I still try not to eat too much meat. I ended up finding a sort of log of sticky Shanghai-looking noodles, tied with string, and a banana. I took it up to the cashier, and she started cutting the string on the noodles, and she was saying, "What's in there?" When the string fell off there was a small lumpy grey crocodile inside, and it started to walk away. The cashier said to me, "Well, are you gonna eat that, or what?" I said, "What do you want me to do, stab it? It's still alive!" As it sauntered off it shot me a dirty look over its shoulder. The cashier said, "Oh, well, it's too late now." As the crocodile walked down the street, it got bigger and bigger, so that when it was getting ready to turn the corner at the bottom it was life sized.
"You may have had lots uncertainty concerning your job, however, you should see a period stability in the new future."
Stability, I suppose, could also mean that rather than the uncertainty I am just unemployed... I don't really want to talk about it, because it's out of my hands, but I don't have any status in my job and am in danger of being bumped out of it by someone with priority, at the end of March. Still, I've lived through this before.
We booked our holiday for March last night, we're going on a cruise to the Bahamas. We've been promising to take the kids, ever since we went when they were little (10 yrs ago). We also have a few days in Florida, and Kirsten's boyfriend David and his mom are maybe going to join us for that part. Which should be fun. This is actually the first time in a few years that we've all gone on a holiday together. Really, considering I'm likely to lose my job, we probably shouldn't go, but we're gonna anyway. Only live once, and all that.
I guess I've been thinking about it a lot, because I had a Florida dream the other day. In my dream we were staying at a hotel, and there was an outside buffet restaurant on the ground floor, a big circle. Miguel and I were looking through the food, he was filling his plate, but I couldn't really find anything I liked. Although I'm not still a complete vegetarian, I still try not to eat too much meat. I ended up finding a sort of log of sticky Shanghai-looking noodles, tied with string, and a banana. I took it up to the cashier, and she started cutting the string on the noodles, and she was saying, "What's in there?" When the string fell off there was a small lumpy grey crocodile inside, and it started to walk away. The cashier said to me, "Well, are you gonna eat that, or what?" I said, "What do you want me to do, stab it? It's still alive!" As it sauntered off it shot me a dirty look over its shoulder. The cashier said, "Oh, well, it's too late now." As the crocodile walked down the street, it got bigger and bigger, so that when it was getting ready to turn the corner at the bottom it was life sized.