Miguel brought me back a box from Yellowknife. It contained a desk for me, which he put together while I was at the candle party, and set up in the cupboard under the stairs. So now I have a little corner to myself, with my books and my buddhas and my frogs. The postcard of Turner's Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus that I've had on my walls since university is up again, and I've got space for my papers and binders and daybook. Prior to this, due to the size of the house and the lack of furniture, I've been working either on the dining room table (I have to move everything when people want to eat) or in the armchair in the living room (tv is being watched and I have no workspace). I keep paper journals besides this on-line one, two at the moment: one for my day-to-day efforts to keep the world from overwhelming me, and the other for my ongoing project to find links between justice and mindfulness. It's silly how much pleasure I get from seeing my thoughts and stuff copied from books, in my handwriting, on the pages of my journals... I write a lot of letters, too, some of my friends don't have email for various reasons (imprisonment / paranoia / general poverty). I'm sitting here in my cupboard right now with my notebooks and letters beside me, I won't have to pack up when dinner's ready, and I've got a new book on the Holocaust and two crossword puzzles waiting courtesy of the Globe and Mails Miguel brought me back from his trip to the real world...

We're having a blizzard today. The wind is up, and (surprise surprise) it's cold. This is the view from our front steps. Not sure if you can see my neighbour's pile of caribou heads now, they're kind of covered in snow.

Miguel's back from Rankin Inlet, where he was working all week. He took this picture there.

Rachel's sick tonight. She and I are watching the Simpson's episode where Bart wins an elephant... I think she's got the flu everyone else's kids had, and since she sleeps on the top bunk she doesn't want to go to bed. Can't say I blame her, and Kirsten's not tremendously keen to have someone sleeping over top of her who might throw up.

I went to a candle party tonight. And won the door prize, twelve candles. I haven't shown them to Ian, because I think he bought me candles for my birthday. As I was leaving he said, in a very worried voice, "You're not going to buy any candles, are you Mum?" I told him you could never have enough candles. I actually ordered something, because it was so cool, a wooden lantern-type thing with sandalwood candles. And used Miguel's credit card... (seems to me that's what you're supposed to do, right?)

This week I'm working for the government, filling in for someone who's on leave from the health department... such a lot of different things I've done since I've been here, it's hard to believe it's only been just over two months. It's been very interesting, I'm working with a nice young man and we're trying to sort out a bunch of requisitions and orders for medical supplies, in a quiet little office. He makes the phone calls, which I like. It reminds me a lot of when I first started going into Miguel's other workplace, and trying to sort out their financials, same sort of working backwards with tons of unrelated papers. Tomorrow's my last day, though, as there's a men's program starting Monday. Although, they did say they might be able to use me for the better part of December, if there's no programs, which might be the case.

But anyway. I'm tired tonight. Gonna go to the library. The librarian is very kind to me, he lets me take out more than my allowed two books, and lets me borrow the uncatalogued donated books before he puts cards in them.

Today it got dark at 2:40....

One more Cheers quote:

Norm: It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear.

(Ok, I'm done now, really...)

Long day yesterday, twelve hours at the shelter... I'm still kinda dazed.

Today I am a slug. I slept on the couch for most of the morning, and now I'm contemplating leftover pizza. But it's in the kitchen, which is a long way away. Sigh.