My brain is a bit fuzzy, I'm looking forward to the sun coming back. I'm trying to overcome my desire to eat too much sweet/salty food, which I'm told is cravings caused by the darkness. One thing that's making it all a bit more bearable is that Miguel tried to order me a Globe and Mail Saturday subscription but they screwed up and sent me about two weeks worth of daily papers before we got it sorted out. So I've had news and crosswords galore. Just like home. The papers take between a week and two weeks to get here, and have been coming out of order but I don't care. (Just for the record, it would cost 950.00 to have the Globe and Mail delivered to our mailbox up here... the charge on his credit card was what alerted Miguel to the fact that something had gone wrong).
Going to the library. I wish to escape the mountains of laundry that appeared in the upstairs hallway when I asked if anyone had anything that needed washing. Rachel has tonsillitis again, and was feverish and confused in the night, poor kid. I spent some time sitting on the couch with her watching the sort of pre-teen sitcoms I normally abhor, because she wanted company.
Saturday, January 07, 2006
Sunday, January 01, 2006
So, Happy New Year to my far-flung readers, I hope that all of you and your loved ones have a wonderful year...
It has been an interesting year, and I've been caught off guard by developments more than once.
Miguel and I managed to put together the mammoth autoparts convention, and in the process repaired the holes in our relationship. The high point of the convention was hitting downtown Nashville on a Saturday night and eating pulled pork in an authentically grungy bar, listening to a country band.
I finished my university and even aced the stats course, then we went to England and France. We spent a few glorious days wandering Paris and London, taking lots of touristy pictures and drinking beer.
During the summer, due to the instability of Miguel's job and my fruitless job search, we sold everything we owned and moved to Nunavut. Now, Miguel really likes his job, I've worked at three different and interesting jobs in the last four months, and now it's looking like I'll be working for the police.....
Along the way, the children have grown and the dogs have kept me company, I cut my hair and let it get longish again, I got glasses, and learned to cope in the Arctic.
I was sitting next to my neighbour, Karen, last night, at the New Year's Eve party we attended, listening to people doing karaoke, and Karen said to me, "If I'd told you last Christmas that on December 31st of this year you'd be sitting in the Arctic at a karaoke party, would you have believed me?" I said no. Last Christmas I spent an hour and a half crying on the ferry to Vancouver, and thinking that I couldn't take any more of the situation I was living in. I wanted to drop out of my schooling, when my last two courses started in January, from a belief that I was wasting my time and would never get a job in the field...
Just the fact that we went to a party last night (actually, first we went for dinner with the neighbours, then we went for champagne at another set of friends, and THEN we went to the party) tells me that I'm a long way away from my old life. And it was a fun party, silly with karaoke, off-key renditions of Karma Chameleon and I Will Survive being the high points, and I felt very cosy and friendly. I like my new life, despite the cold. It retains all the things I enjoy (my books, my friends, my family) and lets me out of a lot of things I had grown to hate (my old neighbours' clannishness and judgementalism, my lack of career prospects, the children being bullied at school, Miguel's on-again-off-again job, the expectations...). It's different. I feel (as I think I mentioned last week) that I have regained the idea that neat things might actually happen to me...
It has been an interesting year, and I've been caught off guard by developments more than once.
Miguel and I managed to put together the mammoth autoparts convention, and in the process repaired the holes in our relationship. The high point of the convention was hitting downtown Nashville on a Saturday night and eating pulled pork in an authentically grungy bar, listening to a country band.
I finished my university and even aced the stats course, then we went to England and France. We spent a few glorious days wandering Paris and London, taking lots of touristy pictures and drinking beer.
During the summer, due to the instability of Miguel's job and my fruitless job search, we sold everything we owned and moved to Nunavut. Now, Miguel really likes his job, I've worked at three different and interesting jobs in the last four months, and now it's looking like I'll be working for the police.....
Along the way, the children have grown and the dogs have kept me company, I cut my hair and let it get longish again, I got glasses, and learned to cope in the Arctic.
I was sitting next to my neighbour, Karen, last night, at the New Year's Eve party we attended, listening to people doing karaoke, and Karen said to me, "If I'd told you last Christmas that on December 31st of this year you'd be sitting in the Arctic at a karaoke party, would you have believed me?" I said no. Last Christmas I spent an hour and a half crying on the ferry to Vancouver, and thinking that I couldn't take any more of the situation I was living in. I wanted to drop out of my schooling, when my last two courses started in January, from a belief that I was wasting my time and would never get a job in the field...
Just the fact that we went to a party last night (actually, first we went for dinner with the neighbours, then we went for champagne at another set of friends, and THEN we went to the party) tells me that I'm a long way away from my old life. And it was a fun party, silly with karaoke, off-key renditions of Karma Chameleon and I Will Survive being the high points, and I felt very cosy and friendly. I like my new life, despite the cold. It retains all the things I enjoy (my books, my friends, my family) and lets me out of a lot of things I had grown to hate (my old neighbours' clannishness and judgementalism, my lack of career prospects, the children being bullied at school, Miguel's on-again-off-again job, the expectations...). It's different. I feel (as I think I mentioned last week) that I have regained the idea that neat things might actually happen to me...