Ok. Because I read Delia's, this is my "Fifty things I love" list. They are in no particular order.

1. Coffee with real cream and lots of sugar.
2. Yams. Especially if they're in sushi.
3. The X-Files.
4. Nevil Shute. Or any other author with his laconic way.
5. Frogs.
6. Brie.
7. Waking up in the middle of the night with a revelation of some sort.
8. Dancing.
9. The Tragically Hip. In concert with me there dancing.
10. Lucy (my new niece).
11. Frozen blueberries with my cereal.
12. Noon in December in the Arctic. (picture to follow)
13. Driving the snowmobile too fast and listening to Justin Timberlake. Yes, they do go together.
14. The feeling of tiredness after a day of excellent skiing.
15. Scrabble.
16. Really short hair on men.
17. My job.
18. Long walks in the dark with someone to talk to.
19. London when it's raining and warm.
20. Ayya Khema.
21. Ecclesiastes. (1.9The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.)
22. Candles that don't smell like flowers.
23. Sandalwood.
24. Puppies that will sit on your lap.
25. Blackcurrant tea.
26. Singing. (not that I can, really, just that I enjoy it)
27. Hugs. Especially unexpected ones.
28. Paradise Valley behind Mount Temple.
29. Books that make me want to read them slower.
30. Old cemeteries.
31. Zombie movies.
32. REM and the Indigo Girls. This is cheating, it's two.
33. Knowing the answers.
34. Cooking for people.
35. Croissants. Especially in Paris. Heck, any food in Paris.
36. Going on trains.
37. Snorkeling in warm, warm water. (are there two l's? Snorkelling? Snork.)
38. Baths.
39. Laughing until I cry.
40. Leonard Cohen.
41. The feeling just after tequila hits your stomach at the start. (later is sometimes not so good.
42. Holding hands.
43. Smoking. (but no, I'm not.)
44. Talking all night.
45. Peonies.
45. (it's a tie) African Violets. Because they're fuzzy.
46. My blue sweater.
47. My grannie's cross. (and I'll probably not lose it, cos I had it tattooed on my ankle.)
48. Thai food.
49. Ian Rankin.
50. T.S. Eliot. For I have known them all already, known them all:—

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a dying fall

Beneath the music from a farther room.

So how should I presume?




And if you have read this, consider yourself tagged... you're it. let's see your list :)

Miguel, before he left for Kugaaruk this week, told me that he'd made some chicken broth icecubes. I imagined that said icecubes would be handily stored in plastic bags in the freezer. I was a bit in awe of his domesticity (although the day I came home from work late at night and the upstairs of the house was a chicken-smelling sauna wasn't so pleasant).

Ian poured himself a pop at dinner time, then turned to me and said, "I don't know about these icecubes". I said to him, "what's wrong with them?" He replied, "they look as if someone wasn't paying attention when they made them." I said, "Your dad made chicken broth cubes, I suppose those could be them. Did you pour pop on them?" He said, "Oh, ick."

I'm feeling a bit better than when I wrote my last entry. But I'm tired. The Beaver/Cub Christmas party was tonight and I had the craft table. We made angels with doily wings. Last year I tried God's Eyes with them (you know - you do the cross with popsicle sticks and then wrap different coloured wool around) but most of the kids just made blobs on sticks. At least with the angels it's kind of obvious - that's an arm, that's a head. There's a very small boy who reminds me a lot of Ian when he was little. He's really too young for Beavers but his big sister goes. He's three and a half, and he has that sort of translucent skin and big sticky out ears. He's gotten braver, since September, and today he was working on his angel and talking away to me, it was very sweet. At first when his mum dropped him off at Beavers and went to her yoga class, he would just sit on the window ledge with tears welling up in his eyes and watch us mournfully. He made a great angel, then glued one googly eye in the middle of its forehead and fell about laughing.

I'm going to bed. I had both trouble sleeping last night and trouble getting out of bed this morning. I was still awake I think at three. Then the alarm went off at 6:45 and I told it to fuck off and went back to sleep. Unfortunately, and this is the problem whenever Miguel goes away - he's actually away quite a bit as he's in charge of five or six communities in the region and all are fly-in communities - he's the one who gets up in the morning. He gets up, makes coffee, turns on the pellet stove, plugs in the car, putters around upstairs for a while and then brings me coffee at 7:30 so that I consider getting up. This morning I was still lying in bed at 8:10 and I'm supposed to be at work at 8:30. I walked in breathless at 8:35, hoping there was no-one there, but unfortunately we had folk in cells and the day guard hadn't come so they were all waiting for me...