this does not surprise me.

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In honour of my little brother in Australia who tells me he's booked a free fall jump for next month.... it's singalong time. This is one of the cheerful songs our family used to sing (with much enthusiasm and little in the way of tune-carrying) in the car on long trips:

to the tune of the Battle Hymn of the Republic
(otherwise known as John Brown's Body)

They dropped him from an aeroplane
Without a parachute,
They dropped him from an aeroplane
Without a parachute,
They dropped him from an aeroplane
Without a parachute,

And he aint gonna jump no more

Chorus
Glory, glory what a hell of a way to die
Glory, glory what a hell of a way to die
Glory, glory what a hell of a way to die
And he aint gonna jump no more

They scraped him off the tarmac like a lump of strawberry jam (3x)
And He aint gonna jump no more
Chorus
They put him in a chip bag and they sent him home to mum (3x)
And he aint gonna jump no more
Chorus
They put him on the mantle piece for everyone to see (3x)
and he aint gonna jump no more....

************

Ahem. No, really. Prayers requested for little brother's safe passage between sky and earth.

I liked this, from the local news....

The learning curve has been steep, at my new job. But I'm starting to get the hang of it. Some people who call, despite the urgency in their voices, are repeat callers. One particularly alarming man, who sounds as if he is mortally wounded, is usually just blind drunk and wants to chat. One elderly lady has a crisis every few days and needs everyone from the fire marshall to the bylaw officer to come down and take care of her. Yesterday she called with another urgent matter. But I'm getting wise. Later on in the day, one of the guys who knows her came in to start his shift, and I said to him, "I think Mrs. K's lonely, maybe you could go visit her later if you get time." I know he goes and has tea with her periodically, takes her fish or caribou if he's been hunting or fishing. I'm also learning that the folks who call and abuse me when they're drunk are likely to call back a few days later and be sweetness and light.

When I watch tv, I get a little jolt from seeing green landscapes. It has been white and flat for so long here. Admittedly, it's not going to get any less flat, but a bit less white would be nice. Also street/mall scenes full of white folks look strange now too. One becomes accustomed to being a minority.

Work continues to be challenging and interesting. Although I am still fighting a toothache. On Friday I went to the nurse to get another round of antibiotics, as the dentist isn't coming until the 3rd of April. And that's if I can get an appointment. Otherwise it might be me and a pair of pliers. I know, I'm not Tom Hanks on a desert island... I seem to be existing in one of two uncomfortable states. Either the pain medication is working and I'm stunned and can't bring myself to do much of anything, or the pain medication is not working and my tooth is sending shock waves through my entire head, rendering me incapable of doing much of anything. Argh.

Jazzy is a bit better, but not completely. She's finished her meds, and Miguel's going to email the vets. They had said something about doing a biopsy next, but I don't really want to send her to Yellowknife by herself. Poor old sweetie.

I have not had a cigarette in 35 days.

Friday was busy at work. A nasty snowmobile accident in the community, with casualties. Made for a long day. To end a long week. It was court this week, and that makes for a lot of paperwork and coming and going. I also had to use the police radio a lot, and at one point realized I'm no longer terrified of it. They call me and I answer, "go ahead" and when I need them I call them, asking them, "do you copy?" without even thinking about it.

I made some paper today with green tealeaves in it. I also made sushi for dinner. This last courtesy of one of the most amazing avocadoes I have ever purchased. Not a bruise on it, came away from the skin like a dream, beautiful firm yet ripe perfect green flesh. Amazing when you consider how far the avocado must have travelled to reach the Arctic. It was nicer than the last one I bought in Nanaimo. I ate too much sushi and am contentedly lazy this evening. Answering emails and tidying up my tax stuff to send to the accountant.

Jazzy seems a little better, she's a bit perkier, I'm still hopeful that this new course of drugs will help. I was pleased to read that the anti-depressant medication also relieves pain. If she was in any, she won't be feeling it these two weeks at least. I have been on the internet and found that if this doesn't work, with her symptoms we'll have to look at bladder cancer, which can be very excruciating. So, I'm praying for Jazz. I'm sure (if there is a God) he cares what happens to furry friends. He's probably got one himself. (Does God have a Dog? What kind?) Today -- in the wake of my avocado -- I'm more inclined than usual to credit God with existence.

The end of the standoff...

Jazz is still sick. Vets weren't much help. We have some different drugs to try but still no diagnosis. One of the things we were given is an anti-psychotic, because ti acts on the bladder somehow, and it seems to be making her a bit stoned.

I'm trying to decide how far I want to go. I really like my new job, and now I wonder if I need to pursue a Master's, or try to get any further ahead in any kind of a hurry. Strange shift of perspective, though, after having worked so hard in school over the last few years. I'm here. Now I just have to work. Don't necessarily have to break my neck to do anything else right yet.

I have, however, been learning how to make paper. Which is very satisfying. I love paper and stationery and pens and all the accoutrements of writing, and I've produced some lovely speckled paper, and made some cards. Experiments galore. I'm getting the hang of how the deep dark hues of wet paper dries to a sort of pale imitation. A beautiful periwinkle blue wet sheet turns into a muddy blue-gray when it dries. It was funny, when I told my neighbour what I was doing, she said, "Did you read The Time-Traveller's Wife?" and I said, "that's how I got started." And we talked about who we would want to play Henry when the movie comes out. (NOT Brad Pitt. Maybe Johnny Depp.)

All right. My brain hates me. So, just for a bit of background, some news items from our widespread and sparsely-populated area. (and, just for fun, the backstory that goes with them).

Friday there was an armed standoff in Igloolik.

I ended up being involved in this a bit at work, fielding phone calls back and forth between the airport and Igloolik... didn't know air traffic control was in my job description. (I had more story here, but I'm still pretty nervous about talking about my job...)

Second news item has to do with the muskox harvest around here.

I saw the posters in the Coop a few weeks ago, asking for applications from hunters to be part of the harvest. I was joking around with Miguel, saying to him that I was going to apply.

Anyway. I'm told that there is a 45 minute window between killing and cutting the animals, which has to be done in the abattoir, rather than on the land as traditionally. All wonderful intentions aside, the problem with the new rules is that the time limits and the need for the abattoir have made it very difficult, given that the timeline requires a very early start that the hunters don't like. (I don't blame them one bit, it's bloody cold out there...) So the hunt is going very slowly and the folks manning the abattoir are bored. The best laid plans of muskox and men. (I personally don't understand the 45 minute thing, I'm pretty sure that in these temperatures the meat's not going bad in a hurry.) People have killed and eaten these animals for thousands of years. I think I'd rather eat a caribou that I can see was healthy and running around millions of acres of clean land than a cow that was stuffed into a feedlot in the Fraser valley within breathing distance of Vancouver's pollution. Who knows.

I went for dinner next door with the lawyers last night. I got to ask a lot of the questions I've been wondering about, to do with cultural differences and my place in the scheme of things. Although my brain still hates me, my emotions are a bit calmer. I love it here. Strange. Miguel's already starting to talk about wanting to go back to the real world. Not yet, but he's thinking finitely. I can understand that. But I'm in no hurry.

Hey Delia,

I didn't get Crow...


Badger


What Is Your Animal Personality?
brought to you by Quizilla


Miguel's comment when I showed him was: "That's you all over." Grmph.

Early Sunday morning the phone rang. I lurched to grab it on the first ring, as I'm supposed to at the police station. At the last moment I thought, "Hmmm, I seem to be in bed", and said, "Hello," instead. The voice on the other end said, "Uh, hi. Who is this?" I replied, "This is Kate. Who is this?" There was a pause, then the voice said, "Oh. Sorry. Wrong number," and hung up. I was telling the corporal about this, at work today, and I said to him that I was all ready to say, "Where are you calling from? What's going on? Is anybody hurt?" And he laughed and said I must be learning something...

This not-smoking thing is ok, I guess. Really I've gotten to the stage of things where I don't want to smoke because I don't want to have to quit again and I know I have to. If that makes sense. I am enjoying the re-threading of my brain. There are definite changes in how I see things when I'm not smoking. I have to fight through the moods, at first, and try to sort out whether everyone really does hate me and is out to get me. I get a bit more selfish than usual, and want to get people to do things for me. Especially, it always seems, as I mentioned last week, I want someone to make coffee for me. It doesn't count as a treat, an alternative to cigarettes, unless someone else produces it. Don't ask me why this follows, but it does. And I don't want people to stand too close to me. This passes, but if I remember correctly it takes a long time. If someone stands too close it makes me dizzy, and I think I'm going to grab them to keep from falling. Like a sort of proximity-induced vertigo.

Jazz is going to Yellowknife next week to the vet. She's been peeing blood and we're worried about her. We got antibiotics sent from the vet, hoping it might be a bladder infection, but the vets said they need to do more tests as the drugs didn't help. We were thinking we might have to send her by herself in her crate (poor sweetie) but it turns out Miguel's going to meetings in YK next week so he can take her. I'm really hoping that it isn't kidney failure, and that she gets to come home again........

Things not-smoking has done for me:

1. tonight an episode of Futurama made me cry. Fry's dog waited for him to come back for 12 years...

2. yesterday Miguel and I had an argument about the alarm clock. that pretty much lasted all day. we made up in the evening (after I showed him again how to set the damn thing) but nasty things were said. and credited to lack of nicotine.

3. keep losing my voice and croaking all over. difficult when answering phones. also sneezing a lot. respiratory system doing spring cleaning, I figure.

4. napped at regular intervals all weekend. like a big floppy dog.

5. the necessity arises to fight a tendency to whine. (although, it does get me coffee once in a while)

Given the amount of papers I had to sign promising confidentiality, I'm thinking there's not a whole lot I can safely divulge about my new job... Except that I really like it, the guys are super nice to me; they are horrified by the idea that I walk to work and the staff sergeant has taken to picking me up in his truck in the morning. I've learnt an awful lot, and I have been able to finally APPLY stuff that I learnt in my criminology studies. There is a chance that I may never have to work retail again.

Also (and this may explain the silence of the past little while...) I have quit smoking again and it seems to be sticking this time. I must be insane, I guess, wait until I start a new job and then quit smoking but although I've been quite tired I haven't been grumpy.

Roy and Robyn, my wandering brother and sister-in-law, have returned from Peru. They went to Macchu Picchu and I'm jealous. Graeme and Rae, my other brother and his soon-to-be wife are in Tasmania. (Me, I'm still in the Arctic, and yeah, it's still good-and-cold, thanks for asking.)

The power in our neighbourhood was on low this weekend. One of the transformers in town was shot and we came home to an orange note on the door saying that we should keep our power use to a minimum as the "crew" was in another community and the power wouldn't be returned to normal levels until they returned. Strange; not enough power to give us much light, most of the fluorescents wouldn't even turn on, microwave just hummed and didn't heat up food, the water pump whined all weekend, but: it was the perfect excuse not to do housework. So I didn't. Well, no, I cleaned bathrooms and tidied up but skipped the vacuuming and laundry.

I re-read The Magic Army this weekend. I can never resist reading bits of it to whoever will listen. Bad habit, that.

I also read Lawrence Osgood's Midnight Sun, which is about a fictitious village in the Arctic. He gets it right, the life up here, if you get a chance to read it.

Started my new job on Thursday last week. I really enjoyed myself, they had me doing all sorts of cool things, the biggest project being transcribing interviews (from tape to print) and I learnt how to do criminal record checks and administer written driver's tests. I also rearranged all their files (they asked me to, really) and answered the phone a whole bunch. I'm still scared of the dispatch radio, but I'm sure I'll get used to it. All in all, very neat.

We've been messing around this weekend trying to install an antenna
for our satellite radio, finally got it working to some extent, after
a lot of giggling on the back deck Sunday afternoon. Mounted the damn
thing on the pole six feet up the wall and then realized when we went
back inside that we'd forgotten to connect the wire to the antenna and
had to take it down again, since it was out of our reach Miguel had to
stand on a table, at which point we dropped all the nuts and
connectors into a snowdrift and had to dig for them for a few minutes.
Then I tried to pick up the nuts with my bare hands and froze them to
my fingers... but now we have 184 channels of radio and I'm
listening to Strauss.

We also tried to (oh my god, we're not handy) hook up the tv we bought
at a garage sale, and we had a sort of metal shelf thing that we were
trying to put up on the wall. Somehow we managed, in the course of
trying to find a stud, to drill about seventeen holes in the wall and
NOT FIND a stud. So the wall looks perforated, like we were trying to
put in a new window or have a bad case of woodworm. Tv ended up on
the top of my dresser, and Ian had to hook up the cable for us. He
stood there saying to me, "Mum, you have to take off the plate and
strip the wire and poke it into the back of the... oh let me do it."
So now I can watch Cold Case Files in bed. Luxury.

Is it wrong if I delete anonymous abusive comments and don't respond to them?

I gotta say, though, it doesn't make me really want to keep putting myself out there...

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?"

Cubs finished their birdhouses last night, and they look fantastic. They painted them wild psychedelic colours and then stuck on hippy flowers and dinosaurs. One enterprising little boy painted "Bird House for Rent" on the roof. The others told him very seriously that birds don't have any money.

Rachel's been quite sick, had to take her down for a pronouncement of strep throat and a prescription. To add to the 10-yr-old-taking-pills fun, Jazz has a bladder thing so we've been having to feed her penicillin too. At least with a dog you can pry her mouth open and throw the pills in. We contemplated doing that with Rachel, too, might save time and the tears would probably be shorter, too. Ok, I'm being callous. I feel sorry for both pill-taking beings. But I wish they'd just swallow the damn things and be done with it. Jazz will take the pills if we hide them in something relatively meaty, she sussed them out of ground beef tonight, but gobbled them down in pork chop bits yesterday. Rachel has worked her way up to being able to swallow a half a pill with water. At first we were feeding her bits of bread and getting her to swallow the pills that way...

Saw the sun on Friday, and again today, about ten minutes each time. It was cloudy all weekend. Soon it will be a bit lighter during the day. The darkness has seemed long. I lack energy. Read a lot. Neglect things. Still, it's the middle of January now. By the spring equinox there will be 12 hours of daylight. Better get on with that, sun.

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.

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...