otters of the twin variety

This week I had a couple of long days - I went on training to be a spotter for air search and rescues. It started with ground school, which was kind of boring. Somehow, and I'm not sure how this is possible, the material was interesting after a fashion, but it was being presented in a sort of junior high science movie format. At one point in the movie, a man with some gooey blood on his head is standing in a field, waving his arms excitedly, while an 'injured' man (you can tell he's injured because he's covered with a blanket)lies on his back, at goo-head man's feet. The airplane, apparently filled with poorly trained spotters, passes overhead and disappears. The concerned voice-over says, "Imagine the despair of these injured passengers, when the rescue plane they have been waiting for flies right over without seeing them." The man standing up assumes a posture of great despair, with his gooey head in his hands, and the injured man on the ground gives a feeble and heart-rending wave in the direction of the oblivious aircraft. That made me laugh. I mean, it's not really funny. Really.

The second day, which was much more interesting (but colder and more uncomfortable) was the flight training.

Nine of us went on a Twin Otter, and it was a bit chilly and cramped. Very nice little aircraft, though. You can really see a lot out the windows, which is good if you're meant to be looking for small things on the tundra.

Spotting is funny. We were told we had targets - an abandoned snowmobile, a tent frame, a couple of old cabins, and a disintegrating boat. So we performed our procedures, as directed, but it's hard. You are meant to be scanning in the same direction that you would read, I guess because that's a natural movement for your eyes. At first I was concentrating really hard and it was making my eyes hurt a lot. Eventually it began to feel more natural, but then I started getting distracted. As previously mentioned here, there are a lot of muskox around and they run away when planes go over. And, as a human being, my eyes are drawn to moving objects. So the mental soundtrack was: "scanning, scanning, don't look at the muskox, damn, I'm looking at the muskox. what did I miss?"

The man sitting in front of me spotted the cabins, I spotted the boat, but we never did see the snowmobile, despite frequent passes. At the end the pilot said, somewhat sheepishly, that there was a possibility that he had plotted the snowmobile wrong, and it never was where we were looking...

The flight training has to be two 1hr flights, so after an hour of looking for the damn snowmobile, we landed at Jayko Lake, on a short gravel runway, and got out to look around. And I wished I had my camera because it was very pretty. We ate our snacks and laughed at each other, and then we all got back in the plane to do the second half of the training.

So now, if there's an air search called, I might have to go and be a spotter. I'm told that the hard part of that is that they keep going until either they find what is being looked for or the search is called off, and the last one they did was 36 hours of spotting, napping, and peeing in plastic bags. But my bag is now packed, I'm certified, and ready to go.

Aha! the internet has relaxed its vigilance. I can access pages.

All the kids are now away. Kirsten is in Quebec (with my laptop, as previously mentioned), Ian's in Vernon BC doing a rifle coach course until the middle of August, and Rachel's at cadet camp in Whitehorse.

Kirsten has called lots, she's having a good time now that she's stopped being homesick. Rachel called last night and she doesn't sound homesick at all, she has a posse already, and they're all going horseback riding on the weekend. She was really quite apprehensive about going - she's a worrier and she felt that all the wasps in the Yukon would be having a convention to decide how to torment her while she was there, and that all the army guys would yell at her. She told me gleefully that the leaders had taught her and her cohorts how to make their beds, but that it was so complicated and so hot there that they figured they were just going to sleep on top of their covers rather than mess it up and have to remake. (To be fair, she did step in a wasp nest, during a camping trip when she was about four, and got stung very badly. And at home she never makes her bed.)

Ian hasn't called at all, but he's a boy.

Miguel and I went and stayed at the cabin for the whole weekend, and the sun shone (no romantic sunsets in the land of 24hr daylight). We went overland on Saturday to Long Lake, about an hour away from the cabin. The muskoxen have fuzzy little calves and I tried to take pictures but they don't like to be disturbed and I didn't want to get too close. One old shaggy muskox was standing on top of Mount Pelly, like a sentinel.

I know, I don't usually do this, but I want to see it so here are the lyrics to City and Colour's "Sleeping Sickness". Gordon Downie sings in the middle...

I awoke
Only to find my lungs empty
And through the night
So it seems I'm not breathing
And now my dreams are nothing like they were meant to be
And I'm breaking down, I think I'm breaking down

And I'm afraid
To sleep because of what haunts me
Such as living with the uncertainty
That I'll never find the words to say
Which would completely explain
Just how I'm breaking down

[Chorus]
Someone come and, someone come and save my life
Maybe I'll sleep when I am dead
But now it's like the night is taking sides
With all the worries that occupy the back of my mind
Could it be this misery will suffice?

[Gordon Downie]
I've become
A simple souvenir of someone's kill
Like the sea
I'm constantly changing from calm to ill
Madness fills my heart and soul as if the great divide could swallow me whole
oh, how I'm breaking down

[Chorus]

Things that are conspiring to make it hard for me to post here:

Kirsten has gone off to Quebec with my laptop.
Our internet has major issues, and some days I can't get any connection.
On the days I can get a connection it is sporadic and if I compose a post it gets lost when I try to put it up.
The sun is shining and we've been spending lots of time at the cabin.

defense de passer

three for one court week

I know. It's been a while. I can only explain by saying that we ended up with almost three consecutive weeks of court. Partly because of this.

I can't sleep tonight.

Well, that's not completely true. I was asleep, very deeply, between 10pm and midnight, but then I woke up and tossed fretfully in a sweaty half-sleep. Very unpleasant, and the things going through my head were pointless and annoying. So I got up. Since Rachel's sleeping over at Siobhan's and the older two kids have to work tomorrow, the house is now quiet and still. I can't even hear the guinea pig we're looking after while its owner is on holiday. Cuddly little thing, but loud.

It seems we may also be looking after two small girls while their foster family is on holiday, starting the 21st. They are very cute, but they're six and seven and we're not used to that age any more. The last time they came to visit they played happily with my good china. I guess I'll have to put it away again. They go to their mom's house on the weekends if all is good in their world, so if we do have them it'll probably be only during the week.

driving me nuts

Kirsten got her driver's licence. Miguel took her out to practice a couple times, but mostly it was me. We cruised around, she practiced parking, tried not to drive us off cliffs. My main goals before her driver's test, since we had the basics covered, were to get her to understand backing up (look where you're going, don't stamp on the gas) going around corners (Jeeps do roll at high speeds, I believe, but it's not something I want tested) and stopping at stop signs (without whiplash for passengers).

At first it was very nerve-wracking. One thing about this town is the prevalence of small children and even some adults who dart in front of cars. So while we were driving around, I was constantly saying to her, "Do you see that person walking? Give him some room," or "Kids on bikes. They might come this way."

It's funny, too, because I remember my dad taking me out to drive around on the gravel roads in Southern Alberta, and freaking out when I backed the big old Suburban into a ditch. Backing up is hard. Driving by proxy, it seems, is even harder. "Are you looking in your mirror? Take your foot off the gas now, you have to take this corner. Step on the brake. No, now. NOW!"

She took it all really well. And she managed to do her test and pass. The best bit, for me, was when I got home that night and the phone was ringing. It was Rachel, and she said, "Can you come and fetch me from Siobhan's?" As I repeated that back to her to stall for time, because I really didn't want to, Kirsten came up behind me and calmly said, "I'll go get her." And she did...

well. we do have a lot of blizzards...

20%

The top off the barbecue????

The cabin was pretty much as we left it. For some reason, on the way out, I was anticipating that we might find that someone had broken in. And when we arrived, we found that someone had been moving furniture around in the porch, but hadn't broken into the main cabin. They had also taken the top off the barbecue, the metal lid, and thrown it on the tundra. Really I don't mind if people use the porch. It's warm in there when the sun is shining through the big windows, and if you were cold I would want you to stop in and warm up.

We sat on the deck for quite a while. Hundreds of geese flapped overhead, towards Lady Pelly, barking to each other.

There's something about the silence of the tundra that is seductive, that makes me want to sit and listen. Listen to nothing, endlessly. And all the things in my head, all the worries that go in tight circles in the back of my mind, they lose urgency and dissipate, and I don't miss them. Every spring that I have been living here, and this is the third, I have had a moment on our first real trip out across the tundra on a warm day where I've felt that I'm part of all creation in a way that is only possible up here. And I begin to understand in a physical way, why this place is different from any other - because on some level, time is behaving differently here. I want to say ...Vaster than empires, and more slow... but then I'm playing with words, intellectualizing it.

I read Ed's post about Jon Krakauer and co. And I really enjoyed it. A lot of what he's talking about, I used to muse on while I was working at the coffee shop. About how nobody can last long without help from others. (I'm paraphrasing, it is a long and eloquent post). I know that I'm not living the same lifestyle as the Inuit who live(d) here for aeons. I have a snowmobile, a parka made of nylon, a thermos full of coffee, a kamotik made of wood (not bone), and when we get to the cabin there's an oil-drip furnace and some Coleman lanterns. When I was first here I went through a period where I wished I had been here a hundred years ago, so I could see what it was really like, but quite frankly the best part of a spring trip on the land is the nap on the couch in my warm living room when I get home. Although Miguel and Ian have been out and shot caribou and muskox for our consumption, I cook them in my electric oven.

So. In the spirit of everyone being dependent on each other, Ed, or anyone else, if you're ever out near Ovayok and you need a place to warm up and drink your hot chocolate, feel free to use my sunporch. Just don't take the top off the barbecue. And close the screen door behind you. We have enough flies as it is.

The view from the back

Yesterday was a beautiful day, with a sweet little breeze, high painted clouds, temperature just around zero. We packed up a lunch and two of our children and one of Patti's and headed out to the cabin. I was passenger with Ian, and Miguel pulled Rachel and Siobhan on a kamotik. A small one, as our larger one got borrowed in the night by the guy who sold it to us.

Usually I like to drive, but then I fumble with my IPod and annoy whoever is passengering. Ideally I like to drive alone. Ian's a pretty good driver, although he sometimes comes a bit fast over rises with no visibility. I only grabbed him once, and that was when Siobhan fell off the komatik in front of us and I wasn't sure if he'd seen her.

Walking around, walking across, walking away

Patti and I are walking in the evenings again. It's nice, it makes me sleep better at night. Although with deeper sleep comes stranger dreams - don't remember what I was dreaming about last night but I found myself standing panic-stricken in the kitchen at 6AM. Sometimes in the last few years, bad dreams make me leap out of bed and head upstairs, a kind of sleepwalking, I think. I'm not even sure why going upstairs is the thing my body decides to do, without my knowledge. Who's in charge here?

Some other walkers I met recently - Chris and Clark. They are retrying a trip they attempted in 2005 - walking across Victoria Island. I wish them luck. They stopped in at the detachment to register, which we really like in wilderness travellers.

Miguel's mad at me. He went downstairs a while ago, and Rachel just came and told me he's not here... I'm not sure why he's mad at me, but I do know _I_ would be in big trouble if I walked away like that... men.

In the eighties, there was a Wind in the Willows series that I used to watch with a kid I babysat. In one episode, the weasels convince Mr. Toad to buy shares in the Arctic Pineapple Corporation...

I'm growing a pineapple. I started it from a pineapple top, when they sent us a particularly healthy specimen in Food Mail. It doesn't look like much yet, but I'm sure it will yield a crop of tasty Arctic Pineapples.

Happy Mother's Day!

Rachel made me frogs, for Mother's Day. Lots of frogs. She enlisted the help of her class. She gave one to the shop teacher and he used it to demonstrate a nail gun, by nailing it to a table.

Wish You Were Here

Rachel and I went to Kitiga Lake today, to go ice fishing. I didn't fish, I don't have a licence and I can't eat fish anymore anyway. I caught just as many fish as everyone else - zero.

The trip is cross-country, and it's hard to tell you're at a lake, except that when Gord and Ben got the ice auger down far enough, they hit water.

smile

The cadets seem to be having a good time in Burnaby. That's my boy looking serious.

Things I did today:

Got up early. couldn't sleep - it's not really getting very dark any more. I nap randomly.
Drank coffee. Probably too much. Sat around in my pajamas until noon.
Tidied up at work.
Cleaned my desk at home. long overdue. found a whole bunch of pens. some that even work.
Re-potted some plants. I'm growing a pineapple.
Cleaned house and cooked dinner, Miguel's parents came over because they're leaving soon.
Walked out to the dump with Patti. Everything was smouldering, no good pickings. Strangely, though, there were a lot of pickles.

Things I didn't do today:

The dishes from the dinner. I'll be sorry about this in the morning.
Work. I've done lots this week.
Wear my snowpants to the dump. I'm sorry about this already, as I'm chilled.
Go to the store. Now I'm really out of conditioner.

Ah, it's FRIDAY.

I finished (at three minutes after five this afternoon) a project that has taken up my every evening this week, including last night until midnight, at work. Someone was rummaging through drawers, over in Iqaluit, and they found some stuff that needed to be transcribed because it's going to court next week, and sent it to me in a bit of a panic. I promised completion by the end of the week. I delivered it, but it was painful today because I was tired and my brain hurt and I kept having to go off and do other things (like the work I'm SUPPOSED to be doing) so it took longer to finish than I hoped. But, it's done now and I have no commitments for this weekend other than the last session of the lay leader course on Sunday.

Tomorrow I can sleep in.

And in a surprising reversal of the hate-on I was ascribing to the universe, the person who could have bumped me from my job has decided not to do so, and the guy who I was figuring wasn't really sending me my daybook wrote today and supplied me with a tracking number! Which indicates that my book is at the post office, believe it or not! It says they "attempted delivery" on the 28th (they did no such thing, I would have definitely gone and turned in the parcel card if'n I'd gotten it) so Monday 0830hrs I'm gonna go down and insist they produce it. We only have boxes, for mail, it's not like they came to my house or anything. I'll have a daybook, and I can stop keeping track of things by sticking post it notes to my coat, or emailing myself.

I still don't know whether I'll get to keep my job, but I have a better chance now, I think. And a daybook is not going to make me stop forgetting things entirely, but at least it gives me a place to write down "I owe $10.00 to the boy who dressed as a girl to go to the dance" and "if I don't buy more conditioner Kirsten will yell at me."

The universe does not want me to have a daybook.

I have a Dayrunner binder that Miguel gave me a few years ago. We have no stationery store here. The Dayrunner website took my order back in 2005, for 2006 pages, and they were shipped up here to the wilds. Success. This, however, was, I realize now, a freak occurrence contrary to the laws of nature. Like, oh, I don't know, when it.... rains frogs....

In September of 2006, feeling very organized, I went on the Dayrunner website and ordered new pages for 2007. They did not come. My credit card was never charged. I wrote to them in November, wondering about the status of my order. I got back a terse email that informed me that my "address was not in their computer". So no pages. When I headed out to Australia, I did a bit of shopping in Edmonton and looked for pages, but it was March and everyone was sold out.

2008 was approaching. I'd been writing my appointments and to-doings in list form on the spare looseleaf pages that came with my Dayrunner when I first got it, but the spares were running out. I went south in November, but got caught up in other things and never did find a store that sold them. Miguel looked in Toronto, when he was there. No luck.

On March 5th, I went on the net and, as I mentioned, ordered a Moleskine. I expected that it would be in the mail when I got back from holidays. It was not. I emailed the seller. He said, oh, it must have been lost in the mail, I'll send you another one. That was two weeks ago.

I realized today that according to Amazon Stores' policy, I have three more days to claim a refund. It's been 57 days since I ordered the book. 57 days that I have not been able to keep track of, because I DON'T HAVE A DAYBOOK.

Rachel said to me, (When I was yelling about it at lunchtime) "You'd think it wouldn't be so hard to mail you one. It's not rocket surgery."

I'm doing the dishes. Sometimes this process takes me an hour, because I am easily distracted.

First I had to find appropriate music. Today it was Outkast, because I needed to drown out a rowdy game of Life in the dining room. The game broke up quite quickly, with some shouts of "I hate Life" and some withdrawing to rooms. Then I had to suggest some alternate diversions to Rachel and her friend Siobhan. But Siobhan called her mother and was told to go home, so then I had to explain why I couldn't drive her. (look out the window. do you see a car? no?) She and Rachel set off on foot.

I also got sidetracked by sweeping the floor (because the dining room table had crumbs on the placemats and they ended up on the floor) and finding a disk I'd lost, under my desk - the bunny hunt picture disk that I was supposed to add my own pictures to prior to giving to Dan. So I did that. Also for some reason there was a maggot ??? in the disk case. So we had to examine it.

The spaghetti pan had been put back on a burner with wet spaghetti in it. Now dry spaghetti. Much scraping. I also thought of something I'd been meaning to Google - we were talking about Facebook jealousy at work. So I went off to do that, and ended up here. Not doing the dishes.

Joeby's eating the dirt I swept up. The clam chowder pot is soaking. Condemned is being played. I'm nowhere near the kitchen.

On the plus side, I accomplished a lot this weekend, work-wise. We're almost done the lay reader training course. Apparently in short order I will be licensed and allowed to lead prayer services, perform funerals, do baptisms in extremis, and anything else the diocese decides it wants done. And yeah, I'm still a bit bewildered about this. I keep waiting for someone to come and say, "No, really, ha ha, not you, we were just kidding."