Polar bears, it seems, like lettuce and radishes.

I've been helping an older lady of my acquaintance, Jess, with her Canada pension application. The government keeps sending her demands for documents, most of which she doesn't have. I've called Ottawa three times for her so far. Once I got a snarky bitch. Who insisted on talking to poor Jess. "Well, is Jess there?" the S.B. demanded, when I had explained why I was calling. When I said yes, she said, "I have to talk to her." Jess listened with a bewildered look on her face for a minute or so, and then said, "I don't understand", and handed the phone back to me. Another operator, on another day, was super-helpful and patient but didn't have a clue where Nunavut is located. She guessed northern BC at one point.

We've been trying to track down documents -- but Jess and her husband were married, she tells me, "Eskimo-style". No certificates. She didn't know him, when they got together it was because her family and his family decided it between them. In fact, she was away at school when the plans were made. I asked her if she was ok with that. She looked a bit confused, and so I said, "Was he cute?" She giggled at that point and said, "Oh, yes, very cute."

One of the forms Jess was sent, a declaration of common-law relationship, required his signature. As he's been dead since the early eighties, this meant another call to the pension office. When I explained to Jess that the pension office had helped me to find and print out a different form, because we'd never be able to get his signature, she laughed and put her hands together as if she was praying, and then looked up at the ceiling, saying, "Please come down and sign my form."

But anyway. We got talking about polar bears. Jess says she has lived in the Arctic all her life, sixty years, and she's never seen a polar bear. And when she was a girl, her family lived out on the land, down at Bathurst Inlet.

Paper I made. Letters are a bit askew, I notice.

I emailed a friend about a month ago, and told her about my trip to Iqaluit. I told her how wonderful it was to fly across the Arctic in the small plane. She didn't write back until yesterday. And then her email said that she hadn't answered because I made her feel that her life sucked...

Envy's a funny thing. And friends are too. I've hesitated over time to give my envious friend my weblog address, and I've never been entirely sure why. I mean, I know that people read this, people I've never met, and yet my parents and my best friend don't. I've been writing an online journal of one sort or another since 1999 (it used to be Diaryland but they kept locking me out) and yet I'm selective about my audience. Every now and then I need to complain about my mother, and I can't do that if she's reading my journal. And my friend, although she's my closest friend, needs to be exclusive. She wouldn't like me having a readership... (all six of you)

What am I trying to say?

There are some people whose attention makes me edit what I'm saying. These people, I email or phone them, and the messages are geared towards them. Because they would read things into the content that I'm not putting there.

What if you could write a novel and stipulate on the front cover: Only people who understand me and can read this work objectively, without finding hidden messages to themselves, can purchase this book?

We took our ATV and borrowed our neighbour's, and headed off for Starvation Cove. Me, Miguel, and Rachel. Kirsten's in Toledo visiting a friend and Ian's at cadet camp in Whitehorse.

It was a great trip, although kind of long. In the picture above, we are waiting for the tide to go down so that we can ford a small river without drowning the ATVs. That's me in the red hat.

We were sitting around having coffee about 1pm, waiting for Miguel's friend Allen to decide whether he was coming with us. I should add that the trip was his idea, as he claims to have caught 10 huge char at Starvation on Friday. The phone rang. Thinking it was Allen, we let Rachel answer it. It was my work. Asking if I could come in for 4. I said yes, because I hate to say no, but we weren't happy. We ended up going and driving around to find a guy who sometimes guards but doesn't have a phone. In the course of looking for him, we found a girl who also sometimes guards, and she said she'd go in for four. If I promised to go in and take over from her at midnight. So by then it was 2:30 -- we had about nine hours for our trip.

Although I drove a snowmobile this winter, I've only driven an ATV once. With Miguel on the back complaining. I don't think he should become a driving instructor. It turned out that without him sitting behind me it was a lot easier, but I still wasn't terribly fast. So it took us quite a while to reach the river, and then we had to wait an hour or so for the tide to go down. Four hours all told to reach Starvation Cove.



At that point I told him he had an hour to fish, because if it was going to take us four hours to get back, we needed to leave at 8pm. On his last cast, at 7:55pm, he caught a nice-sized char and then we packed up to head back, in a light drizzle.

However. The tide had continued to go out, and we thought it would save some time to cut across the first bay.



At the end of the bay, the mud got us. We were stuck, both ATVs and when I got off I sunk in the mud to the tops of my rubber boots. Put Rachel on the red machine and got her to press the gas while we pushed. It was just like Wile E. Coyote, the mud came splashing up from the wheels and covered us from head to toe. And then when the machine started to move, I found my feet were stuck and I fell face first into the mud. Came up spitting mud, but that one was out and on the shore.

The yellow one was harder. It's heavier, I think, and was probably deeper in. We were still struggling with it when two guys roared up on their ATVs and said to me, mildly, "Having fun?"

"Oh, yeah," I replied. I think I must have looked like the swamp thing, but they didn't laugh. They just got out a rope, and we got out our rope, and we pulled the yellow machine out. The older of the two told Miguel he had gotten stuck in just that spot once, when he was alone, and it took hours to get out.

The mud hardened, as I drove home. But it was a quicker trip, the return journey. Rachel and I arrived home at 10:15, (Miguel had put his camera down at one point and had to go back for it, so he was about ten minutes behind us) and I set about having a shower so that I could go to work.

And then, the miracle. The girl who was guarding called and said she was GOING HOME and I wouldn't be needed for the night shift, as the detainees had been let go. And I think for the first time this year, it was Saturday night and there was no-one in cells. I figured I'd go to sleep and they'd call me out, but at 7am I woke up in bed.

Some Bob Dylan for your evening... Personally I think the line about "Nobody can get no sleep" is apropos.

Also you have to go read my little brother's story of how they baked his skates.

And this suggestion for how to solve Iqaluit's dog problem.

Ian is in Whitehorse at cadet camp. 200 teenage boys. Kirsten's leaving on Thursday for Toledo, to visit her friend. She's a bit paranoid about the travelling aspect, being only fifteen, and going by herself (with various folks helping out at different airports) but I'm sure she'll rise to the occasion. She's packed already. Don't know whose kid she is.

A phone call today: "Hello, I'm calling about the turbo beaver you guys are looking for."

My brain was doing pictures of beavers equipped with jet propulsion, speeding across aquatic habitats (Gee, look at how fast that beaver swims, Dad. Yes, son, that's a turbo-beaver.)

Turns out it's a type of float plane. That isn't so much lost as misplaced. It was flying around with the wrong set of call letters, or something. I don't know.

There's a certain type of caller (that Ed will probably be familiar with) who feels the need to unload whatever they have to say on the very first person they encounter on the phone. Phones are such strange things. In the absence of a human face to read, some don't know when to pause and allow things to sink in.

I've been thinking about an encounter I had with a visitor, at work, ever since it happened. Here's how it went.

There's a barge down on the waterfront that needed to be inspected. The inspector was on his way from Ottawa, and I began to receive a series of phone calls inquiring about arrangements for the inspector and keys for the barge, which were allegedly in our possession. Keys were located, arrangements were made, most notably between me and a man named Will who was to escort the inspector onto the barge. I know Will, we were on a course together for three weeks last year, and we are on first name basis. And we spoke a few times in the days before the inspector came.

The inspector dude comes bouncing into my office, and I give him the key I have put aside. He introduces himself (I promptly forgot his name, but I believe his first name was Roy or Ron or something). He says to me, "And you are?" I say, as I always do, "I'm Kate."

Then I phone Will. "Hello, Will," I say, "It's Kate. I have your man here, to inspect the barge. Do you want me to send him down to you?"

I have to tell you, I went out of my way to locate these keys for this man. It took quite a few phone calls, as no-one initially knew what sort of a key we were even looking for. And so his next comments surprised me.

When I got off the phone with Will, Mr. Barge Inspector said to me, "I'm going to give you a tip. When you talk to people, always give your last name. That's why women aren't getting ahead in this world." And then he said, "You have to show people that you take yourself seriously. Kate will always be the under-parlourmaid."

I laughed, because I wasn't entirely sure what else to do. He tried to impress upon me his seriousness. Asked me my surname. I told him, and he said, "Well, you should be proud of that, it's a good French name." I replied, "It's my husband's name. He's French. I'm not."

I don't know what to think of this. Should I be offended? Or is he right? I should add, I think, that Kate is not a common name in this town. And I always say, when I phone on business, "It's Kate at the RCMP." We're a first-name sort of town. When people call to talk to the constables, they use first names.

Some twenty years ago, someone told me (Phil Litke) that "Katie" was a girl with pigtails and I should make everyone call me Kate. So I did. And when I went to Iqaluit last week, after this latest conversation, and had to introduce myself to strangers I told them my full name.

However. I'm inclined to think that women will never get ahead in the world while some men feel free to give them hints like that. I can't think of a situation in the last few months where I was made to feel more inferior. Oh well.

Sleep is all screwed up. At 11:20pm we decided to go for a drive. To take pictures. We were gone for an hour. At 12:42am, now, it is still broad daylight. Rachel, who got up at noon, is reading Garfield in her pajamas. I think Ian might be asleep, I haven't seen him for a while.

What seems to happen, mostly, is that you go to bed and can't quite manage to get to sleep. So maybe every three or four nights you crash and get a good night's sleep. Other days you nap. Somehow the body is aware that it's light outside, even with tinfoil on the windows, and refuses to fall asleep.

Sometimes the North is a very strange place.

Social Services called me today. I had printed them out a document and sent it over. It had printed itself on legal sized paper and I'd chopped off the bottom couple of inches. Which usually turns out ok but today it made the edges kind of ratty. The social worker who called me was asking in a concerned way if he needed to send me over a ream of paper, as perhaps we had run out. I said, no, and explained about the printer settings and how I'd tried to cut off the excess with scissors, and then I realized he had me on the speaker phone and some other people were laughing at me in the background. I will get my revenge. I just haven't thought how yet.

I have to tell you that, in the aftermath of court, we have been making bets on who will last the longest on their probation.

Also, did you know (I had to go look) that there is a town in Newfoundland called Dildo? My boss was talking about it today. He says that it's just down the road from Come By Chance.

I have done Iqaluit. And survived. Passed the course I was taking, and am now even more qualified to run police computer systems. Cool stuff.

Went hiking at the Sylvia Grinnell River, with some other visitors to the region and a local lady. It was raining like hell, but we were all pretending that it was just lovely. My feet got soaked really quickly, after a misstep into a boggy bit, and after that it was just a question of getting through it.

Next morning, when I'm being driven to the airport, the radio is talking about the polar bear that was seen the previous evening. Down by the Sylvia Grinnell River. Just out of town. I said to the cab driver, "Hey, I was there last night." He was an Eastern European fellow, and he started saying to me, "Well, you know, you never hear that the polar bears eat people."

Anywhere you want to go in Iqaluit is five dollars, in a cab. Per person. And if you're taking a cab, it will keep stopping for more passengers. To fill the car. So you could be stuffed in with random drunken strangers.

But, to my mind, the coolest bit of the trip was getting to fly back in the copilot seat of the Pilatus, and the weather was clear so the pilot was pointing out settlements and landmarks to me. And he gave me a headset, so I could hear all the air traffic chatter all over the Arctic. He said that the commercial airline flights go from Europe to North America in the morning, and then fly back later in the day. So in the morning all the traffic's going in one direction. There's miles and miles and miles of ice and rock out there.

It was good to get back home. Funny that I've started to think of this place as home...

Got home Friday at lunchtime, and went back to work. Then after work I went to proctor drivers' examinations. After excavating the kitchen enough to make dinner for kids and feeding them, I got everything squared away and went to bed at 10. At 11:30, they called from work -- they had people in cells and couldn't find a guard. So I went and worked the midnight shift. Yesterday turned into a bit of a write-off, I got some cleaning done but also napped a lot.

Today Patty called (she's got five kids) and we all went out to the beach. (No. We did not swim. There's still ice in the bay.) We made a fire and sat round it in our coats and toques, but we were at the beach dammit. Kids flew kites. Miguel's in Iqaluit now, I left on Friday morning and he got there on Friday afternoon.

I just miss her.

I'm off to Iqaluit for a week. To train on the occurrence reporting software. I'm looking forward to it.

Also we seem to be in the process of buying a house. Offer has been made, banks alerted, lawyers consulted. It's five bedrooms, and I swear at least ten people have pointed out to me that I'll have room to take in foster kids. We had a small boy at the office the other day, accompanied by social services, for a statement, and I said to the corporal, "I can resist the stray dogs right now, but I want to take in the stray kids."

In Iqaluit, the sun still goes down, I think. aaaaaahhhhhh.

I was in the kitchen at work making coffee. Dave, the Staff Sergeant, and Russ, one of the constables, were rummaging through the chocolate bars in the cupboard, and we were talking in a desultory way. So desultory that I can't even remember what we were discussing. Suddenly Russ said, "We've had this conversation before, in a dream I had. And I had the dream before I even started working here." I told him that things were strange right now, that someone else I'd talked to had been complaining of deja-vu. Also, my son asked me that morning whether I thought it was a problem that his hand was a computer cursor. An arrow.

Dave said, "You should have just told him to run it over a link, it would have turned back into a hand." Then he said, and this was the thing that surprised me, because he's generally a pretty prosaic guy, "They must be changing something in the matrix."

So, beware. If Dave can feel it, it must be big.

This 24 hours of daylight thing is killing me. I can't sleep properly and yet I'm yawning all the time. We're short on guards at work and last weekend they called me at 6:45 am on Sunday and got me to come down and watch 12 people. In 5 cells. Crazy.

However, it is warm. 15 degrees today. People are out in shorts. Not me, I should add. But people.

Because I wanted to read this tonight, I thought I'd share it with you all. In the 17 or so years since I first read this poem, I have never come across another that I've uniformly kept on wishing I had written. I have liked others over the years, but this one continues to apply. Probably goes to show that I'm not the cheeriest person, but oh well. It's a good poem.

Aubade

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
- The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear - no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anasthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small, unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can't escape,
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

Philip Larkin

Miguel bought me a jigsaw puzzle. 750 pieces, a sort of pastoral scene of a stone wall with a wrought iron gate in it, and trees behind. So lots of stone pieces and lots of leaf pieces. I've been working on it every spare moment since the weekend. It's done now. He says he won't buy me any more because I was obsessed with this one.

I've been working on compiling our domestic violence statistics, at work, for a community plan intended to address family violence. The research makes for depressing reading, on the whole. I had to plough through a lot of cases, because the statute for assault (sec. 266) includes all kinds of assaults. So in some cases I had to ask around -- a man assaulted a woman but are they partners? Although jealousy seems to be a common flashpoint, most of the reports are also linked to over-consumption of alcohol. And then I found a statistic on the StatsCan site, to the effect that if your partner is a drinker -- that is, drinks five or more drinks at least once a week -- you are SIX times more likely to be a victim of domestic violence.

One thing that surprised me with the cases here is that although some of the women who were assaulted eventually refused to cooperate and no charges were laid (the Crown will not support the police going ahead with charges if there are no co-operative witnesses) all of the men who were assaulted by their partners were co-operative and charges were laid against the women. Granted, more men were still charged than women.

So I don't know if this is just a Nunavut thing? We've got such huge rates of personal victimization in the first place. Statistics are interesting... (really...)

Rachael Ray. In the sink.

I don't know exactly what she's up to. But it kinda looks like fun.

For Ed, the story of my fist-fight.

When I was eleven, I was a small, quiet girl with a pigtail. I think I was about 4’9” and maybe 70 lbs. I didn’t talk much in class, because I had an English accent and kids often mimicked me. Something I still hate to this day. When I was eleven, I moved to a new school, in a small town in Southern Alberta, and in my new and strange classroom, I sat in front of a larger boy named Kevin. He called me flat-chested and skinny (both of which I was) and he would pull my braid, hard, and poke me with pencils, when the teacher was out of the room. Which was a lot. (As a side note, the boy’s name was indeed Kevin, but I’m not putting his last name, because I don’t want him reading this.) He would sometimes try to bug me on the playground, but mostly I could run away. It was while I was stuck in the classroom that his teasing and torturing was a problem.

I told my dad that this boy was bugging me, and dad said I should just hit him a few times and put a stop to it. To facilitate this, dad taught me how not to punch like a girl. Don’t tuck your thumb into your palm, he said, and keep your wrist flat. Dad let me punch him a fair bit, until I was good at it. I liked how it felt, but I didn’t think it was a good idea to start punching Kevin, so I didn’t.

However, while I was internally debating the ethics of defending myself, Kevin escalated his tactics. One particularly scary day, he put his hands around my neck while the teacher was out of the room, and strangled me. I could feel myself starting to pass out, and it hurt. When he stopped, I was angry. I said to him, from the bottom of my anger, “I’m gonna get you.” I don’t remember what he said exactly, but it was something sneering to the effect of, do you want to fight me after school, little girl, and I said yes.

Word got around. I don’t know how. But after school there was a crowd on the little kids’ playground, waiting for me and Kevin.

I remember the exhilaration. The feeling of acting out my anger, as I hit him, my self-righteous tower of anger at my own helplessness and Kevin’s cruelty. I think I hurt him. He went running inside, and later I heard he went to tell the principal that Katie was beating him up. It was said that the principal, a retired farmer, said, “What do you want me to do about it? You’re getting beaten up by a girl?”

I have to say, though. I have told this story a few times over the years, and the consensus among those I tell it to is that nowadays, if one of my daughters beat up a boy, something would be done about it, at school, because of the panic over violence among girls. There were no consequences, for me. Nobody was scared of me....

Ian's back. He very kindly password-protected my computer, while he was away in Quebec, but neglected to tell me the password when he returned. So tonight while he was out at cadets, I started it up for the first time since he got back, and spent some time guessing passwords. When he came home from cadets I greeted him with "Please tell me you know the password for my computer." He did. He says he didn't want anyone to play with my laptop while it was unattended at the science fair, which is fair enough, and thoughtful of him. He seems to be back in one piece, and I can use my computer again. I missed my blog. And my boy. He grew while he was gone, I swear. He says he had a great time, and he won 700 dollars and a 1500 dollar scholarship to Western University in Ontario. Yay Ian!

Jazzy's ashes arrived yesterday, and are now on top of the fridge. I think we'll probably go scatter them somewhere, when it warms up and the land's a bit less soggy. I miss her so much. Joeby's still lost. Kirsten pointed out to us that he rarely gets treats now because he doesn't know how to ask for them. That was Jazz's job. She went and stood by the treat cupboard and barked meaningfully, and then they both got treats. She was also the one who told me when they needed water, by flipping the metal bowl around on the kitchen floor, making a godawful noise. And she'd keep doing it until she got results. I have to remind myself to keep checking his water bowl. Poor boy. I also don't know when people come to the door. Jazz always barked, but Joeby just coughs politely once or twice. He doesn't go pee when we let him outside, either, now, he just stands there and stares at us. I guess he only knew that's what they were doing if Jazz did it first, I don't know. Either that or he's waiting for her to come out too and doesn't understand. Dumber than a bag of hammers. I'm trying not to be angry with him for being the stupid one who is still alive, and my sweetie's not...

Miguel's been away too, for two weeks, he just got back on the weekend. I've been interested to observe in my own behaviour that I cope really well while he's away; I take care of everything, and I don't whine to him on the phone or anything, I look after children, dog stuff, shop for food, feed people, while he was gone this time I even cleaned out the storage room and went to the dump, and did a whole bunch of baking for an open house at work, but when he gets back... (as a side note, the dump was an adventure, it's a half-charred wasteland featuring piles of caribou heads, empty liquor bottles and stinky diapers. Interesting place.) When he gets back I tend to fold, and stop making any decisions for a week or so, and let him do all the cooking. Fortunately he doesn't seem to mind. I make sure to give him a few days to rest before I abdicate responsibility. It used to be when he travelled (his jobs have required this for a few years now) that I would be so looking forward to him coming home (so that he could carry his weight again) that I would be really impatient when he needed to rest for a few days after his trip.

The sun now does not go down. At all. I have been having trouble sleeping. Although, the amount of coffee I drink might have something to do with that.

Somewhere we are walking together on a beach. We don't talk much. There's no need. I have never known another companion as loving and unconditionally loyal as you. I know that I will stop crying, because my memories will always be full of you. The god that cares for furry animals has charge of you now. I hope that he has a cupboard full of treats, some small stuffed animals that he won't mind if you chew, and that he lets you sleep on his bed. I know I have to let go. It's just hard.

Thank-you to everyone who has reached out, here, in email, and on the phone. It means a lot.

My son is off to Quebec for the Canada-wide science fair. He's taking my laptop, because he runs his robot software off it, and for some reason I can't ever manage to post to my weblog from any other computer. So it might be quiet here until the 22nd.

The vets phoned at 10:15. They put me on the speakerphone in the operating room, and told me that they couldn't do anything for Jazzy. I've got an enormous lump in my throat and I wish so so much that I could have been there to say goodbye. They didn't bring her round from the anaesthetic, and they said it was peaceful. I don't feel peaceful. I want my furry friend. I want to go upstairs and find her waiting for me on my bed. I want her to come and steal my chips. Bark at me in the mornings until I provide milk-bones. Flip her food dish around when she's hungry. Bite visitors.

They are sending me her ashes.