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."

It was bunny hunt day today, at Beavers. As you can see from the picture, it's still pretty cold here. Dan, this year's long-suffering bunny, kindly agreed to come and allow himself to be found, captured, chopped up, and made into stew. Great fun was had by all, and Dan even seemed to be in pretty good spirits afterwards.

From Ian re-doing his cadet uniform buttons, I have a small pile of black shiny buttons on my desk. I keep catching sight of them out of the corner of my eye, and thinking they're candy and I should eat them.

Lucky I learned the self-Heimlich maneuver at the first aid course I took recently. If I'm going to take up swallowing non-food objects I'll probably need it.

Guitar Hero came back from our vacation, with the kids. I didn't buy it when I was Christmas shopping because I failed to see the point. I still don't see the attraction - I could stand it if they were legitimately practicing a musical instrument - God knows I lived through the "Ode To Joy on a recorder" days and the "Theme from Star Wars on a clarinet" days, at least that seemed to be an accomplishment. But Guitar Hero? Songs I didn't even like from the 80's are being played to the accompaniment of tapping on a mock guitar. I need new knitting needles. Because in addition to my button-swallowing fetish, I have the urge to plunge needles into my ears.

It's been blizzarding the last few days, and everything is all drifted over again here. Will spring ever come? Where oh where is Delia's global warming? (Just kidding).

We drove out on snowmachines to West Arm on the weekend so the kids could jump off the snowcliffs. We were just ahead of the storm, and when Kirsten and I rode back it was behind us, blowing hard. Bit of a wild ride, but fun. Tonight it's calm and cloudy, but the storm is done. It will be back to business as usual tomorrow. Which is good because we're almost out of water. I don't know if I've mentioned here that water and sewage are trucked to our house - we have tanks in the furnace room like everyone in town - and if the trucks don't run we have to go into conservation mode. Hard with teenagers.

Ian and the Cadets were shooting in Yellowknife this weekend, they came first in the competition and get to go to the Nationals in Vancouver in May.

Over at Arctic Hound I got tagged.

What was the first rock concert you went to?
I think it was Bryan Adams when I was in grade 11, in Lethbridge. Him and Platinum Blonde. I know that the first rock concert I wanted to go to was Journey when I was in grade nine and some friends of my dad's had offered to take me but my mum said no.

What is the best rock concert you've ever seen?
I would have to say The Tragically Hip (oh, you're not really surprised are you?) at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre as reviewed in this very weblog back in 2002. But I also remember quite fondly an amazing and deafening Def Leppard show back in the late 80's and a raucous Nazareth concert in the same time period. On the not-so-good side there's a Billy Idol concert where Billy was so drunk he could barely stand up - at one point he fell off the stage and then climbed back up and started swearing at the audience. The Cult were the opening act and they definitely outdid him.

We enjoyed the cruise - here's Miguel on the bed with our towel elephant. (And Frederick, he came for the cruise).


One of the most interesting (to me) results of travelling is the perspective it gives me on my life in general. Especially when making journeys with kids, things get very basic - do we have food, are we all warm/cool/sunscreened and where will we be sleeping tonight. The conversations we had on the upper decks of the cruise ship in the dark, me and the kids, were wide ranging and free of the distractions of television, computers, and phones. We talked about the future, theirs and mine, and what we remembered from the past, when they were children.





In the course of one of these conversations, Ian told me that he always thought, when he was small, that the tattoo on my ankle was a telephone pole... (It's a cross.) I laughed and asked him if he had a theory as to Why I would have a telephone pole on my leg, and he said, "I thought it had something to do with a Tragically Hip song". Which is not a bad theory, really. Wish I'd thought of that...





Rachel and I snuck off to get ice cream one afternoon, and Kirsten and I had coffee on the deck of the boat late at night, talking about love and relationships. Miguel did Miguel things, mostly, but one afternoon we forgot to tell the kids we were going to sit in the bar down on the casino deck, and managed to be there for about two hours, talking and drinking margaritas, until the kids found us.





There was a slot machine called Lucky Lemmings, that we kept walking past on the casino deck. On the third day of the cruise I said to Miguel, "I think it's a sign, we're from the Arctic, lemmings, you know, we should put some money in it." So we poked in a five dollar bill, and as it was a nickel slot we played it for quite a while. It kept spitting out money, periodically, and I was putting it in a bucket. After half an hour or so, Miguel went off to watch an art auction, and I was still playing all the quarters. Pushing the buttons, listening to the lemming song, playing a nickel at a time and the money was still coming out faster than I could put it in. When the bucket was full, I figured I'd go cash it in and see how much I had. The cashier took the bucket without comment, and poured it into a counting machine. As I watched, the display went from 10.00 to 20.00 to 30.00, counting all the quarters, and I thought, oh, hey, 40 bucks or so, that's cool. But it didn't stop. It kept going and going and didn't slow down until it got to 190.00 Grand total 192.00. I said to the cashier, "Pretty good for five bucks, hey?" and she looked a bit startled.





I went back to the room and put the money in the safe. Miguel put a bit more money in the slots later in the day, but I kept the lemming money and we went to a steakhouse in Cocoa Beach for dinner when David (Kirsten's boyfriend) and his mom and sister were with us. Nice dinner, even if the servers were a bit surly. Wait staff in Florida, I guess you have to feel sorry for them - they're probably a lot friendlier when it's not Spring Break. Even at the IHOP the waitress told me she didn't know where her head was that week.