Letters To My Sister (#8)

October 4th, 1979 was Cup of Peas Day at D.’s school. 

I have a terrible urge not to explain that. However, I guess I must.  Today the kindergarten kids made a Thanksgiving Soup, with every kid bringing an ingredient, and D.’s contribution was one cup of peas.  She was very upset that I put the peas in a plastic bag.  Supposed to be a cup!!  Nonetheless apparently the soup turned out okay, because every kid had some and “nobody throwed up”.  D. thought she might because she hates peas.

Delta Daze is on this weekend (Inuvik’s excuse for a celebration) (of what I have no idea).  There’s a draw for a truck but we didn’t buy a ticket this year.  There will be a parade and a street dance, but one or the other or both could be called off because of all the slushy snow everywhere.  This year they have a new attraction – a honey bucket race.  (Honey buckets are crude indoor facilities consisting of a large can with a garbage bag in it,  in lieu of regular indoor plumbing.)  I wonder how authentic the entries have to be – you know, full of shit, or just had the bag changed.  Honestly, this thing gets more ridiculous every year.  The teams must have five members, and one of them must be seated on the throne.  The others carry that lucky person to the finish line. 

Tonight we had some people from Paulatuk here for supper.  They’re staying at the Eskimo Inn, and arrived promptly by cab at 6:00 p.m., which is when W. told them to be here.  W. arrived promptly at 6:45.  I could have strangled him.  I don’t even know these people.  Well, I guess I do now, but good grief.  They are Jonah and Helen Nakimayak, and their daughter Alice and son Herbert.  We sat around and watched the Beachcombers and grinned at eachother a lot until W. finally got home.  Then while I’m putting supper on, W. hauls in a pail of muktuk, which STINKS and they all dive into that.  It completely destroyed my appetite.  So the roast and vegetables got cold, the bread dried out, the tea resembled molasses, the kids got rangy, and promptly at 7:30 they all rushed off to play Bingo, W. left to fix the dog pen at the river, and I was left to settle my kids down and wash all the rancid muk-tuk’ed dishes.  All in all, what a fun evening.  Helen and I discussed the weather, kids, and the excitement of bingo and then stared off into space a lot.  So now I have to make some notes in my “times you made me want to kill you” book about W. for reference in our future divorce procedings. 

My friend Debbie is driving me nuts.  I’ll just give you an example of a typical day.  She phones at 9:00 a.m. and says she’s coming over for coffee.  I rip around drying my hair and making the beds and putting my kids’ more precious possessions out of reach.  They arrive at 9:30 – the three year old monster, two year old terror, and grinning slobbering baby.  I don’t know what he has to be happy about, but I like him the best because he never messes up my house.  We send the kids upstairs to mess up the beds and haul everthing that is anywhere to anyplace else it doesn’t belong.  We drink three cups of coffee and discuss all the horrible things the kids have ever done and are likely to do next, then dole out cookies that get crumbled and ground into the carpet, and juice that gets spilled.  By the time I’m on the verge of total insanity, they decide to leave, and Debbie tells me to drop over in the afternoon.  I really feel like saying “What the hell for??” but often I invent some kind of excuse.  The excuses are getting lamer all the time.  If I do go over there the kids play dress up, and it takes me an hour to round up all the clothes they came in.  They also scream and yell and hit eachother, and after all that, don’t want to leave!!  THEN, after supper Debbie calls and asks us all over for a visit because her husband is home and they like to have a couple of drinks and play cards and visit.  W. has gone with me a total of 3 times, but its upsetting for him to be around little brats that he’s not allowed to beat up on.  HAHA!!  Then the next morning it starts all over again, and I’m being called to drop over for coffee.  Deb is liable to show up here anytime.  How she can be so mobile and ambitious with three kids is beyond me.  If I go over there, nine times out of ten there will be other moms with kids, or they have left their kids there while they go downtown or to an appointment or for a walk.  ISN’T THIS DEPRESSING???  She goes on holidays next week.  Sometimes I feel like we’re living together I see her so much.  Actually she’s a really nice person, who just happens to be going out of her mind.  I’m trying hard not to follow her example, although from this letter you’d never guess.

At this point in the letter there is a huge happy face drawn in the middle of the page, googley eyed and grinning crazily.

Surprise!  I believe this is D.’s art work.  Did I tell you we sold my car?  Put an ad up in the post office, and had three zillion calls and sold it the next day.  It never works well in the winter, W. was always working on it, and the insurance would have expired shortly so we just decided to get rid of it.  We got what we paid for it – perhaps could have gotten more, but were afraid to push our luck.  Now I’m really walking everywhere, lugging library books and groceries, etc. etc.  We’re still trying to move away from here.  We’ll likely sell everything and then stay another five years. 

The moving had to do with W.’s job satisfaction.  He was meant to be the boss, not the peon who takes orders. 

The territorial election was on Monday and I had to be at the polls from 8:30 a.m. until 9:30 p.m.  But I wasn’t actually in one place, I had to be going back and forth all day to make sure everybody was behaving themselves.  And since everybody was, I read an entire book and drank 500 cups of coffee during the day.  Then I had to hang around while they counted all the votes and delivered the ballot boxes to the Returning Officer.  The guy that everybody expected to win won, so in my opinion it was all a waste of time.  Except that I get paid over $1000 for reading a book and drinking coffee and bombing around in the R. O.’s truck all day. 

(five days later)

I don’t really have anything to add, but I’m sure if I start writing I’ll think of something.  I’m waiting for my government cheque to arrive so I can blow it all.  I got a really nice dress (well, nice for $40) to wear at Christmas in case we go out partying anywhere.  It’s in the fall/winter catalogue on page 91.  Don’t barf.  Now I have to get 3 inch heels to wear with it so it will look right, so if news reaches you that I’ve broken both my legs you’ll know the reason why.  Likely at least 20 other people will have ordered the same dress and be wearing it at the same Christmas party, so I won’t feel centered out or anything.

I spent the last couple of days cleaning house.  W. has been out all weekend checking fish nets.  I super cleaned the store room to make room for all the Christmas presents I’ve ordered for the kids.  D. is finally going to get her real cupboard, fridge and stove, and K. is getting a big yellow riding truck, so we won’t have room for our furniture after those arrive.  I’m buying myself a new kitchen garbage can since the one I’ve had for 8 years is chipping and rusting and I can hardly stand to clean it anymore.  In fact, I don’t think I’ve cleaned it for a couple of years.  Deb and family leave on holidays tomorrow night, so I figure we can see eachother only about five times before then.  This is a really short school week because Monday was a holiday and Friday is professional development day for the teachers.  K. can go only on Wednesday this week.  He is trying so hard to say his “R” sounds.  So I hear things like errrrrrrr wun (run), errrrrrrr wight (right),  errrrrrrrrrrrr woad (road) etc.  Anyway, he’s terrrrrrr wying. 

I’m afraid we’re going to have 40 below weather and gale force winds on Hallowe’en as usual.  The kids will likely make it to about three houses before they’re frozen solid.  I should write to the Commissioner and ask him to change Hallowe’en in the north to sometime in August. 

Well I have to WALK downtown to see if there’s any milk to buy – we’ve been out of it all weekend because they had none left on Saturday.  The kids were quite happy to drink Kool Aid but they drew the line at putting it on their cereal.  I’ll try to errrrrrrr wite again soon. 

Excellente

I’ve been bitten by the procrastination lazy ass bug from hell.  In fact, I think I might be a carrier.  And it’s damned COLD here, (minus forty something with wind chills into the minus fifties) so maybe my brain has frozen, or at least reached temperatures so low that normal function is not possible.  I have been reading books though, so I’m not comatose or anything, and here they are:

                  

The Gathering, by Anne Enright won The Man Booker Prize for 2007 award and is excellent. 

Anything by Alice Munro is excellent, and Friend of My Youth is an excellent collection of short stories.

The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler is also excellent, and I guess I’m not alone in thinking this, since it has been made into a movie. 

Now if I had any ambition whatsoever I would look in a thesaurus for some synonyms for the word excellent.  But, like I said.  See above.

I would also like to mention that I am now reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime by Mark Haddon.  It is turning out to be amazingly excellent. 

Man, I wish book reports in school had been this easy.

Letters To My Sister (#7)

This letter is typed (rather badly) on some kinda swanky (mom’s favourite adjective for something ritzy) writing paper with wildlife pictures at the top of each page.  The little blurbs under the pictures say things like “THE BUFFALO – He ruled the Plains for Centuries” and “THE ELK – Antlered King of the Wilderness.”  I guess female animals weren’t important parts of herds.  Whatever.  It’s very gaggy.  And I’d like to say this was before the invention of correction tape, but probably I just didn’t have any, so I corrected mistakes in my own unique way. 

Glad to receive your letter, and happy you like the towels.  I figured after all our showers and baths there that we owed you something.  I hope our knee is better now – guess that must have been fairly painful.  That should say “your” knee actually.  Sounds like I’m having severe sympathy pains.  I got a bunch of cars GOD!! cards….at the drug store today, and you would not believe what they have been through.  I notice M.’s birthday card escaped most of the disasters.  First some mud fell from K.’s goots um…BOOTS into the bag (that’s what he claims), then D. sat on them in the car, and finally the cards were removed from the bag and placed on top of some honey on the kitchen counter.  Have you seen much of R. and J. and kids lately?  After your exciting weekend, that is?  We (W.) has (have?) decided not to come back for a visit until they are back home again.  So I guess if they never come back you won’t have to put up with any of us ever again.  W. kills me with all the excuses never to go on holidays.  But I’m in the process of maiking (making) a whole pile of money as an Election Claik (!) Clerk for the Territorial Election which is in September, so money will be no object.  Haha etc.  I wonder why I can’t get any typing jobs/????

Last weekend we went on a camping trip to one of the whaling camps at Kendall Island, and had a good time.  The people are all so nice and friendly, making tea and coffee and bread and bannock so that we spend all our time eating.  We were camped right beside where they sight whales, and of course we didn’t see any, so I kind of wondered if they made the whole thing up.  But they did have some nice ripe muktuk from the last whale they got, and W. ate it!!  I can’t get past the smell – it is rank and it’s all fat and greasey and rubbery.  We went to Gary Island one day for a picnic!  Isn’t that the limit, when you’re a million miles from nowhere out in the extreme boonies and you go another ten miles closer to nowhere to eat.  Anyway, we saw a whole bunch of bird’s nests and a lot of baby terns, and the kids got to hold a couple of the terrified little creatures.  I hope they won’t be abandoned.  They wanted to keep them for pets.  By the way, you could not have gotten D. a better present for her birthday.  She has stuff “set up” all over the place, and at night she gathers it all up and takes it up to her room to set it up all over again before she can possibly go to sleep.  This includes the Barbie stuff that mom sent, and her crazy fool of a mother got her some real makeup which she guards with her life.  I never saw a kid that was such a nut for junk.

Anyway, to get back to the trip – we took the grand tour of Kendall Island which has been an Inuit summer camp for years.  They have a wishing log where you place something precious and make a wish, which you can’t tell anybody about, and you can never take back what you put there, or take away anything that anyone else put there or it’s bad luck.  So there is quite a collection  of stuff, tin cans, cigarette boxes, rocks, even some jewelry.  D. had a really hard time thinking what to leave, but she finally decided on a chocolate bar wrapper, and I had to give her all kinds of suggestions on what to wish for.  She of course refuses to tell me what her wish finally was because all the other kids impressed her with the seriousness of the whole thing.  K. couldn’t have cared less about the wishing log, but he was all excited to see ghosts in the haunted cabin.  There is also an animal skull out in the open that is supposed to bring bad luck if you touch it, and there are several graves on the island.  What a superstitious lot.  Anyway, the trip back was about six hours by boat, and we were all dirty and tired and beat when we got home.  We were going to go again this weekend but the weather is really bad, windy and cloudy and raining, so we likely won’t get up there again this year.

I can’t believe all the camping trips I went on and lived to tell about!!  W. and the kids loved them.  I didn’t, although I appear to have been pretty good at faking it.

On Friday we went to a party for some people that we knew in Cambridge, who have been here two years, and are now moving down to northern B.C.  It’s so silly, we’ve maybe seen them a grand total of three times while they were here, but the party was fun anyway.  Not like we’ll miss them or anything.  A bunch of drunks, nobody talking any sense.  Tonight we had a bunch of people here for supper because we had nothing better to do.  I’m sure getting good at these spur of the moment things where I have to throw a bunch of food together in a hurry.  We give people lots of beer first so they don’t care what kind of crap we feed them.  This does not include relatives of course – I’m not trying to scare you away from coming here for a visit.

I have no idea what people I was referring to, although W. might remember.  We met so many people from so many different places it was impossible to keep track of them all.  One time when we were in Edmonton staying at a hotel we got on an elevator with some people that looked vaguely familiar.  It took about four floors of staring at eachother before we finally decided who they were and where we’d met them. 

When you do come to see us all the roads here should finally be paved and all the boardwalks removed and sidewalks put in.  It sure is going to make a difference in the amount of dust and mud.  There is one part of the road which is just hilarious.  They made the sidewalk in front of the post office about four feet higher than the one that was there before, because the other side of the road was higher and they had to make it all level.  So now we are in grave danger of stepping off the sidewalk and killing ourselves, or at least breaking some bones when we pick up our mail.  People have suggested that they just raise the building up a couple of feet so the slope is more gradual.  If they put in fill, quite a lot of the post office will disappear.  They actually have drawn a line about eye level on the side of the building and labled it “top of sidewalk”.  I hope that’s a joke.  But I think they should also put up a Scenic Lookout sign to attract tourists.  Also, they’re saying that the Bay store is too close to the road, so maybe the sidewalk there will have to be just inside their doors.  I love this place.

(one month later)

W. had terrible luck goose hunting, but he doesn’t give up easily and is going back out again this weekend.  There were a bunch of trigger happy kids there with him and Sam, shooting at geese three thousand miles away so no geese got close enough to even see clearly.  And I guess Toban was a regular pillar of stubborness and decided  he would rather track rabbits than retrieve ducks. 

D. is off to kindergarten and happy as hell.  She has a crying fit when I go to pick her up because she doesn’t want to come home!  How embarrassing.  Her teachers are Miss Driver and Mrs. Dyck, and her best friends are Tina, Loretta, Marsh, and “a little girl who cries”.  I have heard of nothing and no one else since Tuesday.  Now if I can just get K. happily launched into play school as successfully I’ll be laughing.  D. goes from 9 to 11:40 every day, and K. will be in a portable behind the school 9 to 11 Mon. Wed. Fri.  We’ve sure had lots of rain the last few days, so I’ve been taking D. to school, but she is bound and determined that she is going to walk like all the big kids.  How I ever managed to have such an independent and outgoing little creature is beyond me.  I was sure never like that.  K. on the other hand is more like I was and thinks home is a very nice place to stay.

Last week we had Glen here from Frobisher Bay to be a witness in a trial in Aklavik.  W. was there too and they lost their case, so we went out to celebrate!  We don’t need much of an excuse here to have some fun.  We went for supper at the Ravens Nest, which is under new management and they’re trying to make it all classy with candles on the tables and a salad bar.  So all of us rowdies show up, me wearing blue jeans, W. still in his work clothes, Sam and Agnes slightly better dressed, Glen looking okay (which he does no matter what he wears) and Al wearing a white t-shirt on which he had Sam draw a tie with a black marker.  After we ordered we realized nobody had much cash and the place wasn’t set up yet for credit cards, so we were planning to start a big brawl later and sneak out in the midst of it.  The stupid bill came to well over a hundred dollars because Al kept ordering “another round”.  We just barely made it with everybody scraping their pockets and leaving about a fifty cent tip.  I didn’t have any money left to pay the babysitter.  Anyway, it is quite a nice restaurant (despite the clientelle) and we also have an A & W which is now called Arctic Take Out.  Apparently the MacKenzie hotel has a nice smorgasboard, and the Eskimo Inn still lets in all the riff raff.  If they didn’t they’d go out of business since there’s not much else here.  So when you come to visit us you won’t starve to death! 

There’s a film crew in town somewhere making a movie, if you can believe it, with real actors and stuff!!  They imported some wolves from California, and the story is supposed to take place in the Yukon, but they’re doing the filming here in the MacKenzie Delta.  No one I talked to knows what its called, but someone suggested Mad Trapper from Cabbage Flats.  So watch for that one at your local theatre.

K. has the headphones on listening to Sesame Street songs and is singing away like crazy.  He just had a bad bout of tonsilitis which he seems to finally be getting over.  He was on antibiotics for 8 days, then a kid hit him in the face with a toy and he had a cut and a bump and a bruise.  His eye started turning black, he threw up, then fell asleep and woke up really groggy and with a fever, so I took him to the hospital in case he had a concussion.  A nurse examined him, and then a doctor, we sponged him down to bring down his temperature.  They ruled out concussion, but decided it was still his tonsils, so he was put on stronger antibiotics for another 10 days!!  Poor kid.  He’s been doped up for ages, but his tonsils finally look almost normal.  And his black eye is fading.  Now he has decided to come and bug me and ask what every letter on the typewriter is.  Have to do that and then it will be time to pick up D.  Have you read the book “Scruples”?  I’m just finishing it.  It’s great.  Filth on every page.  Gotta go.  Love to George and M. 

George was the dog.  Can’t imagine what would constitute ‘filth’ way back when or why it was so great.  K. got his tonsils out after many antibiotic episodes same as the above.  It seemed he’d no sooner be off the medicine than he’d be sick again and right back on it.  I guess the movie they shot up the river wasn’t all that famous, because I still have no idea what it was called or even what it was about.  Or who was in it.  Missed my chance to be a star probably.  What can you do. 

Letters To My Sister (#6)

There are 8 letters dated over the various months of 1979!  Suddenly I had a lot to say!  But, as you are about to see, not really!!  First some background.

There was a federal election on May 22nd, 1979, in which Pierre Trudeau’s Liberals were defeated and Joe Clark’s Conservatives won a minority victory.  Later (in December) the Conservatives were defeated on a non confidence motion and Clark had to call another election.

On June 22nd The World Hockey Association folded.  Four teams – the Edmonton Oilers, the Winnipeg Jets, the Quebec Nordiques and the Hartford Whalers survived and moved to the NHL.  The Montreal Canadiens won the Stanley Cup for the 4th year in a row in 1979.   

The Supreme Court of Canada declared both Quebec and Manitoba’s provincial legislatures to be unconsitiutional because of their use of only one language. 

A train carrying dangerous chemicals derailed in Mississauga, and hundreds of thousands of people had to be evacuated. 

Forty two people died in a fire at a New Year’s Eve party in a club in Chaplais, Quebec. 

Trivial Pursuit was invented.

Heath Ledger was born.  And how sad it is that two days ago, at the age of 28, he died, from what at this point appears to be an accidental drug overdose.  Such an incredibly surprising and tragic loss.   

In the early spring of 1979 I was an enumerator for the Western Arctic Polling Division #9.  It was a list of about 180 names, meaning that I had a LOT of doors to go knocking on, and a lot of changes to make in such a transient paradise.  My area included seven appartment buildings, the nurse’s residence, and three residential streets.  One appartment building had been condemned and only two people lived in it.  Apparently they quite liked it there and didn’t want to leave. 

W. just informed me that there’s a lady here who would like me to be a polling officer at the territorial election in September.  Good grief – has the news spread so fast about the terrific enumeration job I’m doing??  A pollling officer only has to check off names of voters on election day so I think I might be able to handle that.  By the way, W. is sitting here with the head phones on.  This is, I think, so that he can talk to me when the mood hits him but he doesn’t have to listen to my answers.

Had a little crisis with the kids yesterday.  They came to the door crying because an older kid who lives behind us had washed their faces with snow.  He’s been a brat since we moved here and likes these kind of ‘jokes’.  I dried their tears and agreed that he’s not nice at all, and advised them to stay away from him.  And if he comes over here, tell him your mom will wash HIS face with snow and see if he thinks THAT’S funny.  So off they go again.  K. sticks around in our yard, but D. heads right back to where they were to get this kid to come over!  Thank God she couldn’t find him, because she takes me seriously and literally, and would have expected me to shove snow in the kids face.  K. is such a pacifist compared to her. 

Today when I went to the hospital to get the list of names of the nurses in residence I had K. with me.  We had to wait about 20 minutes for the guy I was supposed to see.  D. would have been restless and talkative and driving everyone up the wall – but what does K. do?  Lies down on the floor to wait.  (Is he okay?? asks a concerned nurse.  Yep, he’s fine, just relaxing while we wait. )  Sigh.

Well I suppose I should stop rambling and talk to my husband for awhile.  Sign language maybe.  He always says I never pay any attention to him.

The next letter is dated mid June, and in it I talk about what a great trip we had east.  Our holidays were usually split between my family and W.’s and I suppose this is what we’d just got back from doing.

We’ve had some very hot weather.  It was almost impossible to sleep upstairs and I had a big fan going all night in the kids’ room for a couple of nights, and now that W. is home from his caribou survey (he was gone 11 days) it has rained and last night it snowed.  The only good thing I can say about that is that it may have killed off a few of the bugs which were out in full force when we got back. 

While W. was gone I had my friend Denise and her little two month old baby here for five days.  Boy I sure am glad I’m not having any more of those troublesome little characters around any more!  Actually he was really good, but he still wakes up to be fed during the night and likes to be entertained all day. 

W.’s mom figures now that our kids are such good travellers that we will be going there every summer, and to avoid world war three we agreed with her, but it will likely be a couple of years before we try it again.  We had a super great time ‘down east’ this time;  in fact its the first holiday I can remember that W. wasn’t just chomping at the bit to get going to Kenora.  Our visit there was nerve wracking to say the least with the two Spencer families not on speaking terms and us trying to divide the time equally between them. 

Long story behind all that.  In a nutshell, W.’s brother and his wife lived WAY too close to each of their sets of parents, who didn’t like eachother much.  By trying to please everyone, they pleased no one, perhaps least of all eachother.  But that’s all conjecture on my part.  We just tried to keep out of it as much as possible, and when the yelling started we’d take our kids for walks. 

My friend Debbie is having her baby the end of this month, and I’ve offered to look after her kids while she is in the hospital.  What an idiot, eh??  If I were her I’d try hard to develop complications and stay for at least a month.  I really try not to be all doom and gloom about the situation, but I know if I was coming home with a newborn to a two and a three year old that I’d be insane in less than a week.

I see that baseball has started again and nobody came to tell me they needed me, so I missed the chance to tell them where to go.

I’ve had to leave this letter and restart it – here’s what’s been happening.  At 1:00 Debbie came with her two kids because she had a Dr. appointment at 2:00 and she likes to give me time to get psyched up for looking after her kids before she leaves them.  While she was waiting to go, Pat and her little one year old Coral dropped by to pick up the knitting needles that Debbie brought with her to lend to Pat so that Pat wouldn’t have to go all the way to Debs to get them.  Deb goes to her appointment, Pat stays for an hour, then leaves, I gather up all the mess and dress the kids to go outside (no small task, because it snowed and rained last night and this morning).  I do the dishes, Debie returns and sits down for another coffee, Marg calls to say she is coming over with her little one and a half year old Emily for coffee, the phone rings, W. tells me he is bringing three guys home with him for supper.  It is now 4:00.  I haul out some chicken and potatoes and start that when Marg and Emily arrive, and Marg helps me peel potatoes!!  Amy throws a fit because she can’t stand Emily, my kids are begging me to put a record on so they can dance (??) Ian cries to go home.  When they finally decide to leave my kids have fits because they don’t want them to go.  After they leave I again pick up the mess, D. slops around making a snackin’ cake and eats half the batter, I shake and bake the chicken and make a salad, do the dishes, set the table.  WHO SAYS LIFE IN THE NORTH IS BORING??

(One week later)

I have been really busy getting prepared for the two little kids, Amy and Ian, that I’ll be looking after while their mom is in hospital having child number three.  I’ve put a million little things up out of reach so that there is hardly anything left for them to play with, but I’m sure they’ll still manage to create complete chaos. 

We got our holiday pictures back – I took a million of canoeing, a few of Dad and the kids, and W. and his fish.  And that’s it.  I have NONE of the Spencers. 

We spent last weekend camping down the river with Pat and Al and their little one year old Coral.  And the dog.  It rained a lot and we had nothing better to do than eat constantly.

I’m enclosing a job ad from The Drum, in case you’re interested.  haha!  Gotta get dinner ready, W. has a meeting tonight.  Thanks for the crochet cotton.  I’m making thousands of doilies. 

What a completely crazy time in my life. I’m worn out just writing about it.

Gift Suggestions

Anyone who has been married for any length of time at all, or just knows someone who is or was or will be, knows that the participants in these kinds of partnerships deserve gifts for staying together.  They actually deserve a lot more than that, but gifts are a good start.  And it’s nice to have some guidelines I suppose, for the giver AND the receiver.  I imagine some bored shopkeeper jotted down a list, tired of having to come up with suggestions, and forever after able to point to his sheet and say something like “Aha, their tenth anniversary you say?  Might I interest you in this leather whip?”  or some such similar comment.  Or item, for that matter.  You can also go traditional or modern, depending on what I don’t know, but those are the choices. 

And when you’re on the receiving end and your spouse says to you “What’s with all this silver shit?” you can explain to him that it’s your 25th and thus silver anniversary.  Bonehead. Or some such illuminating explanation.  I don’t want to put words in your mouth.  Although after twenty five years, chances are he’s not listening to you anyway, so go ahead.

This is a card we received from my ‘baby’ sister on our own silver wedding anniversary.  Along with the requisite silver shit from people who took the whole thing seriously, we got a lot of soppy, tear-jerky, frilly, sparkley and lacey cards too, none of which I felt the urge to save.  But this one wins the gotta-save-it award hands down and remains my personal favourite to this day. 

I’m so happy I came across it, because we’re headed for our Glycerin anniversary as we speak, and a mere five years away from Spandex.  Be still my heart.  I wonder why that one isn’t somewhere back around year three when you could still get away with wearing it, but who am I to question this remarkable and thoughtfully put together directory.  It’s on a Marketplace Carlton card, and I’ve never seen it published anywhere else, so that’s why I’m sharing it here with you now.  I have to admit that some of the years are more challenging than others.  Like Cortisone, which would require a bit more thought than, say, Spackle or Rope.  And it might be a good idea to have a copy of it hanging around when the couple who were expecting rubies get an ice cube tray instead.  Just a suggestion.  You certainly can’t say after reading this that no one ever gave you any good suggestions. 

Letters To My Sister (#5)

In 1978 Pierre Elliot Trudeau was Prime Minister of Canada.  His lovely young wife Margaret was our very own Canadian version of the future Princess Diana;  but of course we had no way of knowing or even imagining such a thing while we were living through the shocking revelations of her various faux pas in the political world.  They were a duo who certainly gave all the old fuddy duddys in the country something new and different to think about.   I quite admired them both.  A Soviet satellite called Cosmos 954 broke up over northern Canada in late January, but I personally never came across any of its parts.  The Supreme Court of Canada declared unilingual legislatures and courts unconsititutional.  We wondered what would be the point of incorporating all that French into the everyday workings of the Arctic.  The Commonwealth Games were held in Edmonton.  We did not attend.  Mordecai Richler wrote The Great Comic Book Heroes and Other Essays .  I’ve never read it.  Charles Best and Jack Warner both died, and Nelly Furtado was born.  Dan Hill won a Juno for male vocalist of the year, over Burton Cummings, Gordon Lightfoot, Valdy and Gino Vanelli.  What the hell were we thinking?

My son turned two in February.  My daughter would be four in July.  My two letters to my sister in February and May of 1978 were not concerned in the slightest with anything beyond that little world of moms with kids.  I’m a little embarrassed that I had to look up all those things – no one could ever guess at any one of them from my inane blather at the time.

Thanks very much for the shirt for K, and the airplane.  I hope I got that right – he ripped everything open and threw paper in all directions so I’m not positively certain about who sent what.  Everything to him on Sesame Street is “something-Ernie”, so he loves the picture of “Cookie-Ernie” on his shirt.  Strange kid. 

Now on to the really important stuff.

I have finally got my hair close to being all one length again after that disastrous shag cut or whatever it was last Christmas - it has taken a year.  After your wedding I went to a place in Kenora to actually get it styled instead of being scalped, and the guy did a really nice job, leaving it as long as possible and curling it back from my face.  I think that’s a first for being happy with a hairdresser, so when we go out again I’m going back there.  Probably 10 years from now.  Oh well.

What a strange expression that was – ‘going out’ – whenever anyone who lived in the north talked about heading south for a holiday, or to wherever they used to call home for a visit.  Most places of employment allowed for one, and sometimes two, paid out trips a year for their employees and their families.  So it was exciting to find out when people were going out, and where they were going to.  From Inuvik the paid out trip destination was Edmonton.  From there we were on our own.  So the people heading all the way back to (for example) Newfoundland sometimes couldn’t ”afford” that second paid out trip.  We never did live anywhere that the destination was either Winnipeg or Toronto, although either of those cities would have been ideal.  Edmonton and Montreal were our choices and we had to travel east or west from there. 

I went to a TOPS (Take Off Pounds Sensibly) meeting here awhile ago and came home so stunned.  Everybody there must have weighed 300 pounds.  Each week they give whoever loses the most weight a crown (to stick on your fridge), people who stay the same a turtle, and the one who gains the most a pig.  How incredibly stupid.  There was one girl there who apparently lost a hundred pounds but she is still enormous.  I thought I should be losing about 40 pounds but I felt so skinny in amongst all the rest of them that I’ve decided not to go back. 

I only went to that meeting on the urging of a friend who was probably sick to death of listening to me complain about my weight.  It didn’t seem like such a big issue after that.  The next part of the letter tells about all of us having had the flu (just exactly what every letter home should go on and on about), and how I needed to quit smoking, (unfortunately that didn’t happen for another four years), how W. was leaving soon for a three day planning committee meeting in Yellowknife, and how we had finally decided to get a registered home ownership plan at the bank. 

We won’t have to worry about carpets when we finally own our own home, we’ll just nail down all these furs.  Honestly, this place looks like a taxidermist’s display room.

Thanks for the recipes you sent.  I especially loved the one for Oatmeal Porridge from Grandma Higgins of the Canary Islands. 

We were making fun of our mom here.  No matter how simple and straightforward the recipe, (boil water, throw in some oatmeal, stir) whenever she got a recipe from anyone she would always make sure to write the person’s name on it.  Heaven forbid that she should take all the credit herself for something yummy that she threw together.  (We were used to seeing at the top of the recipe cards things like – Aunt Marie’s Brownies, Edna’s Coleslaw, Edith’s Date Squres, Mrs. So and So from somewhere’s Pickled Beets.  If she got it from a book or a newspaper, she would always name the source.  You can be sure there was never any plagerized cooking activity going on at OUR house. 

I just took two pies to the Anglican Church for a bake sale they’re having this afternoon.  Marg and I are going to the Baptist Church for a tea, so K. is going to a sitter, and D. is all thrilled to attend “Margaret’s Tea Party!! ” (happy excited shrieking).   W. is off to Yaya (whaling camp) for the day.  Who names these places??  K. calls it “Ya Ya Yo”. 

The next (and final, for some reason or other) letter of 1978 is written after my birthday.

Thank you for the birthday card!   I show it to everybody!  I also keep trying to forget how bloody old I am.  You can’t imagine what it’s like to actually be 29.  I used to think that was middle age.  Some people my age already have teenagers!  Well, so much for that.  Excuse me while I drink my prune juice and take a nap.

I’ve been going to baseball practices, trying out for the Snowbirds women’s team.  What a joke.  They asked me what position I’m good at and that stumped me.  Not field because I can’t catch or throw, not pitcher (remember the ball over the school roof??) not catcher because I’d be petrified and not infield because I can’t stop a ground ball and throw it in a straight line.  So, they told me maybe I’d do the least damage at third base where the pitcher and short stop can cover for me.  I am good at batting, but they want me to learn to bunt.  And I CAN run!  So I’m not completely hopeless.  Next week we learn how to slide.  Ha.  I don’t think so.  We’ve been practicing in a gym and running laps.  It’s nice to see all those red and panting faces right along next to me.

This past weekend we went camping with Glen and Rebecca out the Dempster Highway to Ringling River.  There was a river, a stream, hills and trees and birds, very little mud and no bugs.  Yay.  We all slept in a big tent with a wood stove.  K. ate so many hotdogs he got sick and D. found the three bears’ house (an old deserted cabin).  They weren’t home and there was no porridge, just some garbage. 

I have to add here that I forgot to take a hand mirror with me that weekend, and had to put my makeup on using the side mirrors on the truck.  YES!!  That’s exactly the kind of camper I was and still am to this day.

W. is leaving on his caribou survey tomorrow with Dave from Fort Good Hope, and I’ll have Denise here for a visit for a few days.  Tomorrow night I’m going to a ‘rummoli’ party with some baseball people.  What an exciting life I’m living.

(Three days later)

Denise just left this morning.  They guys didn’t get away until late yesterday afternoon, so I’m rid of my company all at once.  Denise cut my hair for me, in a long kind of surf cut.  I really like it, since it’s finally all one length again and I can just blow it dry.  It makes me look ten years younger.  Almost.  Hard to say at my advanced age. 

This picture was taken shortly after we moved to Inuvik, and the next one was taken shortly before we left. 

That one is sure grainy, but all I’m trying to do here is show how my hair evolved.  And thus illustrate the fact that I still have my priorites all screwed up, so nothing much has changed there.  I wore my hair like that for YEARS. 

So today I start my coffee visiting rounds again.  I should be cleaning my house for W.’s parents when they come in July.  It WILL take that long.  I also got two plants – haven’t a clue what they are, but they have lots of green leaves.  (brilliant, eh?)  Somebody gave them to me.  If they die I’ll never get any more.

The stupid things didn’t die, and it just encouraged me to expand in that area until my living room started to look like a jungle. 

I expect the reason there’s a big time lapse between these letters and the next is that we ‘got out’ for a visit and caught eachother up on everything of vital importance that way.  Or my sister came to her senses and actually threw some of my letters away.  Hard to say for sure.  But I think it’s the former.      

I am Brian

You are: Brian Griffin

You have a cultured background and can be partial to opera and jazz. You love to sing even though you may not be the best at it. You like to learn new languages and also craft short stories/essays in your spare time… you have a lot to say. Although you start things whole-heartedly sometimes you have difficulty finishing them. You are a stand up person and prefer to pay your own way and take care of yourself even though there are people around you competing for that role.
 

Well I think it’s pretty funny when I take a quiz to find out what Family Guy character I am and it turns out I’m the DOG.  The part about having a lot to say is certainly true.  And I like that he’s standing around holding a drink and looking bored.  I can do that.  And a whole hearted starter of things who has difficulty finishing them??  MOI??  Wherever did they come up with that idea I wonder.  I’d like to finish off this little blurb with something brilliant and insightful, but damn.  It’s difficult.

Letters To My Sister (#4)

These little blurbs are  taken from another hasty letter to my sister, winter of 1977, but there’s not much northern history even hinted at in this one.  It’s just a list of funny things, tiumphs and disasters, in random alternating order. 

D. would like to name one of our sled dogs Audrey.  I don’t think W. is too gung ho about that.  Can’t you just see him riding along yelling MUSH AUDREY!! Well, sadly, I CAN picture it.

I finally got my new furniture in here, after striking terror into the hearts of the housing association personnel.  My fame has spread to the Department of Public Works as well.  Our shower hose burst one morning and I phoned and it was replaced the same afternoon.  Someone has put fresh gravel over the mud in front of our unit of the row house.  Nobody elses in this neighborhood has been done that I can see.  Apparently all it takes is one nasty letter to a big shot to get you on the list of shit disturbers that need to be kept quiet at any cost.

A frazzled mom is not someone to tangle with.  I got a new carpet too.  For some reason or other the original had a lot of stains.  Which I SWORE were there before we moved in.  Ummmm, yeah.

I’ve been taking my kids to ‘moms and tots’ on Tuesday afternoons at the Anglican Church.  K. (not yet 2 but very mature)(and very loud) clomps around like he owns the place and is right at home playing with everyone and everything.  They have special activities for the 3 and 4 year olds, like painting, coloring, cutting and pasting, but D. NEVER wants to do what everybody else is doing.  When they have lunch, K. starts yelling “Cookies!  More!  All Gone!”  etc.  and D. sits all prissy by herself on a chair (everyone else is on the floor).  I pretend I don’t have a clue who they belong to.

K. spilled an entire bottle of shampoo on the carpet at the top of the stairs yesterday.  W. dumped water on it to clean it up.  So of course when he tried to wipe it up we had wall to wall bubbles and suds.  The kids thought it was really funny, until W. threatened to strangle them.

The other day both kids ran together and jumped onto the big chair in the living room;  it tipped over and rolled across the floor, kids and all.  But did it scare them?  Nope.  They laughed and wanted to do it again. 

K. has discovered the magic of crayons, i.e. that they can make marks just about anywhere you like.  When I let them paint together they now paint eachother’s faces.  They’ve also done a nice fingerpaint composition on the walls all the way up the stairs. 

K. also spilled an entire jug of apple juice on the kitchen floor this morning.  It’s unreal how sticky that stuff is when it’s spread thin and dries. 

The note ends abruptly with must go, lots to do. 

No kidding.  Maybe if I’d spent less time with all my diversions and more time watching my kids there wouldn’t have been quite so many ‘accidental’ spills, art work on all the wrong surfaces, and pieces of furniture rolling across rooms.  Let me just say that I was a mom who liked to let her kids learn things through trial and error.  Hands on.  That kind of thing.  I seemed to be always making up the rules AFTER the fact.  Like the time D. stuck a bead so far up her nose there was no way I could reach it, and I had to plug her other nostril with my thumb, and make her blow through her nose as hard as she could to dislodge it.  She was very happy that it came out.  And she told me she was NEVER going to do THAT again.  Good girl.  We were both so relieved we never got around to discussing why she did it in the first place.  Plus I probably had to run off right away to clean up some kind of spill somewhere. 

Letters To My Sister (#3)

There was an interval of about a month between letters two and three.  These are all sounding quite incredibly one sided, since I’m leaving out almost all of the comments I made about whatever my sister had written to me.  In real life I wasn’t quite as self centered as I appear to be here.  But those are her stories to tell, and this is mine and I’m just trying to stay focused on the historical day to day life of that person I was;  a young mom, far from home, staying alive and mostly happy and at least partially sane.

Your letter was terrific!  W. has been in such a bad mood for the past few days.  He came home for lunch today, read your letter, and actually laughed out loud!  So you see what a ray of sunshine you can be.  W. has been upset because (sorry, this is a long story) his boss and his wife had a baby.  The baby has upset their whole house and routine (duh) with mother and mother-in-law visiting, his wife tired out completely and getting sick, baby crying for what seemed like 12 hours non stop one day.  Boss has been acting rather strange at work.  Probably because he is no longer the center of attention and men have a hard time with that.  A few days ago he told W. to be in the office from 8:30 to 5:00 every day, Monday to Friday, no more travelling, and no sled dogs if they were going to interfere with his job.  Something stopped W. from telling him to shove this ultimatum in his ear, thank goodness, but he came close.

And so started a rocky work relationship, with two sets of priorities forever clashing.  W. was good at his job and had an excellent working relationship with the local hunters.  His boss had no raport with them at all.  I was great friends with the boss’s wife, and we got together socially a lot, where our bonehead spouses could be friendly with eachother for brief periods of time, if they consumed sufficient amounts of alcohol.  I love that I would write ‘in his ear’ instead of ‘up his ass’, which is what I really wanted to say.

My writing is funny because there’s a puppy chewing on my bare feet periodically.  We got a five week old female husky, brown and white, and we’ve named her Kimnik.  Which translated means – are you ready? this is priceless – DOG.  She’s really cute, chews everything and craps everywhere and every morning at 7:00 a.m. she yelps and howls.  K. carries her around with the crook of his arm around her neck,  so she is totally unable to utter any kind of protest.  Very soon she will be going out into the kennel.  Or I will be.  Right now I’m not all that particular about which one of us it is.

Kimnik was the mother to be of our eventual sled dog team of brothers.  We probably shouldn’t have kept her in the house at all, but she was such a baby at first that we did.  With strict orders from W. to not get too attached, because she was going to be an outside working dog, not a pet.  And surprisingly enough, even with her strange beginnings, she turned out to be one of the best sled dogs we had.

Tonight I entertained the stitch and bitch ladies.  W. took the kids out, so it was really peaceful.  The pup slept through it all, so now (12:30) she is up and ripping around.  Last night was Hallowe’en.  We had over a hundred kids, and for once I didn’t run out of stuff.  I’ve learned how to be more stingy.  On Sunday there was a baby shower for Marg (the boss’s wife).  They didn’t call the baby Ann after all, her name is Emily.  Kimnik has just gone berzerk, attacking chairs and other furniture.  The lab puppy that we were supposed to get from Wintoba Kennels (the only one in the litter) died, so that was a big disapointment.  Now we won’t get one until next spring, by which time we should also have another six or eight sled dog pups. 

(next day)

I got tired of being chewed to death by the mutt and went to bed.  Last night our heat went off and it’s freezing in here.  When it does this it goes off in the whole row house unit, so no doubt someone has called to complain and some guys will be here before long banging and clanging under the house until they get it fixed. 

Our house was full of radiators, and the heat came via utilidor, and sometimes things would freeze up.  When that happened we’d turn on the oven with the oven door open, and close off the rest of the kitchen to stay warm in that small space.  The ’stitch and bitch’ group was just a good excuse for a night out with the girls.  All of us would have been engrossed in our various creations even without the get-together.  But it was fun to see what other people were keeping themselves occupied by doing, and wonderful to hear women like myself echo my various complaints and concerns about being a mom, and living in this godforsaken place, and the exhorbitant price of fresh produce.  All fascinating topics of discussion. 

Last week two ladies came to visit me, and like an idiot I let them come in.  Then I found out they were Jehovah’s Witnesses.  I nearly crapped.  All the way up here!  So I was very nice and smiled a lot and said next to nothing hoping they’d take me for a complete embicile beyond hope of redemption.  They said they’d like to come again some evening when my husband was home and I couldn’t stop laughing.  They wouldn’t live long.  Then I told them he hardly ever comes home because he works all the time and all that confused them enough to leave.  Geeeeez.  I am so stupid, to get rooked in by people who say some innocent thing at the door and something completely different when they get inside.  Next time I’ll be smarter, and tell them through the screen that I’m a devout Catholic, so get the hell off my steps.

No offense to these lovely people (or to Catholics), but they must know how annoying this method of peddling their religion is, and it can’t be an easy thing for them to make themselves do it, what with all the rejection involved.  Or maybe it makes them feel pious and holy when they piss people off in their own homes.  I don’t understand the point of door to door solicitation of any kind.  Send me a brochure that I can pitch in the garbage, thank you very much and have a nice day.

I’ve been going to a northern sewing class, and already I’ve made two pairs of duffles and a pair of mitts.  I should try making kamiks I guess.  It’s so disorganized there, and they don’t actually teach anything really.  You decide what you want to make and then ask them questions while you’re fumbling away at it.  The ‘teachers’ are both native ladies who don’t speak English very well.  I wish I could switch to macrame. 

Judging by the ridiculous number of macrameed plant hangers and wall hangings that suddenly appeared in our home I expect I did eventually take the macrame course.  Or I may have learned the various knots from someone, or even taught myself from a book.  I don’t remember how I started doing it, but I got so good at it that I could whip up a plant hanger in an afternoon.  Those suckers lasted forever.  So did duffles, which were heavy pressed wool liners for winter boots, put together with some fancy stitching that produced a nice flat seam. 

The blue ones are pretty basic.  They were great for putting inside rubber boots as liners in the spring when the mud would ruin any other kind of footwear.  The second little picture is of much fancier ones inside seal skin kamiks.  I had a pair like that, with giant pom poms swinging from the ties.  Nice to look at, and lovely and warm, but hell to get any traction on hard packed snow.  And yes, I did fall on my butt a number of times when my feet went out from under me with no warning. 

D. just informed me that I’m her “baddest friend” and she doesn’t like me.  This was after I suggested to her that she shouldn’t use the puppy as a pillow.

And with that I was off down town to the post office and other places.  One snowy winter day my little car slid all the way down an icy hill onto the main street where I finally gained control of it.  I was incredibly shaken up, but the kids were both delighted by the ride and begged to do it again.  But that’s another story for another day.

Letters To My Sister (#2)

The next letter in the pile is dated September, 1977.  That’s almost two years since the writing of the first one.  There are several rather good reasons for this lapse I believe.

1.  Our son was born in February of 1976.  Our daughter would be two years old in July.  I may have been a little preoccupied with the child rearing thing. 

2.  Mom and dad made the long trip west to Edmonton and north to Victoria Island to spend a week with us and meet their littlest grandson when he was four months old.

3.  In July of that year I accepted a teaching position in the Cambridge Bay school, got a babysitter, and trooped off every morning across the tundra to spend my weekdays with a class of grade six students, mostly native, who spoke English as a second language. 

4.  W. went off on trips across the arctic and got lost.  I think pretty much every time he left home.  It was hard to keep track.  I had a lot of stuff on my mind.

5.  We flew to northwestern Ontario with our ten month old son and two year old daughter to spend Christmas with W.’s family in Kenora.  My brother and his wife, and my sister A. and soon to be brother-in-law M. drove up from southwestern Ontario to see us, and to finally meet their newest little nephew. 

6.  We made another trip back to Ontario the following summer (1977) for A. and M.’s wedding, at which D. was the flower girl.  A very cute one, albeit not particularly co-operative one hundred percent of the time.

7.  We flew home to Cambridge Bay, packed, and moved to Inuvik.

Whew.  Perhaps there were some letters back and forth during that busy time that went missing, or it’s quite possible that my sister hadn’t even considered yet that she should hang on to them;  in which case, who knows why that original one from 1975 came to the surface and took its place on the pile.

……….Can’t remember if I told you about my volkswagen;  I’m sure making use of it, bombing around in the muck.  I washed it a few days ago, and every kid in the neighborhood came to help.  One little girl was busy with a stick putting the mud back on.

Ahh, yes.  Inuvik.  We lived in the middle of a long block of row housing, also known as rainbow valley because each of the rows was painted a different color.  There were boardwalks beside the streets, and dust and mud everywhere.  I didn’t care.  I had a car.  How lovely and civilized! 

Today Inuvik had a big “Delta Daze” parade.  They’re trying to raise money for a park, or something.  All K. said through the whole thing was “that’s a car!!  that’s a car!!”  They had the A & W. Root Bear.  D. screamed and laughed and waved.  Then there were clowns and decorated bicycles, an RCMP float, one with the Mad Trapper on it (a big guy with a beard and snowshoes slung over his back) (Look mommy, there’s Santa Claus!), one with a guy sitting on a little house playing a violin.  Fiddler on the Roof???  Who knows.  And finally the fire truck.  All the firemen were dressed in their uniforms and wearing monkey masks.  It seriously looked like something from Planet of the Apes.  There was one guy in a gorilla suit at the front supposedly pulling the truck by two big ropes.  D. had a hairy fit – that big bear’s gonna get me!  – as she crawls up my leg.  Some guy gave me a ticket on a draw for a helicopter ride, and the kids got balloons.  So it was quite a day.  K. is completely flaked out from all the excitement, and D. is outside waiting for another parade.

(several days later)

We lost D. yesterday!  She wandered off with some kids and we couldn’t find her for about an hour.  I was running around to all the neighbors.  Finally the lady across the street, who has five kids and would likely welcome the thought of a couple of them disappearing, made a phone call and located D. and one of her own little girls.  They were merrily playing in a big puddle away behind our house near the bush.  At least everybody knew who I was talking about – they’ve ALL met her.  She has a way of making herself known.

My darling fearless adventurous little girl.  I remember how frantic we were when we couldn’t find her, and how confused she was by our excessive concern when we finally did.  It was the first of many lessons that finally molded her into the kind of kid who always told us where she was going and when she’d be back.  Even all through her years as a teenager.  Even if it wasn’t always the truth.  It’s a good skill to have, knowing how to keep your parents from having a total spaz.

W. is flying to Aklavik for the day tomorrow, and then to Paulatuk for four days, Tuesday to Friday.   Ummm…..who said there’d be less travelling???

Oh well – at least there was way less likelihood of him going missing for days at a time and needing a search party to find him and bring him home. 

They have needlecraft kits on sale at the Bay this week so I think I’ll get one and try it.  I want to try rug hooking too sometime. 

Although I started out slowlly in my endeavor to become craft queen of the world when we first moved north, I have to say Inuvik brought that side of me out in full force.   I branched out in every conceivable craft related direction available to me while we lived there.  Knitting, crocheting, needle point, rug hooking, sewing, painting, macrame.  I was lost without a project. 

(several days later) 

All the exciting things that have happened since I last put down my pen – W. didn’t win the truck in the Delta Daze draw.  Or any money.  Boo.  K. smeared vaseline all over his hair, himself and the floor upstairs.  Yuck.  I’m finishing the vest I’m making for K. using four double pointed needles!!  Wow.  I have finished my painting of a cross eyed racoon trying to fix his gaze on a dragon fly over head.  D. learned to cut and paste and make a tremendous mess in one short afternoon.  School starts here tomorrow.  I think I’ll have a drink at 9:00 a.m. to celebrate the fact that I don’t have to be there!

Yep, my teaching career, which never really got started, was over.  I never thought I was much good at it, was never comfortable in the role, and altogether rather relieved to see the end of it.  Time to be a stay at home mom for a bit, working on a gazillion projects and occasionally misplacing my children.