The first six days, in brief

The view from my apartment

Day 1, Monday: Hopped on a plane from Vancouver to Edmonton. My worries about my cat making a run for it at the airport while I took her out of her carrier to go through security proved completely unfounded. Instead, Duncan flatly refused to be taken out of her carrier, so sure was she that I was going to fling her to sudden death. I held up the security line for minutes, trying to wrangle the poor creature out. By the time I had her shivering in my arms, with her back claws digging into me, I felt as though I was the most incompetent pet owner ever. The rest of the trip was quite uneventful. Picked up my rental car (a Dodge Calibre), and had my move-in inspection. Greyhound delivered the boxes I had sent two days earlier, and I went to my auntie’s house for supper. (She’s my mother’s best friend from high school.) Came home, and spent the rest of the evening debating inside my head whether my walls were indeed light pink. (They aren’t, but during certain times of the day, when the sun reflects off the red brick building across the way, my walls have a pinkish sheen.)

Day 2, Tuesday: Woke up with a sore back from sleeping in just my sleeping bag on the bare wood floor. Called Sears delivery services to attempt to confirm that the sofa and bed that I had ordered a week ago were indeed going to be delivered to my apartment that morning. No siree, things were not going to go that smoothly.... I was informed that my order had been cancelled for some strange reason. Another call to Sears customer service and fifteen minutes of not-so-gentle explanation and argument later, I figured my furniture was not coming, might never be coming. Oh, the customer service guy said on the other end, you should have called in your order instead of using the online order form. Well, then, why was online ordering even an option if they weren’t going to follow through with the order?! With that, I resolved never to order or buy anything from Sears ever again. (Yesterday, I read an article in The Globe and Mail commenting on Sears’s unexpected losses the second quarter of this year. Could it have something to do with poor communication with customers and even poorer service? Hmm, something to ponder....) Called up my friend R who had arrived in town the night before, on his way back to Inuvik to start the school year. Went to IKEA and bought all the furniture that I needed, hauling half of it in the Calibre and arranging to have the rest delivered the next day. R was his usual helpful, cheerful self, lugging everything for me, while I was my usual cranky, impatient, and humourless self. Went to West Edmonton Mall and bought some kitchen supplies. Slept better that night, with my new mattress on the floor.

The disarray at the end of Day 2

Day 3, Wednesday: Puttered around the apartment all morning. R came over with groceries for my fridge in the afternoon, and we walked around the neighbourhood, popping into the stores to pick up a few last supplies, including my favourite cheese, a requisite for my fridge. IKEA came through with my furniture delivery (yay!), and R helped me assemble my bed (yay again!). Third night’s sleep was even better, with a proper bed, mattress, and bedding.

Sweet Dreams

Day 4, Thursday: Went to West Edmonton Mall in the morning with R, then back to IKEA in the afternoon to buy a desk. Went home and, after many whines and complaints (from me, while R brandished the tools good-humouredly), managed to put together the rest of the furniture. R took me out for the most scrumptious meal, and then we saw District 9 in the downtown theatre.

Day 5, Friday: Drove R to the airport to catch his plane up to Inuvik. Returned the Calibre, and took the shuttle to a hotel about ten blocks from my apartment. Walked home, following a guy in a car who was stopping at every street corner to empty the change out of the Edmonton Sun newspaper box. After the meeting up with him on the third street corner in a row, we chit-chatted, after he joked that I was his stalker. Attempted to make an omelette à la Julia Child. Walked downtown, picked up knick-knacks from the dollar store, and came home. Cleaned the apartment and relaxed into the evening, thoroughly bored during my first night after the apartment was fully-furnished and cleaned. Tried to take a walk by the river, but hesitated taking the set of creaky wooden steps I found that might or might not have led down to the trails. Strolled along the street overlooking the valley instead.

Day 6, Saturday: Three loads of laundry. Went to the drugstore two blocks from my house to buy more cleaning supplies. Tried hard to get my cat to sit in her new cat-bed instead of my new white couch. No such luck. Trying even harder to steal someone’s unsecured internet signal. If this post gets published today, August 22nd, then it would prove my success, and the day would not be a complete waste.

She stayed like this for a brief minute, at least.

Ha, take that, Sears!

Ode to summer

Oh, the lazy days of summer are finally here! Time for sand scorching, toe-dipping, twirling, whirling, laid-back lounging days.... Squinting, sunshiney, watermelon seed-spitting days.... Evening strolling, magazine-flipping, lemonade-sipping days.... Piano-tinkering, cat-napping, shadow-catching days....

Who's going to assemble my furniture?

It's my last weekend in Fox Creek. The two suitcases I came with are now getting close to full as I'm packing away my stuff, and the cleaning begins tomorrow. On Tuesday, right after work, the property manager will be coming in to do the out-inspection, and then we'll be driving to Edmonton.

There are a few photos of the town that I'd like to post, but that'll have to wait. The memory card I have the pictures on has been packed away already, and I'm not about to fish anything out of my suitcase. The rule right now is, "In good, out bad."

So far, I've booked an appointment to view an apartment on July 1st. I'll book more once I'm in Edmonton. Although I'm guaranteed a spot in residence on campus, I'd really like to steer clear of student-housing if I can help it. The unit I've applied for in residence is less than 300 square-feet, and it does not accept cats. Although my parents have definitely grown fond of my dear Duncan these months (my current apartment here does not take pets either), five months of abandonment is enough to drive me into feeling immense pet-owner guilt. Plus, it doesn't help to get a call telling me that Duncan has managed to dye one of her legs purple while in my parents' care in Vancouver.... (That's for another post altogether!)

On July 2nd, we'll be going to the opening night of The Lion King in Edmonton. After that, who knows.... I may extend my stay in Edmonton to continue the hunt for an apartment, or I might trek across the Rockies to my parents' house to relax a bit before resuming my frantic search.

I'm also debating whether to ship my furniture from Vancouver to Edmonton once I find a place. I had sold most of my stuff when I moved from Inuvik. The only two things I would love to have in Edmonton are my bed and my digital piano. The thought of buying yet another bed or of not having my piano for two years is painful to me at this moment. However, the thought of paying hundreds of dollars to transport two items might prove even more unbearable.

Regardless, I'll have to buy a couch, a table, a desk, a dresser, and other knick-knacks in order to create a new home. (My Fox Creek apartment is furnished and comes with everything I need other than my suitcases of clothes.) The most gnawing question at present -- Who is going to assemble my new furniture? In Inuvik, I could not, for the life of me, figure out how to put anything together. The instructions on how to assemble the futon were cryptic to me, and I literally attempted for weeks before my friend K came to the rescue. My double-dresser wasn't any easier. M and E pitched in and figured it out for me. My "Inuvik Dad" helped with my table and chair set, as well as the digital piano.

I don't have an "Edmonton family" that would swoop in to help me out of sticky situations. I'll be on my own, with only Duncan and her purple paw....

To sum it up

Low energy at home, no energy to blog, conserving it all for my day-job....

I'm slowly getting my Media classes into the swing of things. I'm still trying to balance what to do with senior high students for eighty minutes every day, versus forty minutes with junior high students every other day.... Too much time to fill with one group, not enough time to get stuff done with the other.

I had forgotten how much of "teaching" actually involves other things, such as phone calls home, paperwork, late-night research, etc..  Being in the classroom with students is the breezy part, and the part I enjoy most. Wish I could hire someone else to do all the other stuff.

Last weekend, we went to Edmonton, and this weekend, we went to Whitecourt. Here are the windswept, crystalline trees along the highway. There is a slight possibility that it was me in the car, toting my cellphone-camera, that was slanted, and not the trees themselves. Yes, slight possibility.

I finally put together the table that we had bought in Edmonton. We had a corner in the condo that just seemed like a waste of space, so we decided to turn it into a sewing corner. Twelve little washers remained after I had put the table together with the nuts and bolts and screws. How crucial could twelve little washers be? (And by the way, I don't sew.... The sewing machine terrifies me, actually.)

And, last but not least, here's a photo of my Duncan. She's at my parents' in Vancouver these few months while I'm here in Fox Creek, and I miss her fuzzy little face nuzzled next to my not-so-fuzzy one at night. Here she is in her Vancouver home, catching some rays on the window sill.

Alberta-bound

I got the call this morning! I'm moving to Fox Creek! It's a town of about 2200, so it's even smaller than Inuvik. However, it's within driving distance to some larger towns, and is only three hours away from Edmonton.

I'll be leaving on Friday, most likely. Tomorrow, the packing will begin. For now, I'm just trying to absorb the news and mentally prepare myself.

My dear kitty will have to stay at my parents' these five months. I'll be moving in with my friend M, and she's not really a pet person, and the condo is not supposed to have pets anyway.

I had to take Duncan to the vet this morning, and am still riddled with bad-pet-owner guilt. I've always prided myself on taking excellent care of my cat, buying her the premium food at the specialty shop, ordering her a fancy litter box all the way from Winnipeg, making sure her shots are up to date, buying her new toys all the time, coddling her (mostly against her will), etc....

However, her dew claw on her left paw had grown into her paw pad, and I just noticed it last night. I had always trimmed her claws every two to three weeks, but that dew claw had been giving me trouble for a while now. It was hard to get at, and every time I examined it, I would note that it was curved but still really dull, and would just leave it. Little did I know that it could grow into her pad like that....

So, I had to cab it to the vet at noon because the car was in the shop. Several hundred dollars later, Duncan came back wide-eyed and even less trustful of me than before. She had always been a skittish, quiet cat, but she is now really really quiet -- giving me the silent treatment no doubt. I have to administer antibiotics orally every twelve hours starting tomorrow. My dad will have to finish off the rest of the doses once I leave for Fox Creek on Friday.

I'm excited about this new job, this new adventure, but I'm also feeling very very quiet.

* For those of you who don't know the story, my female cat's name is Duncan, yes. She was a newborn kitten when she was found on the street in Inuvik in July 2005 by someone, and I had adopted her in September of that year. The person who rescued her had sworn that she was a boy-cat, and her kids had named her "Dunkin," as in "Dunkin' Donuts." I took her to the vet about a month after I had her, and was shocked that my baby boy-cat was actually a girl. I had tried to change her name to Morley (after a character on a CBC radio show, "The Vinyl Cafe"), but by then, she had already grown into "Duncan." Three and a half years later, "Duncan" sounds to me like a girl's name, and I will never look at boys or men named "Duncan" the same again.

The Last Night

Since I've already resigned myself to running off and quitting blogging for the next few weeks, I thought I should do one last entry tonight. (OK, so I probably will blog when I get to Vancouver, when I'm all stuffed up and bored and miserable and all my friends are working – but no guarantees.) The linens are clean in one of the bedrooms, the bathroom is as clean as I had intended it to be, and the floors and couches have been vacuumed and “de-haired.” I was prepared to settle back and enjoy a last relaxing evening with a cup of chai, when the phone rang. A friend and I ended up traipsing in the woods along the bypass and picked aqpiks (aka cloudberries). The sand-flies were relentless, and we finally called it quits after forty-five minutes. Came home and cleaned half my berries. (Why half? Because I was tired of the task, and needed to wash all the bug dope off of me before it poisoned my brain.)

Pretty much set to go now. Just need to wash the bedding in my room in the morning (because I'll be sleeping in it tonight), cuddle my cat, top up her food, clean the litter-box, take out the garbage, and pack some snacks and essentials for the road (journal, extra pens, reading material, sunscreen, laptop, etc.). I'll miss the midnight sun, the lushness of the greenhouse, and the peace of having the place all to myself. I know, I can't have everything....