By Lucy

I got two pleasant surprises!

The first one is that my name change finally got charged to my credit card!!! So within two weeks I’ll get my new birth certificate and the old girl from Barrie will officially be dead!

I was so excited, I texted K and Hanuman, but they took too long to respond, so I danced over to where Eli was sitting and excitedly told him – followed by a lengthy explanation. In his usual half-baked half-bemused way, he congratulated me. The next day he did refer to me as Lucy, confusing my team mates, before deciding my new nickname would be Miss L until further notice.

I’m undecided… I want to tell people ASAP, but I told myself I should keep it on ice until the card is in my hand and I can start legally changing things.

The second is that I made it through the first round of layoffs! Last year they laid me off around now, but this year I made it!

I had to laugh, I was told the misogynistic prick who’d been mocking me all week was first on the chopping block because of how he had been talking to me, in full view of the foreman. To be fair, he was unpleasant all around. When they removed him from my team he was replaced by a laborer. Do you know how useless you have to be when you can be replaced by a laborer?

My team lead has been very supportive, actually. He sent me back to the lunchroom to grab something, and on my way back someone whistled at me. When I mentioned it offhandedly, he was on it instantly. “Tell me who it is, I’ll have them thrown off-site!” I talked him down – as if I could recognize another white guy in orange coveralls half-glimpsed in a poorly lit hallway, if they weren’t one of our own. But the sentiment was fortifying.

Tyler left already, as usual. He asked me if I was going back to Thunder Bay after this, and I let him know that it is basically my last resort. I do want to go back to town for a bit and get the last little bit sorted, but I’d much rather keep moving after that. More towns, more new faces, more learning opportunities! I’m grateful for having somewhere reliable to work in the meantime. He surprised me by handing me his card, so on break I texted him so he’d have my number as well.

The feeling of ‘Holy cow, I made it!” can not be understated. I moved 2000 kilometers from my hometown. I’m not in the first round of layoffs. My name change went through. Just in the last couple of months! After feeling like I was standing still for so long, everything has suddenly happened all at once!

Every once in a while, I debate if I should try harder to make the blog more anonymous. The other day, I pulled into the motel parking lot after work, and some guys were smoking out front. They hailed me and asked how the boiler was coming along, because at least one of them recognized the only female on site. Yeah, attempting anonymity is a lost cause here.

I’m not yet fully used to this “living out of hotels” lark. I rinsed out my empty whisky bottles and left them off to the side to return them to the store later. When I got back from work, they were gone! Some people have suggested the cleaning lady thought I meant for them to be taken, but she did neatly tidy and leave aside the empty box and packaging my kettle came in, so I think she took them for the deposit. Not sure it’s worth getting angry over 50 cents, though. She also has been weighing herself on my scale. My scale is ‘smart’ and records every measurement, sending it to my phone when I open the app. That itself has been more amusing to me – who we are when we think no one is watching! I debated leaving a note for her, because I think I’d want to know I was accidentally telling someone my weight and body composition, but I don’t want her to think I’m pissed off, cuz I’m more annoyed about the whisky bottles.

We can always tell if it’s raining, even if we haven’t been outside. Cuz the room in the lunchroom leaks. The rain is unrelenting, although at least it’s warming up. It’s colder inside the giant steel and concrete tomb we call a lunch room than it is outside. On Wednesday I was so cold that when we hopped in a truck to drive some gear to a build, I had pins and needles and realized my fingers had gone numb!

Wednesday was another long shift. We stayed late to finish a build, until 9 pm. I ran out of food, but Tweedledum, who shall henceforth be renamed Tucker, gave me some of his. Luckily Subway was open late, operated by a surly teenager who could not be persuaded to even pretend to care. She refused to make me a meatball sub. I was so tired and warm from my muscles humming that I didn’t even notice the cleaning lady turned the heat down to fifteen degrees until I was getting ready in the morning.

We had a job in the lime kiln, the heart of the quicklime dust. Every wall, ceiling and floor is coated in an inch of the stuff, and some welder was above us, wailing away on something and shaking all the dust down on us. On a day it was raining, no less! We don’t even need to be on fire to burn alive at work. When I got back to the hotel and showered, my face was all red except for the outline of where my safety glasses are.

We were an hour late for lunch because Kevin wanted to hammer the job out and get out of the lime, and they were telling us we had another job to start immediately after lunch. Go go go!

Also money money money. With OT and my live-out, my paycheck will be over 3 grand for this week alone, and I only make half the journerman’s rate! We also all got a raise on May 1, a dollar extra for me!

Thursday was the day of the cold shut, when they power down the building to work on the generators, because pulp mills generate all their own power. They have huge portable generators for essential operations, but our lunchroom isn’t an essential operation, so we ate by the glow of our headlamps, in addition to slowly freezing to death. I earn my paycheck! It was, at least, a slow and easy day, as they don’t want anyone attempting a big or risky build when lighting is minimal.

I went on an extra big grocery shop after work. I don’t like having more than 2 or 3 days worth of food during shutdown, in case I’m laid off and I have to drive it back to town. With me surviving the first round of layoffs, though, it’s likely I’ll be here another week. It’s definitely a “make hay while the sun shines” situation – anything that allows me to stay as late as possible is a must.

Also on Thursday, I dropped my car off at the dealership. I need an oil change and I also wanted to know what was going on with my wheel making noise. Apparently the dealership has a Mopar charger, even though I am unaware of any car Stellantis makes that is fully electric!

It was a pleasant early morning walk to work, Dryden is beautiful.

I called the dealership at 5 cuz I hadn’t heard anything and she said that they didn’t even have a record of me making an appointment, although when she gave me the key back the name tag on it was the wrong name, so that may be why! Kentucky drove me all of 600 meters down the road to the dealership, which was nice of him. It was more of, making sure the dealership didn’t close before I got there and got my key back, than a huge distance. I’m lost for what to do now. I might try Canadian Tire, but there is another place in town. The biggest issue is, how do I drop off/ pick up my car with the hours I work? And if they have to order parts, what do I do if my car is still at the shop when I get laid off? I can’t even call the dealership in Thunder Bay to make an appointment, because I have no idea when I will be back.

All of my bruises from the mill in Thunder Bay have healed, and I haven’t picked up many from this site, so I’ve been doing good on that front. My blood blister finished healing and peeled off like a scab. My smashed index finger is healing slightly slower – it’s in a high traffic area and that’s probably not good for it. I’m burning in excess of 3000 calories a day, as far as my Fitbit can tell. I’ve lost so much weight my pants are being held up by my coveralls instead of my hips, so I’ll need to go clothes shopping when I get back to town. I am putting on muscle, though – things are feeling lighter than they were even a week ago.

After the layoff, the hotel now has more civvies than our people, and it’s changed the vibe. They tend to be just stopping for the night and don’t care one bit that we have to work in the morning, so they’re noisy and disruptive. I was rudely awoken by the room above me, and I can’t decided if it was a noisy guest or someone who got laid off from night shift getting back at 1AM and being pissed off. I was kept awake for two whole hours, and even though they left and it’s been quiet since, I keep waking up at the same time because my internal clock is broken.

Since the weather has warmed up a wee bit, I’ve been sitting out front with Eli after work. He mentioned that he can’t go to Walmart cuz it’s too far from the hotel, so I offered to drive him. That apparently clicked in his mind that I’m not just being bored when I come over to sit with him, so Friday he asked me if I wanted to go out for dinner. We walked over to the PI after work. I got the three cheese penne, and there was an option to add shrimp, so I did. I’ve been dying for some seafood! It was very yummy, but the PI always is.

We noticed a large groundhog debating chowing down on some lumber outside the Canadian Tire! There was also some sort of event going on at the Canadian Tire, I didn’t want to get too close for pictures because I didn’t want to take pictures of children without permission. Looked free, and fun!

Jamais vu is an interesting concept. It’s the opposite of deja vu, that is to say, feeling strange in a familiar setting. One could argue that a two week trip is not enough time to establish a sense of what is familiar, but I’m not so concerned with the clinical definition. On paper Eli is sort of Vagabond 2.0 – sitting out front the hotel, going out to dinner at the PI, even sitting in the same seat in the lunchroom. But it doesn’t feel familiar at all. I view Eli much more as a big brother. It’s underlined how deep into infatuation/ hero worship I was, and how silly it was that I tried to pretend it didn’t exist.

He messaged me the other day and complained that I haven’t come over to say hi. Y’know, all of three times we crossed paths because we are on completely opposite shifts! Not that he’s tried to talk to me either – cowardice. See, I decided there was no point in trying to talk to him cuz 1, I wasn’t sure if it would make him uncomfortable, but 2, I’m honest with myself. I don’t want to be just friends. If we have to talk at work I will be polite and professional, but I know I need to hold my ground on insisting for an apology. So I asked him, why do you want me to come over and talk to you? He didn’t reply to that. He’s scared of the answer, of accountability.

I haven’t talked to Rich for something like a month. He had sort of unilaterally decided we needed a break and was avoiding me anyway, so I said let’s make it official. It was only supposed to be a couple of weeks, but I’ve been working so much, and the only days off I’ve had were the mad drive to Barrie and back. He sent me some sort of snippy “guess you don’t miss me” message even though he aught to know I’ve been working weekends. Although I suppose as I write this, I have time to spare to message him, but not emotional bandwidth. I just don’t know what to say. It’s the same thing all over again. Am I blameless for last year? No. But I think, up until that day in Whitstable, it didn’t really click for him that we were just friends and would always be just friends. And I’m not really sure he can move on or stop resenting me for it, or that I can manage navigating it with everything going on. More than once, I’ve opened our chat and froze, debating when I should be in bed and how long such a conversation might go, and I can’t.

I’m tired of men thinking they’re entitled to date me. I’ve been seeing a lot of memes for the “would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or a bear” and I’m definitely on team bear. Not that I’m worried about the man assaulting me, but I’d rather be dead than deal with another man falling in love with me and become pissed off because I won’t be wifey. To a certain degree, I am holding onto my feelings for the Vagabond to keep myself from wanting to try dating again. I’m absolutely loving life and I can’t think of any way a ball and chain would improve it.

On Friday, they had us do one of the big clarifier tanks. It’s a job that was planned and staged out and cancelled before I even arrived onsite, but they uncancelled it for whatever reason. Fortunately all the gear was still there, so all we had to do was bring it inside the vessel and build it. One of the hole watch’s is an operator for the area. He said it hadn’t been inspected for ten years and the lime mud was ten feet deep at the bottom, and when I got sent inside he wasn’t kidding. There was a ring like a bathtub around the ten foot mark. We got most of it done and then we were told to leave the rest for night shift.

Post Script

Came in to work this morning. The Vagabond’s jacket was still on his chair and I broke into a cold sweat. I decided to ignore it, he was probably just working overtime and would leave shortly. My stomach finally turned five minutes later, when someone else moseyed in and confirmed they had dissolved the night shift. He was here to stay?

Guess they didn’t finish that big clarifier tank.

How do you forget an entire shift will cease to exist that same day? Some wires got crossed somewhere.

Obviously we ended up finishing it. He was assigned to our crew, but apparently he misheard them, came in at 6 and jumped on the boiler crew by mistake. I was glad for that – I’m not sure how well I would have handled being forced to work with him, early in the morning, unexpectedly and sleep-deprived!

My concerns were confirmed when I came back for break and saw him sitting across from Eli, chatting with him. There was no way I was going to make it through break without Eli calling me over, and because I was caught totally unaware, I had no excuses readily available. Best get in front of it. I walked past him to gear down.

“Hey old man!” I chirped as I passed his seat.

“Hey girl.” He rumbled, his tone warm.

I should not have been as happy as I was. My heart danced! Eli yelled after me “hey, which one of us is the old man?” Because Eli has no idea, but it did make me giggle that he knew which one of them I was greeting.

Geared down, grabbed my lunch bag, walked back and sat down next to Eli. Threw on a big smile and joined in the conversation.

I didn’t even have to fake it. Eli easily pulled both of us into a conversation. Amusingly, his first topic was to mention that we had been hanging out after work and gone for dinner the night before, which caused a ghost of jealousy to fly across the Vagabond’s face.

Eli is the biggest wrench – without him, I could have easily continued to avoid the Vagabond, and I can’t decide if he is a blessing or a curse (or if he is, somehow, doing this on purpose). It was the perfect deniable excuse, for both of us; I didn’t run over to sit with the Vagabond, I ran over to sit with Eli, who happened to be sitting with him. I couldn’t deny that I was stupidly happy over the situation. It felt almost voyeuristic, able to enjoy the familiar laugh and smile without any real progress having been made on patching up the rift between us. I couldn’t figure out how he felt about how this had all fallen into place, and I’m sure he can’t tell how I felt about it either.

Every time his eyes met mine and he smiled with his stupid wide, crooked grin, my heart skip a beat. Oh yes, I remember why I fell in love with you. 7 months of being pissed off, evaporated in a flash.

I did get a little backstory, just listening to him and Eli catch up. Seems that in early December, a job had offered to pay to fly him back from Italy, and then tried to renege on the deal after he was already back in Canada. It was also interesting to hear them talk of bygone days, when there was a mill in Red Lake, a mill in Marathon, and four mills in Thunder Bay, and they would travel between them. It does appear that the two of them are old friends.

After work, Eli asked me if I could drive him to Walmart. He commented that he’s driven cars with bearings/ tie rods in audibly worse shape than my car’s, so I should have no trouble getting back to Thunder Bay, which is the second best thing I’ve heard all day. I stopped at the laundromat to grab my fresh laundry and noticed one of the other scaffolders coming out with a basket that looked exactly like mine, and commented on it. As I was speaking with the clerk, he came back in and informed me it was, in fact, my basket. Excellent timing! Also, what the frack, laundromat? They should keep better track of that stuff, but then lately the store seems to be run by a couple of giggling teenagers. Where are all the adults in this town?

Overall, a pretty good week!

I’ll take those long nights, impossible odds
Keeping my back to the wall.
All that, to be just what I am
Well, I’m gonna be a blue collar [wo]man!