By Lucy

One of the first things I did Saturday was texted Kris and tell her me and the Vagabond were… something, again. I wanted to talk to someone who’s been around for the whole shebang. She immediately replied “aren’t we mad at him?”

Well, yes, but then he apologized. That’s how that works. And the more we talked over dinner, the more things clicked into place. I suspect he had one foot out the door because he didn’t believe I would actually move to Thunder Bay, among other things. Now that I’ve proven I held the faith for seven months, he’s had to reassess his expectations.

We didn’t see each other the rest of the weekend. I turned in early on Saturday to catch up on my sleep. Sunday evening he had a party to attend, and then he was heading back to Dryden before I got off work Monday.

Insert cliche “there’s two kinds of people”. Well, there’s more than two, but there’s definitely categories at play. The guys who managed to make their marriage work for 30 plus years, despite travelling for work and long, 12 hour or more days; and the guys who haven’t. The latter category have a habit of complaining how women just don’t understand the long hours, which is… a thing. I definitely had to think about the number of days I went as a child without seeing my father, because he was working 12s. I’ve also had people joke about how I must be single or have a very understanding partner, with how often I’m out of town or working late.

Could there be any better understanding when we both have the same career and ambitions? And yet, I wonder. I hate living for the weekend, but all I can think about now is the next time I see him! We have so much to talk about.

It’s funny, despite a few people asking for my forgiveness if they slip up and use my old name, no one has. I’ve noticed a few people saying my name quite frequently and unnecessarily, and I suspect it’s to remind themselves what my name is now. Every time, I start singing “Say My Name” by Destiny’s Child.

I like the name more and more as people use it. People have started doing things like singing “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” or the “Lucy, you have a lot of explaining to do!” and I love it! There are no icons with my old name. Some of the guys also shortened my name to Luc (Luce?). Lucy is pretty short, but I love the way it implies familiarity. People occasionally shortened my old name, but mostly people would nickname me stuff like Red.

The Vagabond told me he liked my old name. All I could do was laugh – last year, he was one of the people to consistently use my intended name with regularity, and he never once commented on it! Some days I think he just says things to see what my reaction is. He asked me why Lucy, and I said “it’s short for Lucifer!” with a big grin, and he rolled his eyes. Again, I laughed. When I told him Lucy last year the first thing he did was call me Lucifera! So he questioned, why would you name yourself for “the dark side”?

Well, firstly you’re assuming a lot. Lucifer means light-bearer or shining one, after all. It’s not like I changed my name to Satan. I know someone, no word of a lie, changed his name to Tom Riddle. In case you somehow don’t know who that is, it’s the birth name for Lord Voldemort! When I asked him why, he said he wanted to change his name to someone he admired. Think about that for a bit!

Anyway, we got into this big debate about “the dark side” that didn’t get as deep as I would have liked, so I’m writing it out here. The first and most basic level is something like the Taijitu from Taoism – no light without dark, no dark without light.

On another level… Did you know there was a sequel to the Exorcist? The book, not the movie. I got into the Exorcist when I was 14 and newly into horror as a genre. Most people just take in on the face of “it’s a horror novel” (and the hysteria around the movie, which is so quaint considering the fare at theatres these days), but I found the philosophy in it. Like the internal debate for Karras at the end – inviting the demon into his body is damning his soul to Hell, but he’s saving a little girl. Who could allow a child to suffer? And wouldn’t such a sacrifice redeem him?

Blatty wasn’t happy with the Exorcist. Oh sure, he made lots of money, but the musing on the nature of good and evil, and our choices for one or the other, were lost to an audience who just wanted to be shocked (ironically). So he wrote Legion, which is much better in that regard. The question of evil, as he puts it; if God is infinite in power and knowledge, and loves us, why would ‘he’ allow suffering? I found it fascinating, even if I don’t agree with the conclusions he came to. I recommend everyone who is remotely interested in philosophy read it. I quote Kinderman a lot.

I also like Sauron. Hah, that’s a strange line, no? If you read the Silmarillion, you learn that Sauron was once a Maiar, functionally an Archangel for all you white people, and a Djinn for the rest. He became so obsessed with rules and order that he joined Melkor for the power to destroy chaos. Except, of course, free will is chaos, by its very nature, so that brought him into conflict with basically every living creature.

That resonates a lot with me. I dislike chaos and a lack of rule following. Especially small and careless disregard of rules. Like, on-site, you’re supposed to buckle up when you’re in one of the trucks. It’s such a small thing – the mills aren’t that big, and speed is supposed to be 25 clicks max, etc etc. So a fatal accident is unlikely. And yet, people hop in the trucks and don’t bother to buckle up, and it rubs at me like sandpaper. It takes two seconds! And it’s a rule! Gah!

So yes, I named myself Lucifer. But I was thinking of Sauron, and free will, and the duality of light and dark when I did so, not the pop culture ‘evilness’ of the name.

Better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven!

I also just love it when people ask “why Lucy?” and I cheerfully answer “it’s short for Lucifer!” and watch their reaction, because I am a gadfly.

On the subject of leadership, there’s been some talk about that in some quarters. On Tuesday I impressed Nick and he told me he thinks I’ll be lead hand before I get my ticket. I texted Duff (I miss him, I wish I had an excuse to drive to Winnipeg) and told him about teaching the kids how to straighten nails, the way he taught me (it’s called steeplejacking). He said he thinks I’ll make a fantastic journeyman if I’m already trying to pass knowledge along! I was also ‘knighted’ by the foreman to drive the trucks around the mill.

They brought Yari back to drive the party bus. Yari is technically a carpenter, but he’s as old and wizened as father time, so he just drives the work van around the site. He picks us up in the morning and drops crews off at jobs, or spare gear we need.

I got put in the lead hand trailer. I’m not a lead hand, mind you, it’s just where I was told to go, and I have an uncomfortable feeling about it. It’s the nicer trailer, with running water and everything, but people avoid it for a reason.

It was another dose of misogyny as well: there’s pin-up posters on the wall. One of the guys who’s there permanently has them up. I just sat with my back to them. Not worth it to argue.

Everyone who was caught in the explosion is back, looking none the worse for wear, including Fabio. I guess once the burns were debrided, the skin came back like they’d had an intentional chemical peel, actually looking better with old scars removed. I avoided mentioning the fire at all; I imagine when you’re caught in a fireball, it’s all anyone wants to talk about, and you get pretty tired of people mentioning it! Moustache told the most informative version of the story; apparently Nick was the least injured because he was facing away from the building with his hood up, so the explosion knocked him to the ground and his jacket took the brunt of it. Moustache and the foreman got engulfed in it, but were able to run away. Fabio was the closest to the building and the explosion hit him worst – it vaporized his jacket, his safety glasses, even the laces on his boots. Moustache says Fabio was screaming and still on fire when the explosion went away, so he tore his flaming jacket off of him and gave him a shake to bring him to his senses.

It’s nice to talk to Fabio again. He’s the only person on site who I was debating trying to hang out with after work. He’s definitely a little more skittish, but he’s always struck me as somewhat anxious. He also seems a little stronger for it. Well, why not?

Sunday and Monday were dirty. Sunday was the first day of the boiler shutdown. Like usual, I wasn’t on the chain, but doing small projects with Stu. We were in the ashpit hoppers, of which there are nine for some freakin’ reason! They’re fairly small, maybe ten feet tall, and less across, not to mention the girders and such taking up space. There was no spot that has enough space for me to stand up straight, and I’m not that tall. We had to crawl up through the small hatch the ashes come out, and do a small build in each one, because the floor is angled and hard to stand on. After doing two, Stu asked me to come inside with him and give him a hand – help he didn’t need, but I suppose you get tired of being by yourself in a small dirty hole. There’s also the “passing along knowledge” bit. People can complain about Stu all they like, but they’re gonna miss him when he’s gone and no one knows how to build all this stuff anymore!

It was funny, because we were just under the floor of the boiler, people in the chain could hear us yelling for gear, but they didn’t realize we weren’t yelling at them. Because I had the radio and we could hear them radio each other, me and Stu were laughing as the chain got confused as to what they were supposed to be passing. We also had to laugh at one point as Tyler radioed for a fan because there was a “fog of humidity” inside the boiler. We cracked a few jokes about humidity being caused by breathing and have you tried not doing that?

Monday was a holiday in Canada. It’s technically called Victoria’s Day and is nominally to celebrate Queen Victoria’s birthday. In practice, like Oktoberfest, it’s just an excuse to party. Most of us call it May 2-4 (for the number of beers you’ll drink, not the date), and it unofficially marks the beginning of summer. It also means those days were double time, which is good cuz anything besides that wouldn’t be enough to tear me away from the gorgeous sunny weather we had! It wasn’t enough for some of the others.

We did a few small builds, ended up at some different hoppers. People don’t always tell me what things are called. The labels above them said “primary” and “secondary” hoppers. Stu did a couple and then threw me in the last three to do by myself. There isn’t enough space to show me how, and I’m a smart cookie.

They were the perfect example of how confined space and working at heights can have a horrible baby. The space I could work within was so short I was on my hands and knees, because any higher and I would have hit my head on the dust collectors (cones hanging above me). But I was also 10-15 feet in the air, because the hoppers’ floor is an incline, and you enter from the second floor. The length is about 4 feet, but the width is about 12 feet. There’s a beam across the middle, and two about 2 feet from each end, and that’s all you get to stand on, and they’re maybe 3 inches wide. If you fall, you’re probably breaking an ankle or wrist and sliding all the way down to the bottom of the hopper and landing in a pile of soggy ashes.

The way it had to be done was to throw two 6 foot boards across the middle, so they spanned the distance between the middle beam and one of the ends. Then measure the distance between the two end beams (cuz no one writes it down) and yell it out the hole so they can cleat some longer planks so they don’t slide off the beams. Then plywood the shit out of it.

That’s not a generous space either, each board is 8 inches across, so I have a platform 6 feet by 16 inches to work with, and balanced above a certain fall and broken bones with nowhere to tie off to. There’s no light except your headlamp. It’s very easy to panic, and try to stand up or lean over too far, and pitch yourself headfirst into the abyss. The cleaners were also cleaning something higher up, above the cones, so it was raining ash on me and making this ungodly metallic scream the entire time. I had a dust mask on, but the ashes were still in my eyes and down the back of my coveralls and I hate everything.

They sent the 18 year old female in to help me, which… I’d rather have done it by myself! She was fine for the first one, just handing me the planks. The second one, she got cocky and decided she wanted to measure the gap herself. Except that she stuck her head in the hole, saw the abyss, and panicked. She refused to go out on the boards and couldn’t get an accurate measurement from outside the hole and put the plank in wrong and couldn’t get it out. So I got annoyed, climbed into the hole, and hammered the cleat off the plank while balanced precariously and then measured it properly and hammered it back on. While sweating and choking for breath through the mask and the ash is raining down and its dark and hot and ye gods I chose this career. I climbed out of the hole and complained to the guys that she can’t measure and no one told me I was babysitting and I tore my dust mask off and stomped down the hallway.

I made sure she didn’t see my temper tantrum. It’s such a double-edged sword. I hate females who don’t represent the best of us, because they then become the standard I am measured against. It’s such an uphill battle already without being cut at the knees! And yet, she is just a kid, and I’d hate to be the reason she gave up and stopped trying.

That ended up being a 13 hour day. I went into the office to sign out and let the general foreman know I had an appointment on Wednesday and I would be heading out early. He was unhappy with that and hinted that he might lay me off just for having the gall to go to a doctors appointment.

I almost told him to lay me off right then and there. I’m not going to grovel for work! At this point, I’ve done 2 whole months of 12 hour days, and the odd day off here or there has not been enough rest to recoup working at least 60 hours of hard labour. But I didn’t.

Tuesday I schlepped outside to go to work and had an unpleasant surprise: a flat tire.

For a few minutes, I honestly debated calling in to work and going back to bed. I decided I shouldn’t do that, since I might get laid off next week or even that night.

There was a gas station less than a click away, so I limped my car over, four ways flashing. There was a lady at the tire pump ahead of me, but fortunately she left with lots of time on the pump, so I didn’t even have to throw a toonie in. I inflated the tire above the recommended pressure and drove it to work with just enough time to change before the toolbox talk. Maybe it had just randomly went flat from the pressure change?

We were in for a wicked storm – Environment Canada had been issuing flood warnings for a couple of days.

Tuesday we were put in the viscodyne. What is the viscodyne, you may ask? No idea. It’s a large confined space above the hoppers, adjacent to the boiler itself, also full of ashes. It was expected to take all day because it’s large and complicated. It’s also kind of dumb, because the hole is 8 feet off the floor. Me and Stu built the access to it in early April. So the gear has to be handed up to the hole person, and then handed down into the hole. Logically.

We had to run a string of lights and a rope ladder into the hole for access, as well.

I was partnered with Jay from April, among others, and his dad came back as a scaffolder… I’ll call him Ray. As I mentioned before, Jay has a bad case of trying to live up to daddy’s reputation, and being on the same crew as his father was not making it any better. He was wired and fidgety as all hell. I was almost glad when he was called into the hole and I was left to lift ten foot steel decks 8 feet into the air by myself. Almost.

We went until shortly before lunch. They all piled out of the hole in a hurry – water had started streaming down from above! A cleaning crew had climbed into some hole farther up and started hosing the place down without even a “how do you do”, despite the fact that logic would dictate checking, and the lights and yelling aught to have tipped them off! Ray was drenched head to toe, and we’re lucky no one was perched precariously when it happened because they might have slipped and fallen. Lanyards and harnesses aside, a fall is still quite painful, bruises galore from the sudden stop if nothing else. We radio’d a foreman, but there was nothing for it – once they had started washing, everything was wet and we might as well let them finish.

The legendary rain had started up, oh joy oh bliss.

They split us up for the rest of the afternoon. I got sent with Ray and Jay, which prompted the GF to crack a joke about me being Ray’s daughter. I shrugged.

We got a job in the pumphouse, which is cool and smells like chlorine. Every surface is coated in spiderwebs, however, and I still didn’t want to deal with Jay, so I was pleased when Ray told me I could just bring gear in from the cart. Even so, we couldn’t wheel the cart inside, so everything was soaking wet and soon so was I. My boots are waterproof but the cutproof gloves and coveralls aren’t, so I was quickly soaked to the bone and shivering.

We ran out of gear a couple of times and Ray told me to take the truck and grab it from the yard. Actually, he asked if I’m allowed to drive the truck and then said “nevermind, take it anyway”. Well hang on, am I allowed to or not? What kind of shit can I get into if I’m not? When Stu told me to drive the truck I refused and walked, but now I’ve decided I’ll just tell them ‘my lead hand told me to’. I’m tired and cold and wet. I hopped into the truck and drove it to the yard. A foreman noticed me and said nothing.

There’s lots of geese on site, and plenty of adorable fluffy little goslings! (Also if you google images gosling, you will get Ryan Gosling, hilariously)

We did fourteen hours by the time we finished that job. When we got out to the parking lot, my tire was flat again.

Some bad luck to outweigh the good, then?

Ray had one of those tire pumps that plugs into your cigarette lighter, so we pumped up the tire. I told him I was gonna drop the car off at the shop and he offered to pick me up the next day, so I gave him the address (one of the few people who doesn’t know it by instinct). I watched the tire pressure drop on the dash as I drove. I parked the car in the lot, threw my key in the letterbox, and walked home in the unrelenting rain.

Only two kilometers. And I was already wet.

I was too tired to even make a can of soup. I had a handful of crackers, took my Metamucil, and crawled into bed.

Ray said he’d be by at quarter to 7, but at 6:35 my landlord popped his head in and told me there was a guy waiting outside for me. I ran out the door and he apologized for being early. Trouble with his old lady.

I called the shop and left a voicemail letting them know what was wrong with my car, although the completely flat tire should be immediately obvious to anyone with eyes.

Back at the Viscodyne Wednesday morning. A foreman came by and assured us that he had personally put tags on the holes above us, so no one should interrupt us this time, which was basically guaranteeing something would happen. And it did! Again, just before lunch, someone climbed into the hole and started grinding, so Ray had a refreshing shower of white hot metal! Everyone out of the hole again! It later turned out that buddy didn’t even have a hole watch (because hole watch would have told him he couldn’t enter, obviously), so he was ignoring all the rules of confined spaces and common sense. And probably got in quite a bit of trouble, but small consolation to Ray if he had gotten hurt!

We puttered around the yard for a bit, waiting for buddy to be done whatever was so urgent he couldn’t wait for hole watch (FYI; nothing is too urgent to wait for hole watch). I had an MRI at 4:30, although the letter had requested I be at the hospital for 4. We break at 3, and with no car, it didn’t make any sense to go to break, go back to work for 15 minutes, then head out, so I told them I was heading out at 3. Yari automatically asked me if I wanted a ride out, and when I said “sure Yari, if you don’t mind”, his eyes just about fell out of his head and everyone burst into laughter as his pizza was halfway to his mouth. I assured him he could finish his break and I was in no rush.

I asked everyone what the best cab service is in Thunder Bay and everyone told me Uride. Sure, another app with my credit card details, why not. While I waited for Yari, I ordered a ride home. I have no complaints, although my driver was quite chatty and I was all socialized out. 40 bucks for a fifteen minute ride! I also called the garage, but they hadn’t bothered checking their voicemail and were too busy with appointments to patch my tire. I got dropped off at the house, showered and changed into fresh clothes, made myself some Mr Noodles, then noticed the MRI letter said not to eat before the appointment.

Darn it.

I threw the bowl in the fridge. Wayne was in the kitchen and offered me a ride to the hospital, which was nice of him. There’s been a lot of jumping into random men’s cars lately! He offered to wait around, but I told him it was fine because I had no idea how long the MRI would be. If they were busy, it might be late.

They were not busy. There was literally no one else in the waiting room when I got there, so I was shown right in. I was, admittedly, a little nervous. This was my first MRI since I got the screw in my eye, and despite the optometrist assuring me there wasn’t anything left of it, I still had a mental image of my eye being ripped out of my skull by the magnets.

The MRI technician also admitted that he had 0 idea what he was looking for. They’d had other FAP patients, but none with desmoids. I explained what it was, showed him the picture on my phone of my old scans, and they taped a Vitamin E pill to the spot where the desmoid is. Hopefully that was helpful! He missed the vein in my right arm the first time and I was treated to the unsettling feeling of him wiggling the needle around trying to find the vein. Feeling the vein ping back and forth like a guitar string being plucked is exactly as uncomfortable as it sounds, and tattoos aside, I still hate needles. I finally asked him to try the other arm before he blew the vein. He got the vein in my left arm first try, although I still had a bruise for a week.

I called Wayne when the appointment was over, but he didn’t pick up. I waited 20 minutes before calling another Uride, who was mercifully quiet.

I had no plans for a ride on Thursday, so I asked my landlord if he could give me a ride and he agreed. We look after our own!

We got sent to the steam plant for a few small builds. It was genuinely cold that day, so the constant switching from bathed in steam to freezing my butt off was taxing. Moustache was my lead hand. He’s very misogynistic and racist, although not to me, because I am a third gender. But it’s still uncomfortable when he makes jokes like ‘how you can tell how many black guys live in a building, by the number of watermelons in the garbage’, because I know protesting will get me nothing. No one in authority cares. After lunch they parked at the steam plant and spent a full ten minutes discussing their favorite strip clubs, at which point I hopped out of the truck and went into the building. When they finally decided to join me at the jobsite, I was chastised for “running off”, because “the steam plant is dangerous”. Sure, not like I’ve spent weeks working here with Stu, who usually seems like he couldn’t care less if I got hurt, or that I worked at Chrysler’s Brampton plant, or any number of other dangerous things. Or that I’d rather die than listen to your banal misogynistic conversation!

This apparently clicked in his head that I am, in fact, an apprentice. So he decided to start teaching me how to build. Which… I’ve already built a beam lift by myself, but sure. I had to burst out laughter when he told me to measure the height the beam should be at, and I measured 2 and a half meters the way my dad showed me. He told me I had measured it wrong, before doing it his way and discovering I was correct, hah hah hah. Not that he admitted his hubris. So I played along because clearly he isn’t open for correction.

We only did 8 hours, which is just as well because my car was finally ready for pick up and the garage closes at 5:30. I got a ride from another guy who had been at Dryden as well and I haven’t decided on a nickname for. The tire repair was only 40 bucks, but the real cost was always the inability to use my car. They kindly gave me back the nail that had caused the trouble, which I am glad for. I was slightly concerned about other potential causes… The mechanic wandered through at one point, and when I started to explain what had happened, he held his hand up and exclaimed “I don’t want to hear it!” Which caused all of us to burst out laughing.

At some point Wayne knocked on my door. He had noticed the phone call from me trying to get a ride home, and apologized profusely for having not noticed at the time. He tried to offer to reimburse me for the taxi ride, and when I declined he slipped a twenty dollar bill under my door later that evening.

Well, fine. I’m not gonna fight over it.

I was relaxing in bed for the evening when my phone buzzed. Ze Vagabond!

Hmm, well that wordlessly answers one question! With the 4 hour drive plus the time warp from Dryden, he’d only be texting me at 8PM if I was really on his mind. I got out of bed and danced around my room for a solid 5 minutes before I replied. He was playing it cool, but I was not. I replied with all caps and hearts, and he replied in kind, the ice being broken again. A few times he suggested ducking out of the conversation so I could get to sleep, but no way was I getting to sleep when I knew he had texted me first thing when he got home!

I mean, I was tired the next day, but it still wasn’t happening!

Friday was a write-off. I was basically just counting down the minutes until it had been an 8 hour shift and I could run over to the Vagabond’s. Moustache was also clearly in no mood to get a move on, because we milled one job for most of the day. Which was unfortunate, because the job we had was over an exterior caustic pit. What’s in the caustic pit? Who knows, something acidic (or basic) enough to be labelled “caustic”. The smell burned and before even first break I had a runny nose and a sore throat.

At lunch we had an unpleasant surprise; the boiler was coming out. Tomorrow night.

You what?! I just got to see the Vagabond again after 7 whole months and you want me to sacrifice my weekend for your stupid boiler? Day shift I could stand – I’d just show up at his place in the evening and he’d cook me dinner and give me a back rub and we’d cuddle on the couch and watch movies (sounds perfect, actually). But nights? I’d be sleeping when he’s awake, working when he’s relaxing on the couch, and my internal schedule would be messed up for the week.

But we all knew this was the last shutdown for a while, and a 12 overnight/ weekend shift is 500 bucks. I could always see the Vagabond later, but where else would I make 500 dollars in a single day? Besides street walking.

Grumble grumble.

In the afternoon we had a build, up on the chip pad. I’ve never been on the chip pad. It’s basically the giant concrete pad where they dump all the woodchips to feed the beast and make pulp. And it is giant – at least three stories tall. It’s so big a front loader drives around on top of it, pushing the chips around. They needed an access onto the big conveyor belt arm thingy that piles the chips on the pad.

At this point I was officially told I could drive the truck. Everyone questioned if I was just afraid to drive the truck, but I am not. I learned to drive with my parents’ Dodge Dakota. I was just wary of getting in trouble for driving it when I’m not supposed to.

The bruise on my finger is finally all healed up and gone away. My legs are once again covered in the usual rainbow of bruises – just something about this jobsite, apparently. I’ve had near constant sniffles and a sore throat, and at this point I’m just waiting to be laid off, cuz I am exhausted beyond a weekend being enough to heal.

More Canadian rock for you! These guys are actually from Orillia, which surprised me, cuz they do not look like punks from Orillia! They’re scrawny and don’t seem to have any tattoos, hah hah hah. I wish I had known about them when I was a hop and a skip from Orillia, I might have gone to see a show. I like how slick the first part of the video is, a little disappointed that the latter bit seems to be just them messing around back stage.

Seemed relevant; this song made it onto the playlist for the show “Lucifer”. No idea where, I haven’t watched the show. No, I haven’t! It doesn’t strike me as interesting.