By Lucy

Devotion

• love, loyalty, or enthusiasm for a person, activity, or cause.

It occurs to me that a lot of people are devoted to me, even if it isn’t romantic or sexual. Me and Jeremy hang out at least once a week and usually more often. Me and Paul don’t necessarily hang out once a week, but we do talk quite a bit. Chris, who regularly shuffles the crew roster to accommodate me, and insists it’s not just my superior sailing skills, so it must be some affection. Even Duff, as much as we didn’t really settle anything over the weekend, is clearly devoted to me and was willing to put up with my nonsense to a large extent most people wouldn’t. And devotion was all I wanted, no?

It reminds me of CS Lewis’s Four Loves (yes, the guy who wrote Narnia). Storge, the love shared by family, found or blood; Philia, the love that bonds friends; Agape, unconditional love and devotion (intended by Lewis to be related to Christ’s love for us); and Eros, romantic love, which is distinct and separate from sexual attraction and lust. I’d say there’s a fair amount of Storge and Philia going around, and even if it isn’t Eros, that’s enough for me. I especially love Lewis’ comment;

“Those who cannot conceive Friendship as a substantive love but only as a disguise or elaboration of Eros betray the fact that they have never had a Friend.“

Cuz I know people who would say my friends’ care and support of me is only disguises a vain hope that I might sleep with them one day, and those people must be sad and lonely indeed.

I must also say, every time I come back to Thunder Bay I am more and more glad it is my home. Every time I leave I find something new to miss about it; the Giant, Thundermount, the light levels of traffic, downtown PA, the rivers and rocks….

I feel good and it’s scary. For the first time in a long time, maybe ever, I don’t feel suicidal in the sense that I have things I want to see through. If I died tomorrow, I’d be upset I didn’t get to do some things. Having hope is painful and scary, but I imagine most people would say it’s a good thing, so I’m trying to hold on to it.

My Fitbit did not record anything that happened on the weekend. I had to reboot and re-pair it with my phone and it lost everything from Thursday onwards, which does not help my general sense of being lost in time. I almost feel like it’s still Thursday and I didn’t leave at all and the weekend was some sort of fever dream.

I didn’t do a whole lot Monday. I cooked my last Rappie pie using commercial stock. Theoretically we were in a heat wave, but the thunderstorms had continued thru the night and into the morning and it was cool and cloudy on Monday. The storm was so severe it cause a seiche and the lake receded four feet!

I got an email saying that I had been registered for training… starting on August 8th! That provoked anxiety because I had planned my summer out carefully and that screwed everything up. They later sent us an email confirming it was still August 25th.

The hours were 9 AM to 3:30 PM, which isn’t right. It should be 8 hours a day! No correction email was forthcoming for that.

Time to start sobering up! Measured out 3 shots of what I had left to start winding myself down.

Tuesday was starting to feel more like a heatwave. I went out grocery shopping – what little groceries I could buy – and stopped by Victoriavilla because Eli is working there. He came out for a smoke and a chat, along with his apprentice who is a mouthy little prick. One of the many things excreted from his mouth hole is that he wants to move to the US so he can shoot people at will.

I was slightly nervous. Victoriaville is near where the Vagabond lives and I was concerned he might be working there too, but he wasn’t. Curious, you think he’d want a cozy job like that walking distance from his house. I asked Eli bluntly and Eli gave me some vague answer about him declining, so I was correct that he offered. I’m willing to bet the real answer is that the Vagabond found a job that offered him more money, probably a camp job, so at least I don’t have to worry about that for another bit.

Eli’s company got the Viterra contract already. Won’t be long before the mill is theirs.

Eli introduced me to his foreman, who was quite frazzled and an amusing juxtaposition to Eli’s constantly half-baked chillness. He took down my contact information, but he didn’t seem to be in a hurry to hire me and to be honest, I’m not really interested in doing more scaffolding this summer.

I walked to the Rotary meeting like usual and was surprised when one of the guys came over to me. “Hey, Lucy, got someone to talk to you!”

I noted his tag said ‘Barrie Rotary Club’. “Cuz I’m also from Barrie?”

“What? You are?”

You know what makes me laugh, we had to fill out a “bio” to apply to Rotary and apparently Bryan did not read it. “Indeed.”

“Oh, no, I meant cuz he’s also a carpenter.”

Even better.

Me and Dennis chatted for a bit. He was our guest speaker tonight, on his way to Fort Severn to help them with their drinking water problem. He kept trying to guess who my parents are based on my last name, unaware that my parents do not share my last name, but I wasn’t going to correct him. I sat at the table I usually share with Chris and Sue, and within minutes people had seated themselves around the table to talk to me, which was a little confusing.

Chris and Sue showed up at the last minute. Sue said hi without comment. Chris’ eyebrows flew up his face when he noticed me. As he sat down, he said, “So, what’s the story?”

“Too long to say here. Shall we go for coffee this week?”

“Sure, I’ll email you.”

I’ve learned there is a program called Rotahip(?) that is specifically aimed at helping Indigenous people, which I need to get in on.

Went back home and started streaming Death Stranding out of complete annoyance that I wouldn’t be able to play the game when it came out.

On Wednesday I also streamed a bit before going to Urban Abbey for coffee with Chris and Sue, which turned into a therapy session with Chris and Sue. Sue’s nursing career also helped me with the “anesthesia assistance” note – apparently it means I maxed out on Versed and the next step is Propofol and intubation. Which means it’s also a good thing that I have my alcoholism under control, because apparently I am more or less immune to benzos, which is the main treatment for DT’s. I suppose the next step would be Librium.

One comment Chris made made it sound like he used to be wild as a teenager/ twenty something, which kind of blew my mind. I guess it makes sense that he might have been a wild child and matured with age, but it’s hard for me to imagine Chris being anything other than the soft-spoken listener I have known for the last year.

“Didn’t you go to Winnipeg to visit family?” They asked.

Well, yes, although to be honest that was partially just an excuse to hide the fact I was going to visit Duff, which I was more at terms with now. But I did have sincere intentions to find whomever might be living in southern Manitoba, and without having the base of Duff’s place to search from it seemed like more trouble than it was worth. I wasn’t even sure if Isaac, Tina or the other one who’s name I forget still live there; at least one of the three lives in Vancouver, apparently, which is probably a tip my dad regrets dropping.

Ah, yes, my parents continue to exist. I tried messaging my aunts to see if either of them had contact with their father’s siblings. They do not, or they claim they don’t, which is depressing in and of itself. But they also tried to convince me to talk to my mother again and I pointed out a few of the ways I had been abused, one said “that sounds a lot like what Oma did to your mother. It’s sad to see the cycle continued.”

One story about how my mother thinks she was better than Oma but wasn’t is medical. My mother especially loves telling a story about how she fell off her bike and broke her jaw when she was 4, and Oma refused to take her to the dentist. And it’s true, the dentist confirmed her jaw healed crooked and is still crooked to this day. My mother likes to sanctimoniously inform people how much better she is because she always took me and my brother for our annual check ups, but as I got older she got more and more resistant to the idea of taking me to the doctor for any other reason, until she was denying me Tylenol for every reason and insisting that if I wasn’t coughing up blood (verbatim) I was faking it. Too be fair, a good number of times it probably was anxiety eating a hole in my stomach, but that’s ignoring that she let my brother change schools and eventually homeschooled him because he was being bullied, but told me to suck it up because I obviously deserved to be tortured for being such a freak. And that’s even before she told me it was my fault I had my colon removed!

I went back home to have dinner before going to the marina for the usual race.

Turns out they broke one of the pole’s at the race on Sunday I missed. Darn it. Now I definitely have to convince myself the weekend bender in Winnipeg was worth it.

Of course, Chris has changed in the last year. Marcus was on the boat and he kept issuing orders and ignoring Chris’, and Chris finally got annoyed to the point that he snapped “Marcus!” in his usual soft-spoken and placid voice. I feel like last year, he would have just let Marcus do his thing.

“Wow, that’s the most annoyed I’ve ever heard Chris be.” Marissa said. Me too.

One of the other boats almost did the boat version of cutting us off and we had to yell at them to give way. There are rules for the right-of-way on boats, but I’m never at the helm so I haven’t bothered to learn it.

As we got back to the Marina, one of the guys on the boat that docks next to us fell overboard. He was leaning over the rail as they came into the dock, and as it bumped against the wall he went bloop and fell overboard! We all had a good laugh – it’s not like he was in any danger, but now he was soaking wet!

We all sat around chatting for a bit and then Chris wanted to go to the yacht club to hear the rankings. He paid for the food on offer – some chili – and we sat around chatting about how to improve our racing ability. And by we, I mean me and him, cuz we are… umm… friends? I don’t know, friends seems to casual. I’ll think about it.

I’m not even sure there is much we can do, really. It’s not like we’re always dead last – even this race, we were in second place out of five. There’s probably something to be said for buying new equipment, like sails, but even with the threadbare sails and dollar store fixes we’ve been using to keep the boat going, we are still consistently winning or getting second place. I suppose there’s something to be said for always looking for ways to improve to keep your mind active and avoid complacency.

There was a comment Jeremy made during our social coffee that I always seem to end up being the leader of any group I’m in. It’s funny that he stated it as a casual observation when it deserves a deeper look, but I appreciate that he said it so I don’t sound like I’m tooting my own horn (except I obviously am).

Truthfully, it’s still something I’m coming to terms with. I view it as an extension of my innate desire to be of service. For example, within the Discord group there was a lot of complaining that no one was posting any events, and suggestions for events to post but no one actually posting events. A lot of times I view posting events for the group as biting the bullet; unpleasant, but someone’s gotta do it and everyone is usually happy I did, so I keep doing it.

As previously stated, I had basically no friends in elementary school, to the point that I used to refer to Gollum as my best friend cuz no one liked either of us. It wasn’t until Josh started building me up that I discovered my natural leadership ability, and I say natural because I don’t think leadership can be taught. Like charisma, it’s something you need to be born with, to have an instinct for. I was annoyed at people not taking point in group projects, and Josh pushed me into taking control of the group projects. I discovered I was good at it, insomuch as everyone seemed pleased with the result. Like Rotary says, it was true, it was fair, and it was beneficial, so I kept doing it.

I will say, I am not happy with my leadership ability. The first group I claim credit for was a high school clique we called “The Family”, after the assassins guild in Skyrim. Personally I think one of the marks of a good leader is that a group continues to work well after you are gone, and The Family fell apart when I left, as did my friend group in Barrie, and as will the Discord group, I presume.

This leads into what I think is my biggest contribution to the crew. I keep jokingly referring to myself as the first mate, although Kevin has been correcting me to Bosun. I’m not some sailing whiz like Kevin, researching things like polar charts, or excellent at repairing the boat like Jeff is, beyond my natural skill with wood and machines (my sewing experience does give me an edge with the sheets and the sails). Despite my ostensible physical fitness, half the time I can’t even jump the main. But what I am good at doing is pulling the crew together; keeping morale high, telling jokes, getting to know everyone, making sure the jobs get done, and in some instances being the bad cop to Chris’ good cop.

I think the best example is when Chris needs everyone to shift their weight to the other side of the boat. He’ll politely ask everyone to move and they’ll often glance at each other as if they were unsure he was issuing an order, so I’ll bark “Hike!” and everyone hops to it. I like to think it frees him up to sail the boat without having to constantly check that everyone is doing as he asked.

I still feel unsure about it.

Eventually we have to call it a night.

Now I am fully out of liquor and sleeping slightly roughly.

In the morning, I emailed the union hall and asked for work. They immediately offered me a night shift job.

Ugh.

I don’t like night shift jobs because I am not a night owl. But this one was especially annoying because we weren’t even getting a shift premium. It’s 9-5, reno-ing a Home Depot. It’s not even “real” carpentry, because we’d just be installing prefab things that click together.

Still, I agreed in the end. I’m willing to bet the hall will have a hard time finding people to take the job and I have an unfortunate tendency to martyr myself. Plus it’s steady hours that takes me right to when I take off for school, and I won’t be outside working in the noon sun.

There’s a point in Severance where Mark tries to claim another person’s mistakes and asks to be sent to the Break Room (where they are punished) instead, and the boss says “Is there no one you won’t go to the Break Room for?” and I felt that. I have a hard time saying no to something when I know someone else will suffer for it.

I spent the weekend telling everyone I hadn’t done a night shift like that before, but I realized it wasn’t true. I was on solid nights for 6 weeks at the post office a couple years ago, when I started the blog, but it didn’t feel nights. For one thing, it was winter, which always feels like night. And two, it was right before I moved to Thunder Bay, so I had already sold all my things and said my goodbyes and was basically just waiting to move. Here, it feels like it’s always daylight, and I have something planned almost every single day of the week, although at least I can choose when I sleep instead of trying to get time off work.

It also helped that Bob was so predictable I can still tell you what his schedule is. He’d wake up around 10 each day, have a bowl of cereal and exactly 2 instant coffees with no milk or sugar (and it was Noname instant coffee too). Then he’d average around one beer an hour (yes, starting at 11 AM) and 1 cigarette every half an hour for the rest of the day, and not eat anything until dinner time. The TV was always on and at a dull roar, from the time he woke up until he eventually passed out in his chair and it turned off automatically when it timed out an hour later, but it was consistent so it didn’t bother me much.

Noise is not a problem. I’m not worried (logically, not emotionally) about disturbing Hanuman and Emily overnight, because Hanuman is easily disturbed but also a Buddha about it, and Emily sleeps like she’s dead and is hard to rouse in general. I tend to sleep rough, but neither of them are particularly loud. The biggest problem is how to keep the midnight sun out of my room. Hanuman suggested taping boxes over the windows, which sort of worked.

I finally gave away my old Fitbit. I probably could have gotten some money for it, but I rather pay it forward and give it to someone who couldn’t afford it otherwise. I found a woman on the Discord who lives nearby and swims at the Canada Games Complex every day, and she was thrilled to bits that people exist who would give away an expensive bit of tech like a Fitbit, and even more thrilled to discover you can go swimming with it.

Me and Kevin had date night and watched M3gan finally. No time to watch the second movie; he’s off to Winnipeg next Saturday and busy every day between then and now. Hanuman made us popcorn; I recently discovered Hanuman makes the best popcorn I’ve ever had, and that says a lot cuz I love popcorn. I can and have driven to the movie theatre just to buy popcorn and go home and eat it. I’m sad there’s no Kernels in Thunder Bay, although I believe you can order it shipped to your house.

I have a simple plan for staying up for nights; stay up ’til midnight the first night, 3 AM the second night, and 5 AM the third.

Random midnight trivia. We noticed at the last Soroptimist meeting a fox being chased by crows, and we commented on its odd colouring at the time but had no words for it. I’ve since discovered it is what is known as a “cross fox”, a melanistic fox that is black instead of red. It is just a random genetic mutation, like albinism, although several sites noted an unusual concentration of them in northern Ontario.

On Friday the handyman came by to take a look at my leaking window. Dopey with sleep, when Emily knocked on my door and told me Gary was here, I had a mini heart attack! Oh wait, wrong Gary.

I watched Mayor of Mayhem, the documentary about Rob Ford’s crack scandal and public meltdown. It offered no information I didn’t already know, but it did offer a different perspective. I didn’t realize most people in Toronto didn’t think the story was true at the time, cuz by the time it broke I already knew it was. I knew people in high school who had knowledge of his drug use and the extortion attempts before they even hit the papers, and I’m cynical. What I find interesting is that, even to this day, no one questions why Chief of Police Bill Blair never criminally charged the mayor when he had multiple videos of illegal drug use by the mayor and most certainly had him under surveillance and could have picked him up under the influence at any number of trap houses. No one even seems to have noticed that Bill Blair quietly moved from Chief of Police to Member of Parliament as well.

When I commented about it to Paul, Paul said that no one in Thunder Bay noticed because at the same time, Thunder Bay’s mayor was fighting a scandal about extortion.

I called the number I was given for the job. I would later discover it was the manager and not the foreman, because there is a whole crew of southerners here for the job and not all of them are tradesmen. The managers’ name is Razack, although everyone calls him Zack. The villains in Eragon were called the Ra’zac… is that racist? Anyway, I always call before the job starts because the information the hall gives is always incorrect in some way. In this instance, the tools and the days, because we are Sunday to Thursday and not Monday to Friday, as I suspected. The hall told me to bring a bunch of tools, but all he asked me to bring was a hammer and an impact.

Which made me pause. A rule within the hall is that the employer is supposed to provide all power tools. Part of the reason I haven’t purchased an impact gun is to resist the temptation to bring one when asked. I wondered if that was a red flag.

At 5 I went down for sailing like always.

It was a rough day, but then I loathe using the spinnaker. I find it fiddly; it has to be packed into a bag, has 6 different lines, a pole which must also be set up correctly, and is just generally more complicated than the jib. But it is better when the wind is light.

When I went to jump the main, I assumed because we had ground off the burrs, my hands were safe in the gloves that didn’t quite fit. They were not! When I got to the part where rope gave way to cable, it shredded my hands, cutting across all 4 fingers on my right hand. Ouch! I had to go below deck to bandage a couple of my fingers. I also later noticed several cuts on the back of my hands that must have come from the boat but I’m at a loss as to when they happened.

It was just me, Kevin, and one of the new guys, Devin, so we all had to be at the top of our game. Devin’s good, I’d say one of the best new guys we have this year.

Kevin taught us how to pack the spinnaker, which is actually pretty simple. Well, when you have a good memory it’s pretty simple, because it’s not physically complicated. Basically you want it to go in the bag in such a way that it opens like a flower when it’s deployed. The faster you can follow the edge of the sail, the faster you can pack it, which is where my seamstress training comes in handy.

We had trouble when we deployed it, as always. No one’s ever asked me to handle the spinnaker, probably because I always complain about it, but to my understanding there is a technique to tacking with it. If you don’t time it right, the spinnaker will backfill and twist around the forestay, and you’ll lose precious time untangling it.

Well, of course that happened, cuz Devin is learning. With Kevin busy on the main, I ran up to the front to untangle it.

It was this slow motion movie moment; me fighting with the sail, the other boats passing us as we lost speed, including Blue Jacket, whose crew used to be on our boat until they bought their own. I could hear them commenting on our recovery, a background track to our struggle, and then I freed the spinnaker just as a gust came along and suddenly we were flying and we sped past all the boats to claim second place again.

Up ’til 3.

My feet are peeling. The calluses from shutdown are so thick it looks like I’m flaying the soles of my feet as I peel them off. My hands are peeling too, to a lesser extent.

I woke up around 11 and headed out soon after. I walked down to Picklefest at the Sleeping Giant, but I didn’t partake in much. I’m too broke still. I kept going to the grocery store and ran into Dan on the way out, which made me chuckle cuz I was all done up in my red boots, fishnets, and my Tripp dress with my dragon backpack, but he didn’t bat an eyelid. And if you haven’t yet experienced Tripp clothing, basically imagine any goth outfit and then keep adding belts until it doesn’t make sense.

It’s curious that my Tripp dress fits me better now than when it was bought for me, and when I say fits better I mean it used to squeeze me like a corset. Now it doesn’t, which implies I’ve lost weight around my midsection, so I’m happy with that.

Emily headed out for camp, which left me and Hanuman to our own devices for the weekend, which is funny because both of us are monks if left alone. We eat plain food, enough to satisfy hunger, sleep early and lightly, and make almost no noise. You could have heard a pin drop at any point while Emily was gone.

So i just wiled away the night, cooked myself some more liver pate, and played Death Stranding.