By Lucy

I miss Paul.

It’s strange, cuz it’s not like he’s been gone for long or that we would have hung out normally anyways, but Paul’s usual job is to wave truck drivers thru the gate at the mill to drop off their chips, so he’s usually on his phone to answer whatever silly message I sent. While he’s driving, it’s radio silence.

He offers to buy Duff a bottle of bourbon on the way back. Duff, the traitor, prefers American bourbon but no liquor store in Manitoba will sell it since the tariffs happened. It’s available in Calgary, for some reason, so I set up a meeting between the two of them.

Since Paul has been privy to some of the private conversations between me and Duff – the only person privy to them, actually – I’m intensely curious what the two of them will talk about. Will Paul give him heck for some of the things he’s said? Inversely, will Duff confide in him or ask for some advice on how to deal with me? Since me and Paul are obviously close enough that he volunteered to help Duff out, it’s not outside of the realm of possiblity.

This batch of yogurt is different. There’s a thick layer of something on it. I panic for a minute, poking at it with a spoon. Did I do something wrong? Is it moldy, curdled, ruined?

None of the above. Turns out, there’s a maximum amount of milkfat you can add to milk to make yogurt. Anything above that separates and turns into creme fraiche on the top. I skim the creme fraiche off the top and put it in a second jar. Yum! I love creme fraiche.

I noticed the other day while I was frantically looking for trivia prizes, Bulk Zone actually has a lot of really cool things and is walking distance. I walk down with a baggie of change and hunt thru the aisles. They have some Japanese snacks that Jeremy will love. Only looseleaf tea, sadly. Down one of the aisles, with grains, I find something unexpected; risotto mixes. I’m not much for risotto because you have to babysit it, but this is only 4 bucks a serving. When paired with my 3$ hotdogs, it’s not much but it’s a more filling meal than plain rice, or rice with butter. I grab a mix that includes porcini mushrooms.

I love mushrooms; they don’t always love me back, especially since the surgery. Before my surgery, me and my ex-husband would grab these dinner-plate-sized portobello’s from the Holland marsh and cook them up like steaks. They were so delicious!

I grab a few servings of the risotto and cook it up when I get home. I also add this mushroom flavoured salt I picked up a while ago. I’ve got some leftover chicken marinating in balsamic vinegar and I pop that in the oven to cook. The kitchen is overly hot but smells heavenly.

Jeremy’s friend Jake is coming to town next weekend. Well, maybe he’s my friend too, we did hang out when I was in Vancouver. But he’s not here for me.

I stay up too late that night writing.

The next morning is a walking to school day.

Monday morning Landon is there but not present. He starts off by making us watch an hour long clip of some guy called Larry Haun, who some of the class seem to be familiar with already. He’s an old, legendary carpenter who is technically competent with a few verbal ticks. He says “2 b’4” instead of “2 by 4”, he eyeballs cuts constantly and says “It’s easy!”, and he constantly admonishes the viewers to consult “the code” like he’s escaped from Pirates of the Caribbean. He reminds me of Wolfgang; he’s got that lean 90’s build.

Landon escapes the classroom while we watch. Someone who can see out the classroom door comments that he’s on the phone.

More bookwork. In the afternoon, we hop back into the shop. I finish getting my pieces cut out and start sanding a bit. I’m not the last one done cutting, but I’m in the bottom half of the class. I leave extra material around each cut because it’s hard to cut straight with a jigsaw, or at least it’s hard for me to cut straight with a jigsaw, and you want excess to have space to sand it down. People fall into a trap of forgetting that your piece gets smaller as you work it.

Landon gives us a lecture about not using a worn-out sanding pad, but keeps the sanding pads locked in the tool bunker and keeps leaving the room to do more important things, so it’s hard not to just keeping using the worn pads. He also gives us a quick lesson on using a hand planer, but I quickly decide I can’t figure the damn thing out and just use the palm sander. He makes it look so easy and I can’t tell if it’s because he’s a good carpenter or because he’s so practiced at teaching the same thing over and over again.

It must be a special kind of boring to teach this class. He doesn’t want to hover over us, but he has to be around for us to ask questions. And it’s always the same thing, over and over, every 6 weeks. Cut, plane, sand a chair. Ad nauseum.

As I head out for the day, Adam stops his truck next to me. “Are you walking home?”

“Yeah. Too broke for gas.”

“Do you want a ride?”

I’m honestly surprised no one offered earlier, since it was a joke in the class that I’m the brokest one. Maybe everyone was worried I’d think they were hitting on me. I suppose there’s nothing stopping me from asking for a ride, but I haven’t really connected with anyone enough to feel comfortable doing that.

Adam is one of those guys who drives with his seatbelt permanently buckled behind him. We drive past the cop shop and he scrambles to grab it from behind him and sling it across his chest, failing miserably.

When I finally stop laughing my ass off, I comment, “You know, he’s never going to notice you not wearing a seatbelt, but he will notice you freaking out in the front seat.”

Adam blushes. “You’re probably right. I should just play it cool.”

Paul got home safe and sound. I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. Just knowing he wasn’t in town was painful, even if it doesn’t make any sense.

My EI money hasn’t come in. I finally give in and log into the website, a slow and fiddly process.

My ROE finally came in Friday. Claim denied; insufficient hours.

Lame. Whatever, I’ll just apply again for the school-only claim.

I ask for a ride to sailing in the group chat and Kesia offers me one. I scramble to eat something before I have to run. I ask Emily for a slice of bread and throw some of my creme fraiche on it. I could eat this stuff with a spoon!

The leaves are changing and falling. It’s autumn, what a shame. Funny how I spent all summer complaining I couldn’t wait to leave and now I’m not ready to go.

The military boat is still in the area, getting ready to leave. Some of the other boats out for the race buzz it.

I’m a little more frantic to sell my car now. I drop the price, but I keep getting people wanting it safetied first. Maybe that’s just the difference between Barrie and Thunder Bay, but no car I’ve bought second-hand was safetied before I bought it. And it doesn’t make any sense, there’s such a small second-hand market in Tbay that everyone should be eager to snap up anything that doesn’t have the bumper duct-taped on. I suspect it’s because the inquiries are coming from international students, who got told they shouldn’t buy a car that isn’t safetied and are clinging to that advice like a life preserver.

On Tuesday, the cream ran out. Dammit. I decide to leave early and hit Tims on the way in. I can drink tea without sugar, but not without cream. That’s my smack.

The first half hour of class is devoted to gun talk. A couple of the guys are from Dryden and went hunting on the weekend. There’s some rude talk about “Italian hunting”, which I gathered means driving around with a rifle on the passenger seat and shooting anything that you spot from the car. One of the guys blew up a bird with a 12 gauge – by mistake – and Landon mentions he had an idea riffing on using rock salt with a gun. So instead of disintegrating your meat, you season it as you kill it, hah hah. It’s not a terrible idea but I think if it actually worked, someone would be selling it already.

We don’t get into the shop at all. We plug away on bookwork until 12 ish. Landon checks his phone and the blood drains from his face a bit.

“Ok guys, take a long-ish lunch. Be back by 12:45. My wife’s in the hospital.” And with that, he dashes out of the room.

We all look at each other, perplexed. There’s a bit of speculation about why she’s there, although I’d bet the short answer is that it’s something chronic and not something acute, because he didn’t seem surprised by it. That probably explains why he’s so absent and distant.

I feel a bit more sympathy for him now than I did previously. He’s got a lot going on. This also isn’t the cushy job I thought it was; a lot of these guys are more dumbass than smartass and it’s draining me to listen to them; I can’t imagine doing it doing it 40-odd weeks a year.

I call my nurse practitioner about my ear. She has a spot open Thursday afternoon. Better than nothing. People have started noticing I can’t hear them when they try to get my attention. I feel like I’m walking around with my head in a fish bowl, completely oblivious.

I call my usual shop to book a safety. They don’t do safeties anymore. It used to be 100 ish bucks for a safety, but the government changed it and now it costs 300 dollars and the shop has to submit pictures to the ministry to prove the car is safe, which also precludes me calling someone who knows someone and paying them 50 bucks for a fake safety. Crap. I call another shop on the same road. Their schedule is wide open for Saturday, and they do a ‘pre-safety’ so they aren’t wasting their time and my money if it won’t pass, which I appreciate.

Speaking of needless car nonsense, Dougie Ford is getting rid of speed cameras because something something he’s a populist leader who’s becoming unpopular and wants to juice his approval ratings. God I hate him.

Of course, I still don’t have the money for it. There’s a dark irony here; I’m too broke to sell my car. And people will want me to take thousands off the sale price for it being unsafetied, so I’d be losing thousands because I don’t have 300 bucks.

It’s also annoying because time is slipping away from me. I wanted to buy that new laptop, and I’m worried it’ll sell out and ship before I can catch up. My remaining bra has finally given up the ghost and is basically a scrap of cloth I wear to make sure my nips aren’t visible at school. My last pair of scrubs wore out and if I didn’t have the pants Hanuman and Emily bought me I’d be very screwed.

I ask Adam to drop me off at Tacotime. Hard to beat a 2 dollar taco. 8 dollars is all I need for dinner tonight and lunch tomorrow. David cuts us off in traffic and we have a bit of a street race. Carpenters!

I have to catch up on my movie watching. I decide to watch Thunderbolts, which I wasn’t too interested in but I ended up finding it so interesting that I watched it again immediately. I love Bob, without spoiling who or what Bob is. The trailer is selling a different movie than the one we got. For one thing, it’s a better Suicide Squad than either of the Suicide Squad movies. For another, the plotting is tight; it’s quippy and fast, without losing the depth of the extremely sensitive subject matter the plot is wrapped around. The movie wants to be a deep dive into depression and how it makes us feel empty inside, and it delivers without losing the Superhero movie feel, or any of the funny moments. I still hate Yelena as a character.

It’s definitely a feeling I get a lot, feeling like a good person who does bad things so everyone else can have clean hands. Becoming the villain, the scapegoat, to assuage everyone else’s sins.

Point in case; after I was done the movie and went to wash my dishes, I found more dishes stacked on top. Instead of saying anything, I just went to my room, flung myself on my bed and started crying. I can’t wait to get out of here…

Wednesday I drive in so I can go grocery shopping after work. I need cream and eggs and zucchini. I’m paying for everything with the pile of toonies and loonies I got from trivia night.

We spend most of Wednesday in the shop. David is a full day ahead of the rest of us, done sanding his pieces, and Landon won’t let him keep getting further ahead of us, so he brings in some wood and sets about making himself a spice rack so he’s not bored. Landon has also brought in a project to alleviate his boredom; he pulled all the boards off his deck and brought them in to sand the crappy stain off them.

I enjoy sanding, actually. It’s nice to take the raw edges of the wood and smooth them down to something that looks professional. It’s methodical and gives my hands something to do while my mind putters away.

We also have a bit of drama in the afternoon, as Landon calls us back into the class around 2. The other day he noticed 2 sanders were missing, but didn’t say much about it. Out of all the tools we have, the sanders are the cheapest and the least worth stealing. Now, two batteries are missing. He’s supposedly confirmed no one else has taken them, so it must be one of us. He gives whoever it is an out; bring them back in tomorrow and claim you brought them home by mistake, and you won’t be kicked out of the union.

My money is on Richard. He’s twitchy, broke and desperate. And I never trust a cop.

When I go shopping, I get my bottle of cream basically free. Since she gave me the 2 1L bottles, and I had my other empty half litre, and the bottle charge is 3.50 times three, I only had a couple of bucks to pay for it. Sweet!

Off sailing, with Emily in tow. It’s foggy over PA. The wind is light, and the sun sets early. Chris won’t let me be on the main because “Doug is too fragile to scramble around the foredeck”. I think that’s a poor excuse; Doug is a menace on the main and keeps taking people out with the boom. He’s also not as good as me; we lose by a lot and Chris is audibly frustrated by it. If Doug can’t keep up, he shouldn’t be on the boat, full stop.

Still, watching the sun set it nice.

My EI got denied… again. Insufficient hours. I call them as soon as they open at 8 AM and get told that hours count even for schooling.

Crap. Crap crap crap. What am I supposed to do, not get paid for 9 weeks? Drop out of school and get a job? Take the night shift at Home Depot and really zombie it? Panic-sell the car? The first thing I do do is apply for welfare. It’s not much but it’s rent and food money and I need something, anything.

Thursday starts somewhat tense, as we expect whoever stole the sanders to not show up/ get called out. Richard arrived first and I’m willing to bet it was to return them before the rest of us arrived, but Landon doesn’t comment on it further so none of us know for sure.

We spend the morning finishing sanding our pieces. I’m firmly middle of the pack now, but I imagine I’ll fall behind as we start assembling. I’m not quick with an impact gun, but I suppose someone has to be last and it’s not a race. Adam has the idea of making all the slats square by cutting them with the mitre, so I copy him. Blow off the desk with the air gun and start setting up my pieces on shims so they won’t stick to the desk when we seal them.

At lunch, I inform Julie that hours do in fact count for schooling. She tells me I should call EI back and ask to speak to a manager.

After lunch, back in the classroom to do more math lessons. Landon takes away the textbooks we were copying lines from, thank god. No more lines! He refuses to mark the extra lines he gave me and David when we were done early and we throw a fit about it.

At 2 I bounce to go to my appointment. She’s right on time, and takes the time to go over the results of my scope, which I appreciate even if it’s unnecessary. I’m really grateful for the nurse, she’s quietly competent and just goes over the results without going off on a tangent about how I’m too young to be this sick etc etc like most doctors. Then she looks in my ear.

“Oh, wow! It’s really angry, no wonder you can’t hear!” She looks in the other one. “It’s angry too!”

Fantastic. I’m annoyed it’s an infection, but at least it’s real and not psychosomatic. She decides to put me on the big guns – Amoxicillin – and a corticosteroid nasal spray because I probably have a sinus infection brewing as well.

Can I get some good news soon? Please?

At least my benefits covered the cost. I’m done pretty quick and I could go back to school, but I don’t. I head downtown. A dog’s age ago, Landon gave us some application for some ministry funding of some sort that I wasn’t going to apply for cuz EI gets twitchy about income. Now it’s not a bad idea. Anything is better than nothing. The clerk confirms EI cares about hours for schooling too, but says the funding should cover the difference and she’ll sort it out. She’s got the wrong name for me in the system, even better.

Welfare approved me as well, although my money doesn’t come in ’til Monday. I don’t have the money to pay the shop for the safety, but I’d rather have it in my hand that not; the shop will just keep the car until I can pay them off, and it’s not like I’m driving the car anyway so it doesn’t matter if I have it at the apartment or not.

How life takes turns. Here I thought I’d be rolling in dough from EI and selling the car, and now I have less than nothing and no prospects either. All I can do is keep moving forward. If nothing else, I have the car to drive still, Emily won’t kick me out, and finishing schooling means an instant 6$ raise, so I’ll catch up quick once I get work. It’s just a temporary setback.

Just… temporary.

I drive the car down to the CLE to drop off the donation from Chris. Everyone else is also salivating over it.

I can’t believe we’re more than halfway thru the course. It still feels like it just started. Hell, I feel like it’s still July.

One of the guys is missing class Friday. There’s a wedding to attend. Landon makes it sound like he doesn’t care if we pass or fail, but he’s visibly reluctant to allow us to work on our chairs if someone is missing. We do more bookwork, some math questions, and then he has us play some Kahoots shortly before lunch. When he dismisses us for lunch, he says “be back here at 9 on Monday”.

We all freeze for a minute, confused. He’s letting us go already? We barely did anything today! We ask if he’s being serious and he tells us to get the eff out, so we all leave. I guess getting to go home early is nice, but I’m starting to feel cheated. I’m broke and I can’t get a job because of the school I’m not in?

The apartment is empty when I get there, excellent. Nothing better than having the apartment all to myself, these days.

Then the toilet starts making concerning gurgling noises. I text Emily; a pipe burst and the water lines are being drained to repair it. Yay.

It’s her first day going sailing without me, although Kevin will be there. I’m too tired and my head feels like an overripe grape from the steroids, ear infection, and sinus nonsense. The nurse said I should start feeling better by now, but I don’t.

At 9, I have to go get Jake from the airport. Turns out the plane got in twenty minutes early and he was the last one waiting for pickup, but I still drove past him anyway cuz I was panicking about being late. Woops.

When I drop him off at Jeremy’s, they invite me out for drinks. Why not. I extend the invite to Kevin and Emily, who are still on the boat for after-sailing drinks, and we all got to OnDeck and have a round.

When I drive Emily home, we notice a man collapsed in the Circle K parking lot.

“Should we help him?” She asks me.

I want to. I also don’t want a cop asking me how much I had to drink today, if we get questioned. “We can stop if you want to.”

“I don’t have my naloxone kit on me.”

Well that’s not the only reason to stop, is it? The light turns green and away we go.

“Well, someone will help him.” She says.

Whatever helps you sleep at night, I guess. If we drove by, there’s no reason anyone else wouldn’t as well, but then mine was selfishly motivated or I would have.

Up early, too early. Burning the candle at both ends lately. Drive the car to the shop.

The shop had good news and bad news. The good news is that the rattling noise was just a hanger stuck in the wheel well and not anything important. The bad news is that they won’t safety the car and they think it needs 2k worth of work for a safety. They only charge me 100 for the brief inspection, which I fortunately have because welfare gave me a bit of a top-up at midnight for some reason. The guy comments that he’s never actually seen a 200 reach 200k clicks and he’s impressed by the shape it’s in. I accept the compliment.

I go to Kevin’s place. He’s offered me cash under the table to fix a few things around his place. I really appreciate the offer, because it also gives me the opportunity to practice running a job by myself, but sadly both of us lack a truck and we need OSB. We go to Home Depot and make a spirited effort to shove a sheet of OSB in the trunk of my car, but no luck. We wander around HD and I turn him on by showing off all my learnings, which is always fun. The female clerk who always recognizes me stops us and tells me “I was wondering when I’d see your pretty face again”, which makes me wonder if she was hitting on me. It can be hard to tell.

We head to Tina’s and have some brunch and trade stories. It’s been a while since we just sat down to catch up! We go back to his place and tidy up his yard a bit. Time to wind down from summer.

Go home and sleep. Either the Amoxi or the fact my body is fighting off a major infection or both are wearing me out, I feel exhausted all the time. Write and play Rimworld.

I saw this bracelet on social media. Love feeling like a chain? Immortalize it with a literal diamond-encrusted shackle.

Been dying since the day I was born
There’s no road that ain’t a hard road to travel on.