Jocie's Blog

 Hmm So I have been thinking of buying another house.. to rent out for income.  But, is that really the smartest thing to do?  Barbara picked me up in her car in the morning.  I made my way along the cobblestone road in front of my gated community.  It was flowing with the overflow from the overwhelmed, most likely broken, sewage system.  It has been getting continually worse since I got here.   It has been a long rainy season here.  The amount of water falling has been exceptional this year, add to that a water spout, too much new construction and a developer that decided to reroute the river, and you are asking for trouble.  Just a couple of weeks ago a big rainstorm added to an already overloaded eco system and there was a huge mud slide.. well, a lot of mudslides.  They took out homes and businesses all in West Ajijic. People were left without homes, but thankfully, no lives were lost.  The manhole cover just outside my gat...

 I am back in Mexico.. listening to the football players at night, as the field is right next door, and the roosters in the early hours of the morning.  It is noisy here, but all the noise is happy life.  Each day I wake up and wonder what will unfold.. it is always busy, but nothing is ever urgent.   I walked into a home that was, ready for me.  Like walking into a gorgeous condo for a two week holiday.  Fully furnished and ready to go. The power was on and my bed was made. The big screen tv on the wall is hooked up to Shaw cable, so I can watch Canadian TV.  After almost two years away, the place was clean and the internet was on.  My neighbours and friends had cared for the place while I was away, never knowing for sure when I might be back.  The possum living in my car had been removed and the mechanic cleaned it up and had it running.  It was almost as though I had never left.  My plants, in their pots, had grown and looke...

 So, I bought a house in Blind Bay.. that is just outside of Salmon Arm.  Karen and her friend Nancy took me around when I spotted it.  It called to me!  There was no sign up or anything, but there was a woman getting in, or out of her car so we pulled over to say hello.  And ask if she would consider selling the place.  The asking price was way over what I was planning to spend, I would have to get a mortgage and without a job, I thought that may be an issue.  But I wanted that house.  The bank said okay.  I was in!  And what a relief to be out of the apartment!  Never again!   It was November 2020 when I moved in.  Just in time for winter!  There were two gas fireplaces that kept the house warm.  There was the view of the lake.  There was winterizing to do.  There was a view of the lake.  There was soon snow to remove.  There was the view of the lake.  Man, if it wasn't for the vie...

Gotta love quarantine.    So.. I left the territory.  I left Australia all together.   I felt like a failure.. no longer a leader and elder in my field, but, quite defeated by the whole thing.  I had to buy a new ticket.  The airlines had cancelled my return ticket, on their own, but not offered an alternative.  So, I bought a new ticket and flew into Vancouver, and on to Kelowna.  I was looking forward to Kelowna.  Karen had chosen an apartment right in the downtown, and I thought we would have great fun together.  Karen was a school chum, and we had shared an apartment when we were teens.. first in downtown Vancouver, and then later in Burnaby.  It should have worked well, but really, it didn’t.   It started with fourteen days of quarantine.  Try that in a small apartment.. good lord.  It was awful.  It was the start of the pandemic so I was following the rules very closely.  I didn’t even g...

Covid My classroom in Australia Lets just say, we are all ‘over’ it!   I left my home in Mexico January 30th, 2020, and headed to the Northern Territory of Australia.  It just happened to be on the very day that a Public Emergency of International Concern was declared by WHO.  It was to be a ten week contract, but things quickly changed, as they did for most of us in the world.  First of all, the contract was immediately extended to eleven weeks – a change in the school calendar. I had not anticipated that, but no worries.  My ticket had left a lot of wiggle room should I have decided to holiday a bit in the country while I was there.   Something else I had not anticipated was the World Health Organization to declare the emergency a Global pandemic on March 11, 2020.  The state borders were closed, and road blocks were set up to protect people, largely the more ‘at risk’ Indigenous population of the ‘Territry’, from the new Covid-19 virus....

 I just thought I would make an entry here that captures what it is like on the first day of March, 2021, in Blind Bay.  From my perspective of course.  The sun is out.. it is shining on the dirty snow that I shovelled off the driveway Saturday.   Well.. first on my mind are the bites on my back, and front.  Bites I am certain have come from bed bugs, but have seen no evidence of that other than the bites themselves.  This has happened to me before.  I stayed in a scrungy hotel in Puerto Vallarta and actually saw the critters in bed with me.  I got up and was in the street in the middle of the night.  It took me over a year of hard work before the bites stopped showing up now and again.  Itchy.. huge.. yukky and mentally making a mess of my life.  I thought it was over, and yet.  I went for a massage on Wednesday and that evening was covered in bites.  I have no idea where they came from, but have my suspicions. ...

 

  I had the opportunity to sketch a naked man last night on Zoom.  It is what we do during these days of Covid- find ways to connect with people and challeng ourselves.  This one was Paula and Caran's idea.  I watched a young man take off his robe and choose a position he could hold for the next hour, under the close scrutiny of a group of women all watching him on their computers, from their homes.  An hour.  He hardly twitched- just stood there perfectly still, even in expression, while we studied him in enough detail to note the shadows between his fingers and the slope of his jaw, among other things.  How is that for grit? Standing there naked in front of prying eyes.  I could never do that.  Or, could I?  As people we are capable of so much more.   Given enough, encouragement, we can look intimidation right in the eye and just 'Man-up'- just do it.  I am drawn to the NT, and chosen to spend a lot of...

  A road trip for me is a large part of life.. it is life.   When I was a kid, we went on road trips all the time.   Short ones, but long enough to get me excited. Then when I got older, they got longer and longer, until lately.     It was cool driving from Darwin to Alice, in a rental, in March two years ago.   By ‘cool’ I mean.. far out.. groovy, because actually it was pretty hot.   Darwin to Alice is 1496 and a half kilometers of almost straight highway from the Tropics to the desert.    I had rented a mid sized car, because when I booked it, it was just going to be Paula and myself.   But, I found myself, four other women, a s*&t load of luggage making the journey,   and there was not a word of complaint!   My almost-in-law family is pretty amazing. Years earlier I had driven from Darwin to Cairns, alone, only to find the man that I thought was waiting for me there, didn't actually want me in h...

  Getting old ain’t for sissies.   But some of us carry it off pretty well.   For example, I have these friends in Mexico.. an older, gay couple.   They are a couple of older ladies, as a lot of us are living around the lake in Chapala.   Living in the interior of Jalisco,   is lovely, but it does beg a trip now and then to the busier, touristier places with a beach.     Things have changed since we were young.   We don’t look quite the same in our bathing suits, our memory is often not what it used to be, but it is still lovely to feel the hot sand on our feet, and the taste of a margarita is still magic.   And while at home we most often have a routine to protect us, out in the wild there is the ever-present worry over losing stuff.     We can walk into a room and forget why we are there.   Once in a while we put our shirt on inside out.   But the most frustrating thing is how often we...

 So.. I have spent a lot of time in my new house, thinking about what comes next.  I decided I need to make it more of a home, and started looking for a dog.  However, it isn't easy during times of Covid.  So I put an ad on Facebook for a room mate, and got a few inquiries.   I love adventure, but meeting new people is hard for me.  On-line a couple of people asked about it, but one person kept coming up and so we agreed to meet, for coffee.  Well, the coffee shop was closed when we arrived.  I looked at the fellow.. a bit older than me, and a real person, not as scary as I always seem to imagine strangers to be, and invited him back to my house.  After all, that is what we were discussing.  And it wasn't so bad.. he got me looking at ski boots.  It has been years since I have tried on ski boots.  But listening to him talking about the nearby hills, and the possibilities, I decided to give it a go and headed to Kamloops....

 I would say Happy New Year but really?  It is just a new year this go round.  Not that I am unhappy, just not expecting much for these first few months of 2021.  I was chatting with someone on New Year's Eve when they signed off with a 'Happy New Year'.. I say it back but thought.. ya ya and hung up.  Then it dawned on me.. it actually was New Year's Eve.. so I called back and returned the greeting a bit more enthusiastically.  A new year had been promised for so long, I hadn't realized it had actually arrived.  But here we are. Fingers crossed.   My usual 'Canada' thing was to take down the tree, the decorations and clean up.  But I had already done that.  My usual 'Canada' thing was to start to put into place all those resolutions.  But, I don't have any.  It is not that there isn't room for improvement, it is just that I don't really feel I have any control over it.  2020 stripped that away.   I continue...

 Well you can almost here the collective sigh of relief as Christmas came, did its thing, and has now left us .. for many... alone.  And that is okay.   I read somewhere that 'Christmas' is a full time, temporary, job but one we love.  Putting up the lights in preparation for for shortest day of the year.  Putting up a tree to bring the light inside the house.. decorating it to bring even more sparkle to the long nights.  I have two televisions now.. and regret nothing.  I watched a White Christmas yesterday.. The Grinch the week before.  I could have music going upstairs while Gabe was able to binge on some Netflix (or Prime) series downstairs, where it was cooler.  It was a good Christmas for me.  Since leaving Jaffray I have spent a lot of Christmases on my own, so this year was rather special.  Not the case for many though.  But it seems people figured out how to have a good time and still obey the rules of the day....

My son Monte seeks adventure.  He is a civil engineer as well as a climbing and skiing guide with Black Sheep Adventure Sports. Check it out on Facebook. He comes by his talents honestly.   His father owns a contracting company, and his mom, well... I applied to work at the Fernie Ski Hill the minute all three of my boys were in school.  I was raised on that hill as my father was instrumental in creating the slopes, and my mother, the lodge.  Once I got married, I managed to get up there a few times with just one child, but once the third one arrived, it seemed an impossible dream.  Skip ahead five or six years and the boys  were off to school. I had a few hours free each day, and was eager to go skiing yet again.  I couldn't really afford a pass, but if you had a job up there, they gave you one.  I called called the ski school and asked how I would go about getting qualified as an instructor.  "You can start Saturday," the fellow said....

 So this morning I woke up and it was almost six.  Yesterday, I 'slept' in until 7:30.  This is late for me.  The last few years I am often awake in the middle of the night, but here, in my own home, in my own country, I am sleeping really well.  The only night I struggled was when I thought I was going to be working at Walmart - apparently I don't want a job. Or at least that one.  I wake up in the morning, make coffee and light the fire. Yes.. lighting the gas fireplace is done at the push of a button on my remote but someone has to do it. Then I start to think about what to do with the day ahead.  There is always something, even living alone, there is always something.  Last weekend, it was selling honey.   Rea opened her little shop in the barn.  It started with the ribbon cutting.  We had to wait a bit for the first car to pull into Honey Lane, but when they did we cheered and made a big deal of it.  They had a child ...

 Ya... I chickened out.  Or maybe just woke up.  Either way, it is a bit depressing.  I woke up yesterday, the day of my interview at Walmart, and realized there was no way I was going to drive through the snow, guaranteed at least some of the time in the dark, to work with people during a pandemic, for a wage that would barely pay for the gas it would take to get there.   This is what our front line workers do.   Very few of them get what they call a 'living' wage.  They are out there, masks on, dealing with people who are also 'over' this pandemic.  There was another case in Revelstoke or somewhere nearby, where a lady lost her sh't about wearing a mask.  And, she lost it on people who had got up that morning and gone to work in the dark, for just enough to get by.  At least I hope those people were getting by.. it is as expensive as heck to live in this country.  I am so grateful that I am able to not work if I so choos...

 So... I saw Bonnie Henry actually smile today!  That was cool. And, a relief after watching her all year just reel out the numbers of people in trouble with this virus.  She still gave us the numbers- 2000 over the weekend, more than six hundred today.  However, things actually are changing and there may be an end to this Covid thing after all.. if not in three weeks, maybe three months, or six or nine..  I have been spending way too much time on my own.  With all these regulations it hasn't been easy to not go visit the Kootenays, or visit the kids.  If the roads don't get you, the guilt about not following the rules will.  So, I stay home for the most part, but that gets old real fast.  I try to get outside as much as I can and today I went for another hike.   I have been finding a few trails around here.  Probably not a great time of the year to hike, but after that first snowfall, things have been pretty good.  But, t...

 I don't mind being alone.  I have been doing alone for, well, most of my life.  I like the quiet - I appreciate the ability to do as I like.  But, Christmas is a time for family and friends, food and music and noise.   I was so looking forward to Christmas this year, in my new house, in the snow.  But, apparently it has been cancelled because of restrictions as the numbers of cases of Covid are just too high.  Gabe and Val were bringing a couple of girls and I was so looking forward to it. They say this year will be different, but for me, being alone isn't that different.  I haven't had a joyful, family Christmas, in my own home, for more years than I can remember.   I bought a tree.  Put up lights, bought some poinsettias. Made that wreath. I used Rea's sewing machine and actually made stockings for Gabe and Val's girls and had started shopping for things to fill them with.  I furnished the house with the family in mind.. a p...

The lady that wrote Eat Prey Love, Elizabeth Gilbert, explained that ideas are floating around in the air, like a great tiger, and if you don't immediately reach out and solidly take hold of them, they will fly on past you for someone else to capture and put to paper.. or not. This runs true for me. Idea collection is one of the reasons I like to travel so much.  Well, drive mostly.  It doesn't work for me in a plane, where I could easily capture an idea and go to work on putting it down on the page, as there is lots of time.  But driving down the road in my car, ideas for stories fly past me at incredible speed.  Sometimes they swat me in the face like a big wet fish that I wonder why others didn't duck, but usually they are illusive, like ghosts floating about in the air.  The problem for me is, while the idea can be a great one, and I can spend some kilometers of road thinking about how to expand or use it,  if I don't write it down, actually stop and ta...

Christmas in Canada is largely about the preparations.   It started with a couple of poinsettias.   The last lady in this house, Jutta, left a couple of her plants as transporting them would have been cumbersome and expensive, so what was a couple more. I bought two small, red poinsettias at the grocery store and put them on the steps leading to the loft that I seldom used.  That looked festive and elegant.   Next (still November mind you), came the wreath workshop.  It was local, just a few kilometers up the highway, and in the art studio, so I figured I might meet some like minded people and end an evening with a lovely wreath.  It sort of worked out.  Sure, I was an hour early, and it was already bloody dark so I went to the liquor store and bought tequila, but it happened.  The process was more crafty than creative, and the people were, well, not the artist clan I had been hoping for, but lovely.  We glued blue and gold balls on...