Jocie's Blog

 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...