You Do It To Yourself, You Do.

Perhaps I should back up.  Seventeen months after I left, I am back in Nunavut.  I am back because I need money.  I need money because I took seventeen months off work.  I took seventeen months off work because I used to have a very intense job.  I signed up for a very intense job because I felt like I was stuck in a rut that I needed to get out of.  And sometimes it’s like when you’re stuck in a muddy ditch; you unnecessarily put the pedal to the floor and the next thing you know, you’ve smashed through the nice neighbor kid’s lemonade stand?  That’s me, in a nutshell.  When life gives me lemons, I wind up driving right through the lemonade stand.  In a very expensive, uninsured imported vehicle.  Or something.

So I’m back.  After being up for 48 straight hours, weepy and a little delirious, I made my way to the airport with 2 large bags.  These bags conformed to the weight restrictions laid out by the airline I was booked with—I’d been sure to research that.  What I’d failed to consider was the first leg of the flight, which was booked on a “partner airline”.  THEIR luggage allowance was exactly HALF of what I’d brought with me to the airport.  Here’s what you need to know: I’m beyond broke right now.  Like, hobo broke, and I couldn't cover the excess baggage charge.  So I had no choice; I hastily transferred fistfuls of socks and underwear from one bag to the other, obsessively weighed the thing down to the pound, and then left the rest.  Just left it there, in the airport.  I can’t think about what I’ve left behind.  It’s just stuff.  It is really just stuff.

The attendant on the flight north was warm and lovely, but had such a peculiar personal aesthetic that I found it difficult to look at her.  Her skin was the colour of caramel, which makes her sound exotic and sensual, but she wasn’t.  She had tanned herself to the colour of Wurther’s Originals, and chosen to make the tan ‘pop’ with a highly metallic silver eyeshadow.  To further contrast with her tan, she’d bleached her hair to the point where it was no longer hair, technically.  It was hay, so coarse from chemicals that it wouldn’t lay flat against her head.  Her ponytail stood out straight behind her, as though it were blowing in the wind.  All the time.

I recognized people on the plane, in the little airports along the way.  Their conversations sounded familiar.  It was like I’d never left.  In a good way.

I nearly tripped on a rabbit on my way to breakfast my first morning back.  I work in an airplane hangar, behind a plane, two loaders and a helicopter, in a heated box.  I wear my sunglasses when I walk home at 10 pm.  I’m homesick and more than a little heartsick.  It is a means to an end.  You should really come and visit.  And bring me some cheese.  And truffle honey.  And a custard tart.