Corner of Bourbon & Division

I am so tired.

I know it's tired to complain about being tired, but whatever, this is my journal I can write what I want. ;)

Work has been completely bonkers, although right now the blockades and protests in support of the Wet'suwet'en have stopped, so we haven't had to do any work related to that for a couple of days now. The COVID-19 pandemic, however, is starting to take off here in Canada.

Right now, we're at a tipping point. The virus is contagious enough that, unchecked, the number of infected people doubles every week or so. We had two cases at the end of January, and now there are 299 confirmed cases (with a lot more still awaiting testing). There was a similar progression in Italy, but because measures weren't taken in stride, they currently have somewhere in the neighbourhood of 14,000 cases, and their medical system is cracking under the strain. The rest of the world is struggling with this to varying degrees, and while Italy is the worst hit so far, it's looking like the US is going to be a hell of a shitshow.

The one good thing going for us in Canada is that we learned some hard lessons after the SARS outbreak in 2003. The federal and provincial governments put infrastructure in place to deal better with the next pandemic, as SARS disproportionately affected medical personnel and was just overall so poorly dealt with. So there is reason for optimism, at least here. Everything is shutting down: all schools and universities, all non-essential government workers have been sent home, and people are being encouraged to work from home as much as they can. Right now anyone returning from abroad is being asked to self-isolate for two weeks, anyone in contact with people who've been abroad, and anyone showing symptoms consistent with COVID-19. Anyone with a confirmed case must remain in quarantine for two weeks unless they can't manage their symptoms at home. 

My parents and I have agreed not to visit each other until the end of April, which is when her course of radiation treatments will be done. It's a bit of a bummer, but we're staying in touch by phone and by Skype, and we'll make do. It's not the longest we'll have gone without seeing each other in person--my parents went on trips to Europe that kept us apart for much longer.

In the meantime, people are panicking. It started in other countries like Australia and the US, but it quickly spread here. The panic is manifesting as stockpiling, and it reached an all-time high late last week. People have been buying ridiculous amounts of toilet paper and paper towel, even though they have been assured by both governments and the companies themselves that there is no problem with the supply chain. I think they heard the government tell them to prepare for two weeks at home, and just kind of lost their minds. No one needs hundreds of rolls of toilet paper for a two-week quarantine. The shelves in the stores are bare of non-perishables, canned foods, as well as any kind of disinfectant product, and all the bread products, potatoes and onions. It's kind of wild, I'm not going to lie.

Of course what this means is that the people who could afford to stockpile are fine, but all the people who live in financial precariousness/paycheque to paycheque now no longer have access to every day necessities. Shelters, food banks and soup kitchens are struggling, because many stores usually make donations every week and now can't because they've been stripped bare.

In short, we've got some challenges ahead of us. Schools are closed, but many parents still have to go to work and are struggling to find child care. The elderly and people with chronic medical conditions are the most vulnerable to the virus, and the most likely to be hospitalized and die if they get infected. We have people who are already isolated, people with mobility and other accessibility challengers, and more.

Inspired by something I saw on Twitter, I'm putting together a neighbourhood support network. I spent two hours or so yesterday going door to door to all my neighbours in my townhome complex in order to leave a flyer I made explaining the concept, and so far eight people (out of about 100 households) have expressed an interest in helping out. The idea is to identify vulnerable neighbours, to assess needs such as child care or basic food and supplies, and organize volunteers in order to meet those needs. I hope we won't end up needing the network all that much, but I am erring on the side of "better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it." I've also been compiling a list of information and resources for anyone who might need them.

It's my first time putting something like this together, so I'm sort of improvising and relying on a handful of resources from other people who've done it before. I'm hoping the other people who've expressed interest will be able to fill in any gaps I've left. We'll see how it goes, I guess! At least I'm getting to know my neighbours better. :)

Now it is time for me to go faceplant in my bed.

 I ended up not coming back to my post, and now it's Thursday.

I will not, alas, be staying up for Critical Role tonight, because it's 18:30 and I can barely keep my eyes open. Better to go to bed early and watch tomorrow, when I'm fresh. Otherwise I'll just end up nodding off during the show and missing all the important stuff anyway. I'm pretty excited, because Vox Machina are all at Level 17 and above now, which means their story is ramping up toward the End Game of Level 20, and I can't wait to see what Matt has in store for them!

I've been lured into a new video game called Stardew Valley by fearsclave , who is responsible for so many of my bad habits that I have truly lost count. It's a fun little game, although I'm finding certain aspects a little frustrating. I spent a couple of days obsessing about it, and then I had to work, which generally put the kibosh on most of my extra-curricular activities anyway. I may go back to it tonight, or maybe tomorrow morning, depending on how soon I decide to be boring and go to bed.

Otherwise, life proceeds as usual. I have done no unpacking since the weekend, when my parents visited, and I should probably get on that. Living out of half-opened boxes ain't all it's cracked up to be, but I'm also a terrible procrastinator, and apparently I'm willing to put up with a lot of inconvenience to avoid unpacking properly.

I promised myself I'd be doing more in May, and yet this week I have been a mix of mysteriously extra tired and also pretty busy, video games aside. I'm still not settled into anything remotely like a routine here, inasmuch as I am able to have routines in my life at all these days. There's a lot of upheaval at work again: more people leaving, a couple of new people coming in, but more going than coming, and so now I'm probably going to have to go back to training newbies, which I really don't enjoy. Bleh.

I also am kind of dipping my toe into paying closer attention to hockey. Yeah, I don't understand it either, but there you go. My home team are out of the playoffs ("No, Habs, no!") but my not-quite-home team, the Senators, are still in it for now, so I'm rooting for them. Many, if not most of my online friends are Penguins fans, and although I can't quite bring myself to root for an American team, Sidney Crosby is at least Canadian and is, I must say, pretty magical on the ice. So it's fun to watch my Pens friends get all excited about their boys.

Okay. My brain has officially turned to mush tonight. Time to give it a rest. :)

I've been going out on Pokéwalks again, which has been both a challenge and very nice. I'm not particularly physically active these days, and the less active I am, the less inclined I am to be active. It also means that when I get out there, my body doesn't respond the way I want it to (because I've lost all the muscle and endurance I built up years ago), and I get discouraged all over again. It's a vicious cycle.

So I've been trying to prod myself out the door for Pokémon, at least. I stopped for nearly ten days, but picked it up again after last weekend, which I spent with fearsclave wandering about, collecting Pokémon and exploring the adorable little town he lives in. I'm very jealous of his town, for the record. He essentially lives in Eureka, full of scientists and lovely houses, surrounded by the Canadian countryside in its full Group of Seven glory. If I win the lottery, I am moving there.

I've been getting out more, and trying to work through my feelings of frustration at not being able to walk as far or as fast as I used to. One one of my jaunts with fearsclave I caught a Pikachu, which was very rewarding (I'd not seen one out in the wild before), as well as a couple of other new Pokémon. Then during my walks this week I hatched a few new Pokémon as well, so I'm feeling accomplished. My new goal is to collect a bunch of common Pokémon and use them (and a lucky egg) to grind for XP a bit. I've fallen behind due to letting the game lapse for so long, and as a result I'm 10-13 levels behind the local players, which makes doing things in the Pokémon gyms incredibly difficult, if not nearly impossible. So the plan is to try to level up, so as to level the playing field a bit (pun totally intended).

The poor dog was so excited to go for a walk with me today, but after an hour in the heat he'd changed his tune considerably. It went from "Oh boy, we're going for a walk! Come on, come on, let's go! I don't want to wait for you to lock the door!" to "Fuck you and the Pokémon you rode in on!" pretty quickly. XD


Of course, when I don't take him with me, I get a look like this:

I am too easily distracted, it seems. I keep remembering to post LiveJournal when I'm away from the computer, and then forgetting when I'm finally at the computer.

Things are chugging along at Casa Phnee.

Work has been busy. I had to come in for more overtime this week, which would have been fine had I known in advance that they were planning [Important Redacted Event]. I managed well enough, but having it sprung on me at the last minute was unfortunate. Also, the newbie that I wasn't supposed to train was once again given to me to train for two days this week, while I was still wrangling my current newbie. After this newbie #2 is going to another shift, so I won't have to wear three or four hats at once anymore, thank goodness.

Also, as it turns out, one of the other supervisors (I need to start coming up with code names for them for LJ purposes) threw herself on a scheduling grenade for my sake, and that has allowed me to take actual vacation time starting on Wednesday. I can't even tell you what a relief that is, especially after my first request for vacation in July was denied. I'm hoping to use the nearly two weeks of downtime to good effect, as I'm quite literally exhausted. I've been dragging myself around, scraping from RTO to RTO (RTO is "Regular Time Off," which is what a weekend would be for people who work normal jobs), and barely holding it together because most of my RTOs have been interrupted due to overtime, meaning I haven't had the opportunity to properly rest in a very long time.

Thursday was my monthly Cooking Day with the awesome ai731, who apparently still reads my LJ. Hi! *waves* I love our cooking days. We've been doing them for about a year and a half now, getting together once a month and spending the entire time making super yummy and healthy (mostly) meals to be put in the freezer, thus guaranteeing we have meals for almost the entire month. During that time we catch up on what's been going on in each other's lives, and talk about all the fun stuff we're into: crafts and volunteering and gardening and self-sufficiency and writing and fandom. Good times all around.

So this time around she showed me the vast improvements she and her husband t! (no longer on LJ, if memory serves) had done to their lovely house out in the country. She decided to follow the method outlined in The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, and her enthusiasm for it and the very visible results in her house have inspired me to give it a shot. I was leery at first, because some of the advice sounds daunting (the author, for instance, seems to think that books are an easy thing to get rid of, which, if you're me, is not true in the slightest), but I asked a bunch of questions, and it does sound like this might be a useful exercise for me to try. No idea if it will work, as I am a horrible procrastinator and I cling to my stuff, but I am going to snag the book from my local library or maybe try to find it second-hand, and give it a go. If nothing else, it may inspire me to clear out my junk drawer. ;)

The plan this week is, once I'm done with work, to take two days to do not much and just get some much-needed sleep. I will take Sergent for some extra-long walks, and spend more time than usual in the community garden. On Saturday I have a date in Montreal with my friends toughlovemuse and owldaughter to finally see Captain America: Civil War (where I will probably cry over Steve and Bucky a lot), Starting next Monday and going until the Friday, the plan is to use my free time to declutter the house. Only time will tell if I actually follow said plan, because I am usually terrible at this kind of follow through.

November has arrived again, with its customary dip in my energy levels. I'm experimenting with being off Facebook and Twitter again, after a successful one-month hiatus in May. This time I'm not enjoying it as much. I took a break in May because those platforms were making me a little crazy, but right now I'm finding that I feel more isolated from my friends and community than anything else. Maybe November isn't a good time of year for introspection. At least in May it's sunny and the days are longer.

Apart from that, my news is mostly good. I got the promotion I applied for, despite the fact that I thought I was by far the least likely of the candidates to get it. Apparently I got a bit lucky. There were four of us applying for two positions. The girl I thought was most qualified got one of the positions. Two guys also applied from outside our section, but one of them withdrew without my knowing, and the other one, by all accounts, had a bad day when he interviewed. He'd applied before and been passed over in favour of a more qualified applicant, and it seems that he came to this new interview with something of a surly attitude as a result. My boss told me that it had showed that I'd come prepared, and that I had done really well, so no one on the interview panel doubted for a moment that I should get one of the two open positions.

So, in short, promotion! YAY! Also, in related good news, fully 75% of the supervisor positions in my section are now staffed by women. Go us! The three of us also get along like a house on fire, so it's going to be so much fun to work with them. I'm excited. :)

I'm also going to be spending the next four weeks training to perform a completely new set of functions at work, unrelated to my new supervisory role. Well, sort of related, but I would have had to learn them anyway, regardless of the outcome of the promotion process. That means four week of an almost bourgeois schedule of working 06:00 to 14:00, Monday to Friday. It will be very interesting to see if I can deal with working five days in a row with only the weekend in between for four weeks. I've been working shifts for eight years now, it feels weird to be going back to a "regular" work day, however briefly.

By the way, we are horrifically short-staffed at my office, and we will likely soon be opening up new jobs (again). If you or anyone you know is a Canadian citizen with a high school education or higher, good computer skills, and a more than basic grasp of French (you need to be functional but not fluent), and you want to come work for some great bosses (myself included, now!), drop me a line! I will send you the application information the moment the jobs open again. :)

I've also been nominated to become the Clerk for the First Day School of the local Quaker Meeting. It sounds more glamorous than it is. ;) Basically it just means I'd be responsible for herding the cats in order to keep FDS running smoothly. First Day School is the kids' program at Meeting, a bit like Sunday School, only a lot less formal. There's singing and crafts and occasionally lessons about what it means to be a Quaker/Friend. Honestly, I'm still learning myself how to be a Quaker, so I feel ill-equipped to be the Clerk, but most of the FDS Committee have been there for years, and they're all burnt out. So I've agreed to take the helm, and two of them will be mentoring me until I get the hang of it.

Technically I'm still an Attender at the Meeting, not an official member. I've started doing some reading to become more informed, and the more I learn the less I feel I know. I think that's sort of normal, at least at first. I don't want to ask to become a Member before I feel like I know what I'm doing. The Religious Society of Friends has had a long and rich written tradition, letters and essays and diaries, and there is a lot of history to go through. I basically know absolutely nothing of the complexity and nuance of thinking that evolved over the centuries to bring the Quakers to where they are today. So, that's one of my current projects right now.

The adoption project has slowed to a crawl while we sort out paperwork. I need to get a police check done to prove that I have no criminal record (yes, you may all laugh now) and no history of abuse toward children or anyone or anything else (go on, laugh harder). Also, even though I've been stable and not medicated for nine years, they want my former psychiatrist to sign off on my mental health. So I've been jumping through hoops trying to get him to answer his damned phone. He's moved to a private practice, and I've already left messages several times. His secretary assures me he'll call back "when he gets the chance," but it's been three weeks, so I'm a little irked. I realise I'm not a current or paying client, but sheesh. Once all those papers are in order, I'll find out whether or not I've been accepted as a potential candidate. If I'm accepted, things will proceed as they are right now. If not, I am toying with a Plan B, which I will explore more in depth if needs be. I'm not thinking about it too much right now, as it involves a pretty drastic life change, which won't happen at all if I end up on the waiting list for kids.

In the interim, I've been spending my free time returning to the gym, playing video games on the computer, and watching probably way too much TV for my own good, even though I've become even pickier about what shows I like to watch. The trouble is that, even if I'm picky, there's still a lot of enjoyable programs available, especially once you have both cable and Netflix. Yes, I caved and got cable, because my DSL internet provider, despite promising speeds of "up to" 30 Mbps, never delivered anything above 300 Kbps, and it was rather frustrating to pay for a service I wasn't getting. So I coughed up extra money for much better internet, and got a land line and cable TV out of the deal, too, which really isn't half bad.

The rest of tonight's plans involve sacking out on the sofa with the cats, the dog at my feet, and the latest episode of Sleepy Hollow (or maybe Elementary, I haven't decided yet). Then it will be bedtime. In fact, it will be past bedtime, as I am now old and boring and am usually in bed by 21:00 these days. Kids, lawn, etc.

How's everyone else in LJ land doing? Let me know!

I don't think I could possibly catch up on everything that's happened since I last posted here, so I won't even try. That being said, there's stuff coming up that I may want to blog about in more depth, so making a bit of an effort now is in order.

First off, hi LJ Land! I haven't been posting, but I do read everything you write. <3

Anyway, have a bullet-point version of the past few months:

• I adopted three new cats in February. It was meant to be two, but then fearsclave was forced to rehome his kitties due to health concerns, and so I got his Maggie as well. Alas, one of the other two cats I got is not integrating into the household, so he will be vacating the premises and going to live with good friends of mine. So far all the cats mostly get along, with some spats and negotiating of territory still happening. Things are settling down slowly but surely.


• I am still volunteering in the soup kitchen at Shepherd's (I won't use the full name, because I don't want their media relations people reading all my posts), and have also started volunteering one day a week at their community garden plot, helping to grow and harvest vegetables for the soup kitchen. I still love it, although the work is often physically very demanding.


• I went on a trip to Barcelona with my parents in March, which was far too short but truly wonderful. I posted lots of pictures on Facebook, so anyone following me there probably saw them.


• The work restructuring continues apace. It is, as I suspected, a PITA, and has resulted in a lot more work being given to much fewer people. Those people are also the ones who are paid the least, not surprisingly. It appears every workplace is the same when it comes to penny pinching: the higher up you are, the less you feel the pinch.


• I also managed to escape to PEI for a while this summer, also with my parents. I've joked with them that we've seen more of each other since I moved to Ottawa than in the past five years I lived in Montreal combined. That's not quite true, but they have been making extra efforts to come out and see me (and vice versa!) since I moved.


• The past two years of commuting to and from work in Ottawa, as well as trying to run two households on one income, paying for private daycare, and then renovating the house in order to sell it, all took a pretty serious financial toll on me. The short, ugly version is that I accumulated a fair bit of debt in order to do that. So I've been tightening my belt (the two trips notwithstanding, although in both cases my parents were generous enough to pay for almost everything) and looking for extra sources of income. I'm currently trying my hand at being a mystery shopper. It doesn't bring in a fortune, and it's not super great work for someone with anxiety, but I'm hoping it will at least offset some of my monthly bills. Every little bit helps, right? I also need to get my act together and try to sell some of the "extra" furniture that doesn't fit in my new, smaller house.


• In happier, not debt-filled news, I have been approved by the Ottawa Children's Aid Society to continue with PRIDE training (Parental Resources for Information, Development, and Education) as well as a home study. The training starts on September 9th, and if all goes well I should be done with everything by the end of October. If I'm approved as a prospective adoptive parents after that, then I get to start the waiting game of being matched up with a child (or maybe children!) in need of a permanent home.

So that's me in a nutshell. I may be using this space to talk about the PRIDE training in September and October, so apologies in advance to everyone who finds that sort of stuff super boring. I promise to put it behind a cut if it gets overly long. :)

I know lots of you have been having a really rough year. I hope you're all keeping as well as possible under the circumstances. *hugs all around*

I didn't have time for the pet post today, so you'll have to settle for a Real Life Stuff kind of post for now.

Tonight is my last shift here in Moncton. It's been a very exciting thirteen days, but I'm looking forward to getting home. They actually are asking for some people to stay on until July 4th, but even if I wasn't done my own unit needs me back. Besides, I have renovations to organise and the dog to take to the vet, and plenty of things that simply aren't getting done while I'm not there.

Sometimes yesterday morning I must have slept funny, because I have hurt my neck in a pretty serious way. It's not as bad as in 2009 when I had to be medicated to the gills to even be functional (I couldn't lie down or do anything other than keep my back ramrod straight because even tensing my neck muscles ever so slightly was excruciating), but it's pretty painful nonetheless. I couldn't find a position to sleep in that didn't pull on muscles in a bad way.

Our visit to the Hopewell Rocks was cancelled due to my coworkers being wet blankets who didn't want to get up three hours early to drive out there and back. Boo. Then again, seeing how much pain I'm in, perhaps it's just as well. I am sad I won't get to see them, though. I guess I'll just have to come back to New Brunswick some other time and see them then!

The shift supervisor of the operators who were on duty the night of the shooting took us out tonight for a tour of Moncton and then for a lobster dinner! It was delicious, but very rushed because the tour took longer than expected. I had to take half of my lobster to go. Still, it means that I have a lobster snack waitin for me later tonight!

Friday night is always busy around here, so it's actually taken me about three hours to write this entry so far. Compared to the quiet nights we had earlier this week, we've had a fair bit of action tonight. Nothing too terrible, no lives truly in danger (which is good!), but someone lit his food on fire (accidentally, this was not meant to be a flambé) in a big apartment building, so that kept us busy for a while.

Okay, make that four hours to write this entry. Eesh. Lots of stuff happening. Lots of custody disputes tonight, and one little kid. "My mom and her boyfriend are fighting and yelling and throwing stuff at each other." Super calm, too. You could tell it wasn't the kid's first time calling. :(

The regular operators are going to start coming back gradually as of tomorrow, so things should slowly get back to normal here. I think everyone is going to heave a collective sigh of relief as life goes on in the wake of the tragedy.

*checks clock* *sighs* Still not time for more Robaxacet. It's the only thing keeping me functional tonight. That and the Aleve I took around 16:00. I accidentally took two of those at the time, not realising I'm only allowed two a day (one every two hours), so I guess I'm stuck for the moment.

So that's the news for now. In 24 hours I'll be on a plane heading for Ottawa, and from there I'll be driving home in the morning. Good times. I'm going to miss all the people I met here, but it'll be good to get back.

I owe miseri two consecutive posts. If I can kick myself out of bed in time to do it before work this evening, that's when it'll happen. Especially since I'll have to think long and hard about the post on Brideshead Revisited, as I haven't read the book in about twenty years. Yikes.

I've worked six twelve-hour night shifts in a row, and the fatigue is starting to show. The new crew are great, though, and we're having a blast together. I miss the new friends I made last week, but it's been lovely to see old familiar faces from Montreal (two operators from there are working with me now) and meet a couple of new people from Alberta and Manitoba, too.

Work has finally given me a car for my own use, which is really nice. Before I had to walk to another hotel in order to hitch a lift with the night crew to the comm centre, but since the old crew all left the day before yesterday, work had to give me the use of a car or else I'd be stranded at my hotel. The comm centre is close, but not really close enough to walk. The car is an orange Dodge Lancer, and it's like driving a luxuriously-appointed sofa. If I weren't staring at the road, I would swear I was sitting in my living room.

I have five more nights shifts ahead of me, after which I shall be returning super, super late on Saturday night. Technically I think it will be Sunday morning when I return. So I'm going to sleep in Ottawa overnight and drive back to Montreal on the Sunday, and then spend four and a half well-deserved days off there before going back to my regular job. I think it will be hard to get back into the routine in Ottawa, since things have been pretty exciting here. While my new job is great and I love the people, I do miss the actual dispatching aspect of my old job, and working 911 is even better as far as I'm concerned.

Mind you, I'm scheduled to work overtime at the OCC in Ottawa in mid-July too, so I'll at least get to do some federal dispatching while I'm there. It's not quite 911, but it's operational, so that's something.

Even though this is proving to be a really awesome experience, tragic circumstances aside, I'll be happy to get home. I have a to-do list as long as my arm to get done if I want to sell the house, and while I've been trying to coordinate things from here in Moncton, there are lots of things that I simply can't do over the phone, no matter how much I want to.

Also, I missed Fathers' Day, so I promised my parents I'd go out and see them for dinner on Wednesday, when they will be back from their own short trip to New York.

On that note, bedtime. I will be making a herculean effort to be up early in order to write and run a couple of very overdue errands this afternoon.

I am up a little earlier than usual. I must have been tired yesterday, because the hotel didn't seem as loud then. Today, however, I have been awoken by the sound of KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK "HOUSEKEEPING!" on what sounds like every single door on my floor except for mine. They are being nice and professional and respecting my "Do Not Disturb" sign, but the walls here are apparently paper-thin. I can hear everything going on in the other rooms (though it's muffled) and everything that goes on in the hallways as though the people there are standing in my room. It's making sleep somewhat of a challenge.

On the plus side, it means I was able to get up earlier than usual and try to catch up on my LJ posts.

Today is Friday the 13th. It's also a full moon, and it happens to be Prom Night here in Moncton. Oh, and did I mention Mercury is retrograde? /o\ I am not usually a superstitious person, but for some reason these factors really do seem to affect the type and the volume of calls that we get at work. So now that I'll be working 911 tonight, it's going to be a gong show.

In theory I am supposed to come home on Monday, but last night there was talk of extending my stay by a week, supposing I am deemed "releasable" from my post in Ottawa. Knowing my boss and my boss' boss, they likely won't say no unless they're really short-staffed. So that will mean a bit of mad scrambling to get everything done at home long-distance. I don't mind doing my part, of course. Not in the slightest. It's just making everything a little bit harder to manage.

In all the mad rush to get to Moncton, I forgot I had a doctor's appointment on Wednesday. I got awoken by them ringing my cell phone to let me know that "just this once" they wouldn't charge me for not showing up. I explained that I was RCMP and that I'd been deployed to Moncton very last-minute, and apologised for the inconvenience.

"Normally we only accept cancellations if there's an emergency," the receptionist said, in the snottiest tone possible. "But Dr. C. said we'd make an exception for you."

I boggled. "It was an emergency," I pointed out. "Three men died."

"Fine. Do you want to book a new appointment now?"

"I'll have to call you back when I know my schedule."

Yeah. I was nonplussed. It was definitely my fault for not calling 24 hours ahead, but I am used to a little bit more civility from people, especially on this subject.

All right. Looking at the clock, I should have time for at least one of my June Writing posts. With any luck I'll be able to write them both today.

My icon feels a little too happy for what's happening, but it's my only RCMP icon, so there you go.

The first night at work went as well as could be expected. Working 911 is a bit like riding a bicycle, luckily enough. I made mistakes, of course, but all of them were of an administrative nature rather than operational, and so no one cares. I'm back to square one when it comes to understanding the French accent here. OMG, how does anyone understand anything the Acadians say, ever? *headdesk* Still, we're managing well enough thus far.

The outpouring of both grief and support here has been overwhelming. The operators are all doing our best to get the members through these few days. So many officers breaking down in tears because they've lost their friend, their co-worker, their troop mate from when they first became RCMP officers. One of the operators had to go help an officer who was so overwrought that he couldn't bring himself to put on his "red serge" for the funeral. We didn't escape unscathed either. All night the various news stations showed clips of the funeral service on loop, and not a single one of us remained dry-eyed during the night. I had to start looking away from the screen so I'd be able to answer calls without my voice breaking.

We do a lot of handholding in our job sometimes, and while we're happy to do it, it's at times like these that it's incredibly hard to keep your own cool.

The reverse of that coin is that the whole of Moncton and Canada has come together to help us. There were several charter flights with Air Canada to bring members here (I was on one of them), and when Air Canada asked its employees for volunteers to be on the crew, they received 200 names. They had to pull names out of a hat at random because there were too many people who wanted to help.

We are inundated with food. Everyone has cooked for us, brought food to the detachments, to the memorial services, to local churches. Last night we had to coordinate among ourselves because we worried the food would go bad and be wasted, so we collected as much as we could and spread it out among as many local shelters as we could find. So, for this week at least, a sizeable chunk of the population of Moncton will not go hungry.

Although the flood of calls has died down, I would say that even now about half the calls I received last night was about the fallen officers and yesterday's funeral. People wanted to know what would happen to Officer Ross' dog, Danny (he'll be retired and placed with a family to live out his days, as far as I know), or wanted to express their condolences or their thanks for our service, or both.

Around 20:00 last night the clouds parted just enough to let a double rainbow arc through the sky above Moncton. We could see it through our window, huge and bright against the stormy sky. As I was gazing at it, my phone rang, and an older woman from the city spoke to me.

"I think it's your three officers, looking down over the city," she said, her voice breaking. "I think it's God, giving them one last moment to bless all of us."

I don't know about you, but as far as I'm concerned even if you don't believe in God per se, the sentiment is a beautiful one.

RIP

Constable Dave Joseph Ross, 32.
Constable Fabrice Georges Gevaudan, 45.
Constable Douglas James Larche, 40.