LIFE IN SASKATCHEWAN

As of January 5, 2008, we have lived in each of the four western provinces of Canada. That’s right, we are now residents of Saskatchewan – kind of.

Back in November, we had looked into the possibility of moving to Moosomin, but only if we could find a furnished suite that included utilities in the rent. We didn’t want to move our furniture or more boxes than necessary in the middle of winter. And we thought this would be the cheaper option.

But being cooped up for over 50 hours in a vehicle during the holidays gave us time to talk and seriously consider getting our own place. Eric’s boss had guaranteed him work until May or June, so with this type of commitment to being in the area we decided it was worth moving to Moosomin. Then Eric wouldn’t have to drive on winter roads, Rachel would get her own “office” space, and we would be able to crack open some boxes to get at things like personal papers, photos, and kitchen utensils.

Rachel says:
As kind as my parents were in allowing us to invade their house and lives, the time Eric and I had together at Christmas reminded us how much we appreciated some independence.

This is not because we were being poorly treated. In fact, without my parents’ farm and their generosity, the bus project could not have happened. And even before we got the bus, the farm was our home base while we stumbled through some life decisions, including legally moving to Manitoba. Living with my parents freed us from the worries of paying utilities, setting up a phone or Internet, buying groceries, and all the other minutia of life.

But despite their efforts in accommodating me and Eric, in the end, it was their house, not ours. They had the final say on who, what, when, and where. Nothing is wrong with that, but Eric and I had been doing things our own way for five years and developed different routines and approaches to doing things. After five months of living according to someone else’s style, we were ready to cook our own food and set up our own furniture and pull out some of our own books.

Physically, the only space we could call our “own” was a bedroom, and everything else was shared. As a couple, we found this made it difficult to get the “alone time” that we were used to. Eric’s 30-minute commute meant he was up at 5:45 a.m., home by 6:20 p.m. (or later), and in bed by 9:30 or 10 p.m. And with four other people in the house, it was too easy to spend those few evening hours visiting, playing games, or whatever, with everyone else. Good thing we don’t have children!

Some people are able to make multi-family living work. I think a lot depends on discussing expectations and needs beforehand; determining exactly what spaces are shared and what spaces are private; and on agreeing to how certain things will be done. Basically, these are what anyone needs to do when they live with anyone else, from a roommate to a spouse. And considering the individualistic culture we were raised in, I think Eric and I (and both sets of parents) did well at lasting as long as we did. But come January, it was time to “leave the nest.”


Moving – all goes well until we disturb the creatures of filth

On Wednesday, January 2, Eric phoned from work about a place for rent, he looked at an apartment after work, and had the keys in his pocket when he got home for supper. We moved on Friday and Saturday, making two loads with our truck and trailer. (More about our truck later.) Rachel had one worrisome moment as we carried boxes and furniture out of our canvas storage shed on the farm. Handfuls of dead flies had collected in the drawers of our old wooden dresser. Rachel detests flies. Eric dumped them out and assured her all was well. “What if we get to our apartment and they suddenly start flying out of the furniture?” asked Rachel. “It will be fine,” he said soothingly. And we carried on with loading.

On Saturday evening we wiped off all our boxes and furniture with bleach water to remove the fly nasties, and on Sunday we unpacked the kitchen and a few other necessary items. As we opened various Rubbermaids, we found more flies, most disturbingly amongst our linens. Apparently, the handles had a few air holes we hadn’t noticed while taping the lids on. Then we made a horrifying discovery – the flies weren’t dead – they were in hibernation! Eric quickly dispatched of all the flies we had awoken.


The Lady of the Flies

Rachel says:
Eric went off to work Monday (January 7) morning around 6:30 a.m. I woke up around 9 a.m. and, still groggy and needing to pee, noticed flies had collected on the bedroom window and were flittering against the ceiling. Flies repulse me even at the best of times. This was not the best of times. We had uncovered our fly swatter the day before so I put it to good use before starting my day.

Then I opened the dresser drawer to get my clothes. A striped fly escaped and bumbled over to the window. My worst fears realized! Flies crawling out of my furniture! I decided my dirty clothes from the day before were good enough and quarantined the bedroom. I periodically returned to yank open the drawers and slam them shut, wildly smashing flies as they made their getaway. I lost count after 20 kills.

When Eric came home from work to a frazzled wife, he kindly cleaned up the war zone and examined the dresser.

Eric says:
I apologize, but I must interject. The scene when I got home from work was far beyond the sight of a frazzled wife. I knocked on the door because I didn’t have a key yet as we were only given one and hadn’t had time to get another cut. Had I been a police officer responding to a call, at the sight of Rachel I would have unholstered my sidearm and proceeded with extreme caution.

Rachel had obviously not had the shower she had planned the night before to have that day. Her hair, rather fine to begin with, was floating about her head looking like fishing line gone mad. She glistened with sweat and had a look in her eye that can only be compared with Jack Nicholson’s on the cover of The Shining. Behind her I could see the boxes of stuff she had planned to unpack that day but had obviously not gotten around to. Something was very wrong.

After she managed to tell me what had transpired she pleaded for me to deal with the cleanup in the bedroom. I am sure many of you readers are familiar with the TV show CSI. If only my reaction could have been recorded as I entered the quarantined bedroom, I am sure I could have been guaranteed a role on the show.

As I entered the room I could see bodies everywhere. Not human, but fly, of course. Some were supine on top of the laminate, their bodies intact. Others were not so … whole. Rachel, in her cold rage of fury and revulsion, had used far too much force with the fly swatter. Long smears were pasted across the walls and ceiling. And the window sill? It was a sort of fly mega cemetery. Dozens decorated the ledge, their legs curled up as though trying to keep warm by the cold window. A shiver ran up my spine. After finally cleaning up the crime scene, I invited Rachel in so that we could continue the investigation.

Rachel says:
We could see flies hiding in teeny cracks you would not imagine could house a fly! Eric stacked the drawers in the living room to assist the flies in crawling out of the dresser.

The next morning, Tuesday, I zipped out of the bedroom and into the bathroom, again still groggy, and reached for the light switch. Flies brushed against my arm. I fought the urge to heave. I calmly killed four flies before using the toilet. I quickly realized the living room and adjacent immediately run screaming from the apartment bathroom and kitchen have been contaminated from the dresser drawers, so I hauled them back into the bedroom. Again, I went on regular killing sprees in the bedroom. Again, I lost count after 20. Again, Eric attended to the war zone.

By Thursday, the fly count had decreased and I felt secure in doing some preliminary cleaning in the bedroom. I started with wiping down Eric’s bedside table, which is actually a white, particleboard, two-drawer mini dresser from Canadian Tire. I had checked the drawers for flies earlier in the week, but this time, I banged the drawers around to make sure all the flies were out. Well! Out they flew, almost smoking me in the face, as I was performing the classic let-me-look-straight-at-this-hole-to-see-if-something-is-in-it move. This time I gagged. I stacked those drawers beside the others to “air out” and immediately left the room, my skin crawling.

During this time, I also had to re-kill a number of flies that were trying to crawl out of the garbage can, located beside the toilet. I guarantee those flies were ones Eric tried to kill, because believe me, when I kill a fly, it dies.

Eric says:
I can vouch for that!

Rachel says:
I also did some reading on the Internet and discovered that our invaders were likely cluster flies. These flies have the longest lifespan of any fly (up to two years), they lay eggs in earthworms, which live in the dirt (like dirt on the floor of our canvas shed), and in fall they, en masse, search for places to hibernate, like the wood siding of a house, or the wooden crevices of our dresser. On warm winter days, they awake, thinking it is spring, and gravitate toward windows and ceilings and light bulbs. I was grateful for this final characteristic of cluster flies – it made them easy to kill.


We still can't escape the escaping flies

Rachel says:
We headed out to the farm for the weekend and hoped the flies would be gone when we got back. We killed a couple on Sunday evening and continued hoping. But once again, flies greeted me the next morning. I only killed 10 or so during the day, but by this point I had lost my appetite and flies tormented me in my dreams.

Eric was surprised to hear about the flies so he took another look at the particleboard drawers of his bedside table. He strapped on his headlamp and peered into the depths of the random holes poked into the furniture and saw a dark mass of flies crawling around in recesses of the drawer. How could they all have been crammed in there like that? They must have enjoyed one hell of a game of sardines! Eric plugged all the holes with tissues and predicted we would be free at last.

I did kill a dozen or so flies over the next few days and in a moment of panic and determination spent 30 minutes taping all the visible cracks in one dresser drawer – what this might have accomplished, I wasn’t sure, but I felt like I should do something.

But this time Eric was right. By Monday, January 21, we were truly fly free.


Finally, we get to settle in and enjoy our new space

We have lived in four places since we got married and are proud to say that each has been smaller than the last – at least according to our square footage guesstimates. We have also decreased our horde of possessions with each move. While packing in St. Paul, we were ruthless in ridding ourselves of stuff and brought a truckload to the local secondhand store. We probably still have too much, but it’s a start.

Our little place would be nothing special, except for three words: nine-foot ceilings. Honestly, these make all the difference in how this apartment feels. It isn’t old enough to have much character, but the space definitely works, and it has a decent-size entrance – something Rachel always thinks is crucial. We are two floors up and so get a nice view of the landscape, which happens to include the Trans Canada Highway and some deteriorating buildings. It’s definitely better than being on the ground level or in the basement.

Our one-bedroom apartment costs $375/month, plus electricity. Groceries are more expensive here than in the city – a four-litre jug of milk is $5 – so we expect to spend at least $250/month for food. While all this is more than the $400 we were paying for rent (food and utilities included) on the farm, we hope to spend less on gas. Then again, with the way our truck has been acting lately, maybe not.


Raoul – reliable, but a gas hog

Does anyone know anything about Nissan pickups? Ours is a 1988 King Cab, five-speed, 2.4L, and is lucky to get 15 mpg. The usual is closer to 11 mpg. In the past three months we have poured money into our trusty truck, hoping to solve this problem. Granted, we did some maintenance that was necessary anyway, like replacing the oxygen sensors and getting an injection flush, but nothing has made a difference in Raoul’s gas consumption. Could he actually be an embodiment of George W. Bush (who said America was “addicted to oil” in his 2006 State of the Union address)???

Winter weather makes it difficult to work on the truck, even if Eric did have time between his job and the bus. So, despite our best efforts, our little truck can’t quit its gas habit.

However, we were able to get it safetied and transferred into Manitoba. Our insurance for one year cost $525. The six months of insurance that we bought in Alberta in July cost us $400 – almost $23 more EACH month! And we might even get some money back, once we submit our perfect insurance records from the past five years.


So are we now gappers?

Technically we are still residents of Manitoba. We are only living in Saskatchewan during the week for work reasons. At this point, we don’t even have a phone (we can’t believe how expensive it is!). But we do have Internet, and thus e-mail. And we still consider the farm’s phone number to be our contact number. We have been going back to the farm on weekends to work on the bus (and do our laundry), although that has been difficult with the weather dipping below -25 C many days in the past two months.

Eric has the possibility of doing some extra contract work at the hospital, which he may take advantage of as long as he can’t work on the bus anyway. Besides, we need to save up some money before we can do much more at this point.

Also, Rachel doesn’t have an outside-the-house job, but that may change if something right comes along. She is not interested in being a reporter for the local paper – we don’t want to buy a second vehicle, we don’t have money for a camera, we don’t plan on living here that long, and she wants to try a different kind of writing. (Please note: anyone in need of writing, editing, or designing assistance is welcome to hire Rachel for a small fee.)

To be honest, we are slightly deflated with this turn that our lives have taken. Living in Moosomin, Saskatchewan, was never one of Rachel’s dreams as she grew up only 50 kilometres away. We feel that completion of our bus project is becoming more distant and more difficult to achieve. Not because we are “tempted” to abandon it, and not because “real life” is distracting us. (If anything, we believe most people who say we don’t know what “real life” is are the ones not experiencing real life themselves.) No, the capitalist system is reaping its price from us because it knows we are trying to escape.

However, we are also excited to be in our own place. Rachel has more focused time to write and work on her various organizing projects. Eric has more time at home in the evenings and doesn’t have to drive on scary roads every day. (The Trans Canada Highway in Manitoba has been closed up to the Saskatchewan border several times in this winter – Eric would have been forced to drive on drift-covered gravel roads or icy secondary highways to get to work.) We have time to ourselves to discuss and plan the details of our bus.

And we are trying to keep a traveller mentality about the whole situation.


What does being a traveller mean?

Eric says:
Let’s pretend for a minute that travelling is not so much an action, but an attitude. Where would that lead us? What kind of life would we live on a day-to-day basis?

I speculate we would always be excited about who we might meet and would therefore be more accepting of others and less prone to stereotype them. I realize now that while we were backpacking in B.C., I looked at people from a different perspective. Each person was an opportunity for a new learning experience. Each person’s story would be interesting in its own right.

I think we would be more open to new and different experiences and would enjoy life more. When you travel, life doesn’t have time to become routine. Routine can lead us to believe that what we will experience tomorrow will be very like our experience today, subconsciously limiting what our minds will allow us to absorb. A traveller mentality allows us to be more accepting of “disruptions” in our daily lives. When travelling, disruptions can happen so often that they are the “routine.” Travellers have to learn to shrug their shoulders at the unexpected and unusual, because it comes along so often.

We would also be interested in exploring the history and traditions of wherever we live. As travellers, we are always learning the culture and history of the places we visit, because they are new and different. But often, we don’t know the corresponding information of the very place we are living. I grew up in Chilliwack and have never been to the museum. I have no idea how, when, or why the city was started, or how many indigenous people lost their homes and livelihoods because of it. I have never even just wandered around Chilliwack with the sole purpose of meeting strangers.

We would spend more time reflecting on our daily experiences and they would become more meaningful. While travelling, I would lie in bed thinking about that day and get excited thinking about what the next day would hold.

Finally, we would behave as though we hadn’t yet arrived. We would always look forward to the future. I don’t mean that we would never be content with where we were, because I firmly believe in living in the present and enjoying each moment of life. But we would also not think that “this is all there is.” We would believe that anything is possible (like getting a ride on a yacht and being treated to lunch by Americans; read this story in the entry THE ICING ON THE CAKE).

The attitude of a traveller is one that accepts, no, embraces, changes that, to an open mind, can create the most satisfying and enjoyable life possible.


Our routine

For now, we follow a bit of a routine. We wash the dishes every day after supper, we buy groceries every two weeks, we make dentist appointments, we go to the farm when we can. But already, the rumblings of change are sounding. Eric’s job situation has become uncertain. Our financial situation has taken a downward plunge. What can we do but keep rolling with the punches? We can strive to learn every possible lesson from our experiences. And instead of feeling grim, we can look forward to the unexpected. After all, that’s the most exciting part of travelling – the anticipation of what new adventure lies around the corner.