-36.8C

I was up early this morning. Like quarter to three early. And though I tried to get back to sleep, it eluded me completely to the point that I woke Rob with all my tossing and when I decided to allow him to rest by retreating from our bedroom to the office downstairs for some mindless blog surfing - he wasn’t far behind because he can’t sleep if I am not there (he tried the pillow thing first but found it inferior - to my tossing and turning, I guess). So, why was I up? I have been sleeping really well, but between the yoga instructor who decided we need to “pop” our hip flexors yesterday and the fact that I had to drive into town uber early this morning to go to the hospital for labs (all that fun blood-work doctors like us old folk to do with increasing frequency once you hit that “old people” demographic) - my mind just couldn’t find a slow enough frequency for sleep.

Rob convinced me (or I convinced him) to head back to bed about 5:30 to try for another hour of sleep. The hospital lab opened at 7:30AM and I wanted to be there then to avoid waiting. Waiting be the common denominator of all things medical here in Canada. As it turned out, I didn’t get back to sleep until nearly 6 and then overslept, getting up finally at 7:20. I vaguely remember a dream that was mostly me crying but I don’t remember why and both things bothered me for a while as I hurriedly dressed and scampered out into the frigid air. There is something about deadly cold that implies hurry even when the air itself seems to hold you motionless and suspended in the moment. After much frustration, Rob had found the heater block plug and cable on my Equinox, which was undoubtedly built for Soccer moms in Texas, and I wrestled with the connection because the last thing Rob reminded me of as I left was to not forget to unplug the car before driving off. My vehicle only reluctantly gave up its warming charge and I nearly had to be frostbitten in the process. The interior wasn’t exactly warm but it wasn’t the outside either. Cold like this hurts. It stings the skin and slices the lungs. I tired to warm my bum up at least but the seat heater refused to stay engaged. Like the dvd player, it doesn’t work in icy temps (to be fair to the seat, the dvd player is a wuss at even warmer temperatures).

The plants were spewing heavily and the fog that wasn’t too think in our little hamlet was a curtain over the town. I guessed at the location of intersections and exits which isn’t too dangerous in the evening when the workers have gone back to Edmonton and the truck traffic has thinned but during what constitutes morning rush here is more than chancey. I couldn’t even see the hospital as I drove by trying to divine the entrance to the parking lot. A lucky guess and I found a near deserted lot. The front doors were closed due to the cold, so I was let in through the ambulance bay by a patient who was having a smoke, standing outside the door in his jammies and robe - tethered to an IV pole.

I survived the blood draw. The trick is not to look. But, I couldn’t pee into the cup. I hate when that happens. So now I have a cup of pee to deliver after I take Katy into school today and it will be another afternoon of hanging around in town because the school buses aren’t running again. Katy rather enjoys this because first of all, her class is unbelievably small. Seven kids yesterday and that was because three of the all day kids showed up. Today it will be just her afternoon group. On days when the buses don’t run, school is open but parents are allowed to decide whether or not to send their kids. A neat way to avoid having to make up missed school days at the end of the year. Of course the year here ends on June 28th. Not a bad thing because kids then begin the new school year after Labor Day and it makes more sense when the warm weather really only arrives with July. Canada Day is the second of July and I am pretty sure I was in long pants and sleeves that day.

Frosty weather is interesting up here. The trees are white with crystals and the wood beneath the siding cracks like trees. All night long I could here the the house popping in protest. The padding on my fingertips is tender from exposure and I have dry skin itch for the first time this winter. The forecast for the week puts us back up into the minus teens by the weekend which you wouldn’t think would be an improvement until its -40C with wind chills even lower. I am glad to have had the opportunity to experience a real Canadian winter in terms of cold but I would have settled for just the Northern Lights - which haven’t materialized as of yet.

-28C

It’s freakin’ cold out today. The drifts are up to my knees. I have cat starving in the garage, a kid to take and pick up from school because buses aren’t running, and a car that isn’t happy about starting. Not to mention shoveling. And I shouldn’t mention that because when Rob reads that I shoveled, he will not be pleased. Shoveling, aside from being the man’s job, is fairly hazardous in this types of temps (and I am not talking wind child stuff but real minus degrees). I know this personally because the winter that my late husband was first sick I ended up with frostbite on several toes trying to keep up with the shoveling. It snowed quite a bit and was a colder winter than we’d had in a while. Will’s uncle was always telling me to leave the shoveling for him but then it would snow and he wouldn’t show up. So, I would leave Katy inside with Will (she was about eighteen months old and he was going blind and had dementia) and go out and shovel as fast as I could (two car drive but mercifully very little sidewalk). I’d be in and out checking up on them but not enough to save my toes. I had crappy boots though and no money for new ones as I was just paying the bills we had and feeding us without Will’s income.

Texas, I am told, doesn’t have winter like this and I know that is why many people head south for the winter or to live permanently. I bet they get ice though. Ice is worse than frigid temps and snow by a very long shot in my opinion. People in colder climates are barely able to navigate it with any amount of sense but down south there should just be a general ban on travel when ice comes.

But, I really miss my garage today. My attached two car garage. I’d never had one before and spent not quite four years with it and now I am feeling hooped not to have one.

First Snow of Winter

The snow was falling even before we went to bed last night. Not flurries either but the wet, heavy flakes that fall straight down like missiles, sticking to the cold surfaces and piling up like cord wood. From a distance they look like tiny snowballs and up close they clump on face, getting stuck in your eyelashes and bangs before melting into tiny slush pools that dribble slowly down you face and off your chin like drool.

Although it was much colder this morning, the snow clung to most surfaces save the roads. They are still a bit too warm and with the help of the sun, shook off the white stuff this time. Next time will likely be a different matter. Snow in early November is something I can’t recall in the last several years. The last really snowy winter I remember was 1998 when Will and I were first living together. It seemed as though it did nothing but snow that winter. I think we had nearly a week’s worth of school to make up that following June because of the snow days. Here, according to Rob, the snow fell and stayed, foot after foot of it, just before Halloween. I don’t recall snow on Halloween ever but I remember plenty of snowy Novembers growing up and even through my young adulthood. Weather patterns have changed a lot though because of the global warming in the last decade and a bit more. In Iowa winter snows fall around and more often after Christmas and in the southern part of the state significant and lasting snowfall is over by late February or very early March. By late April the warm weather returns and it can be very warm and humid by mid-May and stay that way through to mid-October. Here the snow falls and stays until May.

Everyone is concerned about how I will handle a Canadian winter, but I only just put my long johns on today whereas Rob has been wearing his for weeks already. It’s just snow and cold. The sun being perpetually on the horizon, not that we have fallen back to standard time, is more bothersome. On the way into town today, Rob has me try to picture what it will be like with feets high snow banks on either side of the road and weather so cold that the car exhaust builds up into a fog at the intersections from the waiting vehicles. Not hard to picture the latter at all as I have been paying attention to the smokestacks at the plants around here and the smoky pollution that comes out. It’s thicker and moves languidly up and across the sky. Manufactured clouds of steely gray snaking away for what seems like miles. Rob isn’t far off when he asserts that the cold is visible up here. I used to try and picture the Fort and the road to Josephburg before we moved up from his descriptions. I tried to visualize the layout of the yard and the house. He had shown me how to get to the aerial shot on Goggle Earth once and that helped a bit, but it wasn’t until I got here that it all made sense. Of course, even in the beginning, nothing seemed concrete in the same way life in Des Moines did. Now the Fort is my mailing address and Josephburg is where I live, and this house, is our home in a way that the old place on 53rd Place never was.

Winter has arrived. And so have I.