-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.

A Clean Fridge is a Sign

The fridge back in Iowa was almost empty. I remember Rob being appalled at the lack of just about everything when he came to stay for the first time before our trip to Arkansas. The fridge in our home here was stuffed and mostly with items of questionable edibility. Vintage describes a lot of things and many of them were in our fridge. But today all that changed because a very affable Hindu repairman arrived at our home just before lunch and fixed our broken down refrigerator, scoffing at the very idea that his phone diagnosis was incorrect. By the time I returned home later that afternoon, not only was there a chilling freezer and fridge but a clean one. Really clean and not just empty as Rob had returned home from his only afternoon meeting (hand holding as he put it) to finish up the job he began yesterday. All foods and condiments and no longer identifiable were disposed of and all surfaces within scrubbed.

So now the fridge looks like the one back in Iowa but for the fact it is way cleaner. What could this mean? First, it means we don’t eat much by way of variety anymore. Allergy- induced semi-veganism has really limited the products purchased and consumed by all of us. Second, it means we are really moving. Really. No one cleans a nasty fridge without an intervention by the universe and when the move wasn’t seeming real enough for us, destiny stepped in. But, that is not all that a clean and newly repaired fridge means. It also means that I have a pretty great husband.

-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.

WordPress, Cell Phone Novels and Me (again)

Okay, so because I haven’t joined nearly enough blog sites (MSN-Spaces, dot.mac, LiveJournal, Blogger, Blogher, NaBloMo) or have blogs enough, I went to WordPress the other day and started a whole new account and am rebuilding this site essentially at WordPress. A really neat function allowed me to transfer all the stuff at Blogger (which are the same posts as here) to WordPress. I called the site Anniegirl1138 which was my “handle” at the YWBB. In my first post there I explained the story behind the name too. While most people at the widow board tend to create monikers based on their loss, my name was all about me. What an selfish little thang I am, eh? But I saw being there as being about me anyway. Not Will. I was there to see if I was normal (found out that normal is a bit more relative than I had believed it to be) and to rant (as I had no outlet for it in my real time) and I wanted to find people who were coping, internalizing and moving on - which is what I was more than ready to do. Rob was teasing me a bit this morning about naming my site for myself as he is grappling with what to call his on site. I named this site Second Edition because it was the second blog after my Widowed:The Blog at MSN-Spaces, literal name and boring, but I like the idea of my blog being christened with my online persona.

WordPress is a bit more complicated and I am still playing with the free features before I upgrade (which I think I will have to do to get the cool stuff) but I think it will eventually be my permanent - and only - online home. I want to continue this blog there and also have a page for my writing and a page of resources for widowed people - just cause I want to help and I haven’t much of an outlet for that right now.

Cell phone novels are a big Japanese thing right now. I went to look at a couple of blog articles on them and wondered if I could do something like that myself. It made me wonder too if I could, or should, put some of my own fiction online. I used to write fanfic in the long ago. It was fun to get feedback and have an audience that was so immediate. It reminded me of when I was a sophomore in high school and I was writing a soap opera satire that all my friends (and even kids who weren’t my friends) were asking to read it. I couldn’t write fast enough. I love writing for people. How did I lose that? Why did I forget that? Oh, yeah - I was told I wasn’t quite good enough when I tried to go back and get into the Writer’s Workshop at Iowa. Now if that happened I would chalk it up to a problem with the source but then I was twenty-seven and very insecure.

Rob and I have talked more about the Texas move and my working and my writing. I am being silly to worry about what feminist society thinks about my role. Shouldn’t my role be whatever I choose for it to be? I choose to be a writer who does the stay at home stuff. Men are practically applauded for that but women are selling themselves short and up shit creek at the same time. As Rob has pointed out on many an occasion, who decided that career and all its material accouterments were the be and end all? If everyone let fear of failure or loss of status or society’s aversion to living a scaled -down material life get in the way of the pursuit of one’s true talents, interests and dreams what a real shit-hole this life would be.