| I’m Not Ready to Scrape Ice Last week. True north strong and freezing. Cold enough to glue eyelids shut. Cold enough to freeze wood frogs solid. Cold enough to freeze tongues to flagpoles. Cold enough that icicles are inside the house. The benchmark lowered considerably for what was enjoyable and what was not. Lordy. You know it’s bad when even the Gentoo penguins at the Calgary Zoo weren’t allowed to play outside. |
| Yup, it was approximately the same temperature as it would be if you’d been sitting on top of Mount Everest. Except it was colder. And the snow! All that shoveling. You wonder what you’ve done in your life to live somewhere where there’s an actual threat of losing your fingers while shoveling two feet of snow off the sidewalk – along with having to miss your favorite TV show. Any of you who lived through a week like last week will now be able to tell your grandchildren of the good old days of 2020. |
| There are 37.59 million Canadians. These are their problems. Maybe we should keep this weather seasonal myopia to ourselves. Is this how we want the world to see and remember us? Fur wrapped and huddled around a Primus stove drying out our toques, bemoaning the cancelled bacon cook off? I mean, who needs white sand beaches, sun and suntan oil, when you can be puffed up in four layers of down, long johns and two pairs of wool mitts with matching earmuffs. Surfing the waves? Ha! That’s for sissies. Now let’s talk about our collective winter creativity? I mean, seriously? Once we had nine professional football teams and two of them had the same name. Dance Like Snow-One’s Watching There are still some of us that can be totally fearless during a cold spell, mainly because we hate being confined, especially if it’s for our own good. Some of us go out and throw boiling water in the air to make mist arcs, use lawn chairs to clear sidewalks, make spaghetti sculptures, play Frisbee with frozen clothes, have frozen hair contests, and dance the bhangra in the snow. For 45 seconds. |
| All this just makes us just a little bit more Canadian. Just like participating in the Polar Bear Swim or voluntarily spend the night sleeping on a slab of ice. Yes, we Canadians have a capacity for accepting unconventional things on the intake. Say “Cheese curds on top of fries and gravy.” By the way, there’s an “alleged” cool front coming in again on Wednesday, and if it happens, you may never hear from me again. Plus my leg hurts. It’s been great knowing you all and thank you for reading. After all, the secret of happiness lies in focusing less on what we don’t have – heat, and more on what we do have – snow. P.S. But for the record, I’ll continue to skip the double-double. In minus Celsius. |
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