FROZEN THOUGHTS

I'm freezing off my poor, sad Canadian ass off right now. The reason I haven't posted is for fear my fingers would freeze to the keyboard and I would be forever plagued with a keyboards dangling from my fingertips. That's worst case scenario. Low-middle cased scenario, I would only have the keys "D" and "L" stuck to them... and quite possibly the space bar.

IT IS COLD!!!

It was -29 yesterday (without windchill). You factor in the windchill and you get yourself something in the range of -40ish...... that's cold people! I won't do the conversion for the Yanks because A) I suck at conversions and B) my brain is frozen and I couldn't do a satisfactory job at converting it. It's so cold, when I open my kitchen cabinets that are on the exterior wall, cold air comes shooting out of them. I swear I saw a frozen steak behind the dessert plates. It's so cold, I can't even sit in the back end of the house, only the front because that's where the sun beams are located. I'm like some deranged cat trying to find the sunspot on the living room floor. I'm so cold that I'm wearing my housecoat over my clothing, and yes my furnace is working in case you are wondering. I'm a perpetually cold person, and this doesn't help matters at all. The worst part is my husband is out of town on business, and I don't have any food because I was too lazy to get my ass in gear over the week-end.

They also cancelled school... well kinda. Kierra's aide called in sick (she was probably frozen to the tile on her bathroom floor), and the furnace in the classroom couldn't handle the pressure of doing a half-assed job of not freezing 17 five year olds. Their classrooms is one of those satellite classes - you know what I'm talking about. Those sad little buildings in the back of the actual school? So the principal called to see if I still wanted to bring the girls. In a couple of eloquent words? FUCK NO!! So instead I had marathon long-distance phone calls with my mom, made foam valentine bear bookmarks, and looked up my family lineage on ancestry.com.

However, I couldn't avoid the inevitable. I mean I made this nasty can of chicken and wild rice soup for lunch (barf), and had nothing more than that to offer for dinner. So rationalizing this, I decided to whip over to Wal-mart to pick up some stuff, and they also have a handy little McDonald's there I can throw at my kids. Win/Win situation. I bundle them up, strap them in the van, I open the garage door and I swear if garage doors had feelings, this was the saddest door in the City. It creaked like ice was in between the cracks of it. This whoosh of cold frosty air attacked me like a Stephen King murder fog. I raced around the front of the van, jumped in, and thought to myself "what that hell am I doing?" Too late - we are in the van and I'm not getting out. So I drive off and spy my newspaper sitting on the porch (I wouldn't even open the door to get it). Drive around the corner and see drifts of snow on the sides of the road, each with a car stuck in it. Now I don't understand this you see.

A) Calgary is a well-endowed City yet they never have snowplows go down the side roads of sub-divisions at all. They just plow the main roads (aka anything a bus would go down), and screw the rest of us stuck in the back. So there are cars littering the sides of the road now; owners who gave up after they realized that no a smart car can't plow itself through a 5 foot drift of snow. Enough SUV's and pickups forged a little path which I managed to get my van through as well. I get to Wal-Mart and brief the children of the plan. I sounded like a drill Sargent "ok troops, when I open the door, you must evacuate the van immediately! Do not, I repeat do not open your mouth, breathe through your mouth. You will freeze your lungs and I will have to leave you. Do not run into the pile of snow Wal-mart left in the middle of the parking lot for some unknown reason, so you loose a boot. Any boot lost in the snow pile will remain in the snow pile. We will amputate your frozen foot with a fork in the McDonald's. GO GO GO!"

So I ran my poor children for the coldest two minutes in Canada to the store, yelling at them to stop yelling about how cold it is because they start complaining it's too cold (well der). Immediately blast of warm, happy re-cycled contaminated air in the door openings - thaws my insane body. We take our time shopping (no rush to go back out there!). I get what I need (minus the blowtorch that I'll need to get into the frozen van afterwards), and then we go eat. I can see through the windows that there are other people just like me who don't know any better. People slipping in their running shoes they thought could withstand the icy roads. Fools really. I cue up the command start and decide to put all three kids in the shopping cart. I was shocked the greeters at Wal-mart didn't yell at me to tell me this is not a good plan I have. I don't care - three kids pushed by their mom in a shopping cart go a lot faster than said mom dragging three kids through a parking lot. I ran, my kids squealed in delight. I get to the van and apparently my command start didn't activate (piece of crap), and I throw all the children into the van, telling them to curl up in a ball and let their 20 inch thick parkas cushion their fall. Get everyone strapped in, go to back out... and SOME COMPLETE ASSHOLE decides to park behind me in the row across but not pull in entirely! NO he's half-way in the aisle! I'm thinking "I know it's cold but come on!" So I fiddle back and forth to get the van out of the parking lot. If I was one of those road rage people, I would've just backed my way and smashed his Lincoln Continental ass (must've been an old person's car). Got home - my garage door screamed at me again, and got back in the house.

So there you have it. For those of you who live in this country, you feel and share my pain. For those of you who say "Oh Canada's so pretty, I've always wanted to visit" ... yah don't come until the two months of summer okay?