escape from the north country

Wow. My admiration for Canadian parents grows exponentially as the weather gets worse and worse. I can't imagine having to deal with the minus degrees on a daily basis with two kids. Enhh. There's the insane amount of clothing involved, first off. Ji demands "oversocks" now. I think he picked this up from his Gramma. And really, it's a good idea. There are the undersocks which are small and thin and these hold the long underwear down. Then, there are the oversocks which go (duh, as Ji would say) over the pants and protect the ankles from snow exposure underneath the snowpants. On at least four occasions Ji returned my pre-selected pair of socks as not the right ones, oversocks, Mum. Then there are the hats, scarves, neck warming thingies, and of course mittens. Good lord, the mittens. Everyday it got grimmer and grimmer. We started out with nice kids' mittens. Then it was on to the hand knitted, not-so-waterproof mitts. Then it was those mini-gloves that are supposedly meant for adults. After Ji left those at school he was forced to wear my big black mittens. Just as well the other kids in SK aren't fashion plates either.

Then, there's the driving.

Driving. In snow. Is. Not. Fun. Hm, maybe I could make that into a cutesy licence plate. DrvSnNF? On the day we were supposed to leave the countryside, my POOR DAD lost the keys to his rental car. This after he drove all the way up early in the morning after Boys' Night Out. It was awful. We looked and looked and looked at looked but to no avail. Either Ji absentmindedly stuck them in a boot somewhere or they are under a snowbank. Whichever it is, we didn't find them. Likely, come spring, some deer will eat them off of a new shoot. And then get shot itself, knowing our neck of the woods, which is hunt-a-riffic. Sooo.... turns out that when you lose the keys to your rental car you will likely have to get towed to the nearest seller of the type of car you rented. Just as well Dad didn't get the Bentley, huh? He had to skip work the next day to await getting towed to Owen Sound. In the meantime, Ji and Seung Yi and I made our way to Toronto in our first yecchy snowstorm. It was really, really scary. I couldn't actually drive my car forward in the driveway, the snow had gotten so high. I had to back out the entire way. Then, I drove white-knuckled along they icy highway at about 40 km an hour to Sauble Beach. Seung Yi slept and I listened to CBC 1 report on the incredibly boring story of the liberal - sorry, Liberal - leadership election. It was stupefying but in a good way. So dull, it effectively rendered my fear of flying into a ditch null. Yay, CBC! (I actually heard someone get interviewed on CBC, a white rapper kind of guy, Buck Sixty-Five, and when he said he first heard rap on Brave New Waves, the interviewer actually said, "Thank God for the CBC, eh?").

Winter: nice when you're inside in front of the fire; not so great when you're outside, with two kids, trying to "get" somewhere.

More from frostier climes (Calgary!) later this week.

[Countryside-8-December-2006]