No Plow Snow Plow I Don't Wanna Go Plow

I live in Canada.

It snows here.  A lot. It gets cold. Really cold.

There's an old joke about Canada having four seasons: Winter, More Winter, Dear God Even More Winter, and Roadwork.

(It should be mentioned, for those who don't live here, that this is not true everywhere.  It's a big friggin' country, with many climate zones.  Not everyone is subject to brutal winters, right Cheryl?)

But here in Central Ontario, it snows.  Like a mofo.  What's more, it gets cold.  Cold enough to freeze your god-dammed Winnebago, in the immortal words of Fozzie Bear.  Or was it Doc? Maybe it was the singing snowman, I don't know.

A friend and co-worker expressed annoyance at people who complain about Canadian winters.  I partly agree.  If you have lived in Canada for any number of years, there is no reason you should be surprised when you get dumped with 20cm of snow every day for a week, or if you wake up to -30C-with-wind-chill temperatures.

It really shouldn't come as a shock.

That being said, I fully reserve my right to complain about freezing my ass off, despite of wearing layers of clothing.  I fully reserve my right to complain about the sheer volume of static electricity emanating from my body at any given time, and about my compulsive need to tap or kick every door I go through, lest I somehow forget and manage to electrocute myself with the static build-up.

I reserve my right to complain about assholes on snowmobiles who do 65kmh down my tiny road with the 40kmh speed limit at 11 at night.  I also withhold my sympathy for people who send their machines through the ice when they knew damn well we had open water less than three weeks ago.

My house is drafty, my toes are cold.  I'm gonna complain.


I didn't ask to be born in this bullshit climate.

Were it not for the socialized medicine and certain custodial arrangements, I'd have fled this godforsaken no man's land years ago.  

Is this a traffic sign, or a plea for help?  SOURCE

First outing(s) of the year.

Goddamn this late winter.

That being said, this has been a pretty darn decent Easter weekend.  I had the day off on Friday, so I got to chill out around the house with the children and the Well-Travelled One.  Since he and my youngest were busy tearing down and rebuilding a computer (He guided her through the rebuild after which she was apparently able to install Linux on her own. I'm not particularly techie, but that sounds pretty impressive to me), I spent some extra quality time with the eldest.  

I engaged her in a vaguely uncomfortable talk about various "grown-up" topics (read: sex, birth control, consent), which although she was hesitant to open up, I hope she thanks me for later.  This basically came about because I finished reading Jessica Valenti's "The Purity Myth" and some of the chapters on abstinence-only sex Ed made me curious about what the schools are teaching the kids.

Not much, apparently.  It could also be my daughter's selective memory combined with a strong desire not to have this conversation with her mother, but it sounds like they pretty much touch on the basic logistics and cover a little bit about birth control, but not much else.  I guess it's not as bad as the "Just Don't Ever Unless You Are Ensconced In A Fully Procreative Heteronormative Marriage" approach that the abstinence-only programs in the U.S. seem to use, but it leaves a lot of gaps to fill for us parents who wish their kids to be fully informed on such subjects, including but not limited to sexual identity, pregnancy and STIs and consent.

But anyway, that's a post for another day.  Back to my weekend, after making my daughter cringe at least 27 times in the span of an hour, I let her off the hook, and suggested we take a walk around the block and discuss lighter topics (such as the Comicon that she was going to the following day). Usually the eldest is loathe to do much that involved physical activity so I was quite surprised and pleased when she joined me with little to no heavy sighing or eye-rolling, and we had a lovely walk around our neighborhood.

Upon our return, The Well-Travelled One and my youngest were off on their own walk to get a coffee and a treat for successful completion of the computer project, so T and I went to her room to move the wardrobe that had until now been used for storage in the basement into her bedroom, as the girl is getting older and her clothes take up more space and my poor house sorely lacks closet space.

The girls were to go to their dad's house this weekend, so after dropping them off, we decided to head up north for a bit of a drive and to scout out some locations for hiking and checking out waterfalls this spring and summer.  The idea is to try and hit some of these places while they are still at their spring high-water mark, as by part-way through the summer, they often dry up somewhat losing some of their majesty. We walked down to the canoe launch at McRae lake, which was challenging as there was still a lot of snow and walking in half-melted snow can be a lot like walking in sand, only more slippery.  My calves and ankles, even with decent footwear, were not liking me much.

With the cancer and the surgery this year, I have backslid quite a bit from the fitness level I was at two years ago, or even last year (even though last year my energy levels were already deteriorating).  For a while I was able to walk or hike fair distances but now, depending on how I've been eating and drinking, a walk from work to the bank can be exhausting.

Taking baby steps, we're trying to revisit some of the less challenging trails and taking shorter walks so I can build back up to the fitness level I was at.  It's going to take some work.

At any rate, we made it over to White's Falls where even dammed, the water was in full force, and then over to Big Chute, where I got to revisit the fun that is peeing outdoors since a great need for hydration also means I have to pee a lot more, in places where bathrooms are not readily available.

White's Falls

Me, back-lit. Later in the summer I can sit on the rocks about 3 feet to my right here.

Saturday was more of the same, after the laundry was done.  We drove as far north as Huntsville, before taking some fun sketchy roads back towards home.  We made a couple of stops, once again at McRae Lake and another stop on the Sequin Trail, which lies atop an old rail bed.  Because, I am told, trains do not like going up and down hills, these rail-bed trails are handy for me because I too, do not like going up and down hills.

View of the rail-bridge from the bank of the Seguin River

Sequin Trail.  Newish foot bridge.  The giant concrete pillar signifies where the rail bridge would have existed.

Seguin River

Stand clear.

I am sore today.  Mind you, after we got home I forced myself, against social anxiety and general exhaustion, to go out to my friend Lori's 40th birthday.  My attempts at dancing after tromping around bush and rocks two days straight were probably not the greatest idea, but I had a good time and was glad I made myself go.  But I am paying for it today.  I know this is part of getting myself back to the shape I was in, so it's worth it, but ow.

Anxiety and other monsters under my bed

It's been a while.  

I've fallen into that blogging trap of going weeks without posting and as a result, all my posts begin with the requisite apologies for not posting in forever.

And so it goes.

I've been struggling.

This winter has been a tough one and I have found myself in an almost constant state of anxiety dating back to the cancer and the floods, a state of waiting for the other shoe to drop, a sense of looming disaster at every turn.  

When I was younger, I was very anxious.  I worried about change, about risk and what if? It's one of the things I am sure helped contribute to the destruction of my marriage.  Incidentally, that destruction helped quell those thoughts for a long time.  After the initial separation, I felt as though if I could get through that, anything else was a piece of cake.

I learned to roll with the punches.  That things were never as bad as they seemed, they could always be worse.  I'm trying to get that back, because anxiety is a huge asshole that robs you of your ability to enjoy your peace as you are always looking around the corner for the next sign of impending doom.  It leaves you with pain from walking with your shoulders at your ears.  Everything is a fight and everyday decisions become fraught.  Everything that goes wrong becomes a sighing, eye-rolling case of "What the hell else?"

Anxiety has been eating at me, these long winter months, and it's affected my relationship, my children, my work.  I've been neglecting friends and hobbies (hi, blog) because being on guard, it's so fucking exhausting that at the end of the day it's easier to zone out and watch episodes of M.A.S.H or surf the Internet than actually try and socialize, which ends up being another source of worry... Either worry about co-ordinating efforts or worry about if you're a horrible person if you just bow out, one more time.

I'm fighting, though.  Bit by bit, I'm trying to relax.  Breathing.  

Out with the jive, in with the love.

Slowly, but surely, I feel like I may be able to pull myself out of this darkness and enjoy the light once again.  It's going to take some self-care and taking some time to fix the things I can, but each day I'm feeling a little more hopeful.