No good deed goes unpunished

I don't usually make a point of taking pictures of Victoria when it snows, because, unlike many of my fellow denizens believe, this city isn't magically transformed into a winter wonderland. It just turns into Ottawa.

The snow snuck up on us Sunday evening, when Demeter came over for dinner and to watch Masterpiece Theatre. I didn't even notice the snow outside until the Resident Fan Boy donned his boots, and I went to the window. Demeter refused our offers of boots or YakTrax, so we escorted her up the sidewalk, as the right rear wheel of her walker picked up broad white ribbons, then stalled with the resulting snowball.

I found that if I rhythmically swatted the wheel with Demeter's cane - rather like the old-fashioned bowling of the hoop - we made steady progress. Thank goodness the journey only took two blocks.

The RFB and I returned to the colourful glow of the Christmas lights against the snow, and pondered how both elder daughter and younger daughter, of the Hadean childhoods, reject January and February snow, only wishing for it at Christmas.

A snowfall in Victoria is a good time to visit the shops, nearly deserted by those lacking the inclination to brave the weather without winter gear or tires, for that matter.

At midday, as the flakes resumed, I resolved to seize our trusty ergonomic Ottawa shovel, and tackle the sidewalk running the length of our building, much as I cleared the sidewalk outside the Hades house in the vain hope of shaming my neighbours into making passage easier for strollers, wheelchairs, and canes.

It's about the same length of sidewalk as that I laboured on in Hades, so I cleared it again an hour or so later when the snow stopped. A Strata Council member thanked me profusely. Unlike Ottawa, where it's a municipal pastime to complain about the city's failure to bulldoze sidewalks, it's a municipal requirement in Victoria to clear paths and fronting pavements during the occasional instances when we get a brief blizzard. (It's never a real blizzard, but don't tell Victorians that.)

After two brisk shovelings, the body cries out for carbohydrates and salt, so the Resident Fan Boy fetched me potato chips.

It was the dip that did me in.

At 1:48, I awoke in agony, and chewing antacids and swallowing acetamenophen, lay awake until stupid o'clock, wondering if I were having a heart attack. (I've reached the age where this is a possibility.) I gave up, and, since upright seemed a marginally bearable position, plodded miserably to the cold living room to watch stuff I'd PVR'd and peer out between the blinds at the garden, which was steadily disappearing. As I dozed fitfully after 5 am, the RFB learned his office building, along with schools and several other businesses, had been locked. He ventured out at dawn to join the shamed shovellers. (I can dream, can't I?)

Where the sidewalk ends

This being our sixteenth winter in Hades, we've learned to clear the front path and the sidewalk in front of our house every one to two hours during a snow-storm. That way, the snow doesn't pile up past our ability to shift it.

I clear the sidewalk from the bus stop, which is about ten feet to the left of the house, through to the opposite side of the driveway on the right side. (Not having a car, we leave the driveway for our neighbours to clear -- who do, and who do.)

My motivations are three-fold:

1) I come from Victoria, where your civic responsibility is to clear the sidewalk in front of your property. Mind you, Victoria has little in the way of snowploughs.

2) I'm trying -- in vain -- to shame the neighbours.

3) When we came here fifteen years ago, I accompanied elder daughter to school, pushing younger daughter in a stroller, so I really appreciated cleared sidewalks.

A week or so ago, during the opening hours of a snow-dump that would exceed previous records for Ottawa - though not, ironically enough, for Victoria - I was out making a dent in the damage.

A twenty-something/thirty-something fellow was zigzagging up the middle of our street brandishing a large shovel, but not using it.  Spotting me labouring away with my royal-blue ergonomic number, he strode to the opposite end of where I was digging.

"Watch out!" he warned as he ploughed by, forcing me to leap into a nearby drift.

He then swooped in and out of our front walk, shouldered his shovel, and marched past me.

"You're welcome," he said.

Slightly stunned, I wordlessly watched him continue up the hill, zigzagging up the middle of the street, not stopping to shovel anywhere.  He vanished into the whiteness.

What  was that? I wondered.  Machismo? Helpfulness?  A demonstration of my shovelling shortcomings?

It did make my job easier.  As I was tidying up what he'd left, another fella trotted through on the cleared pavement.

"You're hired," he said.

I just chuckled, because I didn't see any point in explaining that this wasn't all my work.

Less than an hour later, it looked like I (and he) hadn't shovelled at all.

Sixteen winters have taught me to go out and clear it again.

I did see someone with a double-stroller struggling through where the sidewalk wasn't -- until she reached the stretch in front of my house and rolled easily through until the sidewalk disappeared again.

Elton, fetch a shovel!

My two daughters, four years and several worlds apart, have much in common. One is their refusal to discuss the tragedies and defeats of the day. "I can't talk about it," elder daughter used to say when she was much younger: "It makes me too sad." As for younger daughter, I doubt I hear about a fraction of the day's disappointments. Stress robs her of words altogether.

I can relate. I can often tell how unhappy I've been by the gaps in my journals and diaries over the years. Writing it down just makes it more real somehow.

So. A few days ago, I was actually having rather a pleasant day. I hurried up to the library just before picking up younger daughter. There was a hold waiting for me, Patty Griffin's 2004 album Impossible Dream, and while the librarian was checking this out, I spotted a new Alexander McCall Smith book lying on her desk. "You want it?" she asked.

I dashed next door to the school with my treasures. On the way out, we spotted one of younger daughter's guardian angels and offered to wait with her until her mother arrived. "Something happened today..." she said.

Apparently, the Grade Fives are tackling something called "Mental Math". One of the young boys in the class thought it would be screamingly witty to change this to "(Insert Younger Daughter's Name) Math". What is almost as dispiriting as learning that the boys have found a new and hilarious way to call my PDD-NOS daughter "mental" is that the young boy responsible was the ring-leader in a little gang that spent at least one recess in November shouting in younger daughter's face and ears, a particularly delightful thing to do to a sensory-sensitive child. Three of these charmers were hauled in to the principal's office and read the riot act. Little Ring-leader sent a long note of apology and a stuffed animal at the instigation of his mortified mother who stopped at an intersection to say: "I can't understand it; he's always been so supportive of her..."

I know she loves him. This is why I'll restrain myself from taking a shovel to school and braining the little creep. "I guess," I told the Resident Fan Boy that evening, "he just thought 'Hey, this would be funny and everyone will laugh'...and from the sounds of things everyone did."
"Oh I doubt he even thought it out that far," said my husband, the former boy. A pause. "I don't think you would have liked me much when I was a kid."

I left a phone message for the teacher and went to the computer for my favourite painkillers: family research, David Tennant, music. The songs on Patty Griffin's album were, as expected, hauntingly lovely. And melancholy. I had to turn them off after a while. (At least Mary Chapin Carpenter and Dar Williams have the occasional flashes of humour.) Took three "Sleep-Relaxes" that night (herbal remedy, not to be taken several nights in a row -- it relaxes everything...). Quick word with one of younger daughter's EA's when he very sweetly offered us a lift to school. He's athletic and works with the class in the afternoon, so he might make an impression. Even quicker conference with math teacher who thanked me for the heads-up. Don't know what the outcome of this will be. I didn't use the "B" word this time, and frankly, I'm weary of reporting these things.

I did appease my own bruised feelings yesterday by "looking shovels" at Little Ring-leader at a field trip to see a play at the local girls' school. Just for a second. Judging by how quickly he averted his eyes, I'd say he knew exactly what I was thinking...