After a fashion

With Victoria Day out of the way, I hear people claiming it's summer.

No, it isn't.  Not even in Victoria, where a run of cool days have resulted in a mixture of clothes downtown:  from quilted winter coats to tee-shirts.  An older gentlemen just walked by dressed in shorts with a fleece jacket --- Look!  There's another one!

I wouldn't be intrusive enough to snap pictures to illustrate, but I can do a sort of written snapshot.

Here's something I wrote over my bowl of oatmeal (with maple syrup, bananas and sour cream) at the Blue Fox Cafe last February, when no one was in shorts.  Not even in Victoria.

The girls my daughters' ages are wearing toques in neutral shades, pulled down to just above their ears, with the toque-tips arranged in artful pockets, and their wavy tresses carefully flowing down from beneath.

They wear layers, some draped over the backs of their chairs:  cable sweaters - also in neutral shades - sheep-skin-lined patchwork jackets (but not real sheepskin - that's cruel), broad shawl-style scarves perfectly covering their shoulders in soft folds.

At the next table, a lady with bobbed, noticeably tousled, dark, dyed hair looks out from what's left of her eyebrows.  She's wearing what appears to be an exact replica of the close-knit midnight blue pullover worn by the honey-blonde (possibly also dyed) taupe-toqued young girl a few feet away.  The lady has a gold band hanging from a pendant, heart-shaped.  Her close-fitting jeans are folded up to reveal her stylish ankle-boots.

Women dress so much more deliberately for the company of other women.

The first rose of winter

A few days into the new year, I came across a planter on Fort Street.  It had flowers in it.  Real flowers.  I touched them in disbelief, even though I grew up here.

It's my first winter in Victoria after seventeen years, and though, intellectually, my mind knows that flowers can grow outside in Victoria, evidently, my heart and soul, shriveled by Ottawa Februaries, had forgotten.

A few weeks into the new year, I made my way up Fort Street and spotted a tiny pink rose, no more than two inches by two inches (and possibly less), burgeoning bravely amid the rose hips.

Roses?  Rose hips??? I thought to myself, turning the corner to find my street exploding with robins.

Quite early one morning

From our apartment, we can see the middle school which our daughters would have attended had we stayed in Victoria, rather then heading to Hades.

It's been upgraded in the intervening years and is now a rather handsome off-white building with Mondrian-like squares amid stencils of trees and sea landscapes.

I've learned to close the door of the en suite bathroom before using it.  All manner of people bring all sorts of dogs to the schoolyard outside of hours - something unheard of in Rockcliffe Park, where dogs were banned from school property.

At recess, the yard fills with kids ranging in ages eleven to fourteen.  Small knots of them make their way to the fence where the grass slopes down rather suddenly to two or three ancient trees.  This puts them out of sight of the school, but I'm not sure it occurs to them that they're in full view: of the quiet street, where people park their cars to walk to the shops on the busier thoroughfares, and me, sitting on the bed, while I put on my make-up.

This morning, I open the curtains to see the distant figures loping up to the school entrance, some clutching instrument cases, all wearing packsacks and clad in variations of jeans.

The young couple are obscured from their classmates and teachers by the slope of the grounds and by the tall tree by the chainlink fence, but I can see them clearly.  I doubt they'd care.  She's blond and bespectacled; he's her height, dark-haired in baggy jacket and light trousers.

How old are they?  Certainly no older than fourteen, possibly as young as twelve. Feeling self-conscious, I step away from the window, but they're oblivious to everything but each other.

I sit down on the other side of the bed, back to the window, to put on my shoes, wondering if they'll have any memory of this morning years from now: the chill of February, the half-light, the swish of the morning buses and cars.  The smell and taste of each other.

Shoes on, I stand, turn, and they've vanished; I can't even see anyone crossing the long field back to the school, where final stragglers are melting into the doors, some running, some plodding.  It's past 8:30.

The belt of the hunter

Sometimes, I find myself making my way home on the black streets, with Orion glowing on the eastern horizon.

Being newly back from Ottawa, and in Victoria for the winter for the first time in several years, I'm noticing how dark the streets are. Victorian streets often have a grassy verge, whereas Ottawans walk close to the edge. Getting splashed by passing cars is slightly less likely in Victoria, but there's also a greater distance from the street lights, which fail to brighten the sidewalk much. Also, I'm realizing how much light reflected off the snow in the winter nights of Hades. Pedestrian accidents are common in Victoria, where they try to cross the shadowy streets, shadows themselves.

I'm also startled by how deserted the Victorian sidewalks are, after darkness has fallen. My home street in Hades was not a particularly busy street, other than in the morning and after-school rushes, but I'd walk out at night, even in the bitter cold, and pass several other pedestrians on my journey. Our home street here is a major artery with plenty of cars, but few people out, even reasonably early in the evening.

I'd forgotten this, possibly because I was the mother of young children when I left Victoria, and so rarely abroad after dinner.

Walking home on a dark, dark sidewalk, I can see Orion very well, far better than I ever did in Ottawa. I blink back at him with a light I've attached to my zipper, like the cyclists and joggers around me, so the cars can see what they're hitting.

Sunlit

You may want to click on this one to enlarge it.

So I'm running back and forth, collecting laundry for the laundry-room, because I live in an apartment, and that's what I do now. I look out the window, and wonder why the lights are suddenly blazing at the school across the way.

It occurs to me that they're not blazing from the inside. The bright golden light of a winter sunset after a cloudless day is reflecting back from the windows.

This is totally unconnected, but I'm feeling a wee bit ill. Time for bed.

Snow birds?

I don't know why Ottawans are so indignant when it snows in April.  It snows every damn April, often in late April.  It is a bit depressing, of course -- this morning, I was noting that with a very few exceptions, the worst of the glaciers had retreated from the front yards.  Now, I look out the front door and it's as if we have been hurled back in time.

The birds on the back deck seem to be taking it in stride.  Well, flutter.  They're buzzing around the feeder like bees, some "nesting" in the accumulated snow on the deck railing, resting up to battle the others for seed.

I believe these are pine siskins.  There is one chubby adolescent, who seems disinclined to join the struggle.  He's bedded in the snow drift, trying to look cute enough to feed.  Typical.

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.

Power failure

I took this picture exactly eight years ago, on the way back from dropping off younger daughter at her elementary school. Younger daughter is no longer in Grade Five (thank heaven, that was the cusp of another used year). There is no snow on the ground; I didn't even need gloves today. The utility boxes are long gone.

But I'm whacked and stressed out. God give you good night.

"March has the first day of spring, but not the last day of winter"

Well, winter is on the way out. That's why we had a frost-bite warning last night here in Ottawa. But it's okay, it was only a paltry -13 wind chill this morning. Time for a last crack at the departing season with this Rick Mercer poke at Calgary's attempt to have designated tobogganing hills.

Water like a stone

And the wheel of the year turns again. Two weeks ago, I was walking the Accent Snob on a late November mid-morning, snatched time between buses to and from younger daughter's school in Bells Corner. Both the Ottawa River and the Rideau River (pictured above) were whirling with mists, the silver water looking smooth and thick, like pudding on the boil. I wandered eastward and thought sadly of a friend who had just emailed me that her marriage had ended, and wondered how I'd reply.

Barely a fortnight later, the edges of the Rideau River really were thickening. As I gazed out toward the middle of the Rideau River where the water was dark and still liquid, I glimpsed odd objects dotted along the part where the ice had advanced. Nervously, I continued on for a better look, thinking how they looked about duck-sized and fearing they might be actual trapped birds.

Nope. Someone had evidently been testing the ice with rocks, not someone so foolhardy as to venture out, I hoped. (Although, these days, with global-warming, the ice simply doesn't get as thick as it used to, as people with skidoos and trucks keep discovering every year.)

The sun slipped away, and so did I, before my blood froze as well.

Doily double

Sometimes, when it's really cold and the snow hasn't come yet, the streets look grey and white with strain.  I hadn't noticed this particular effect before -- the web of cracks spreading out from a man-hole cover like a doily dropped in the middle of the suffering road.

I stopped and fumbled my mittens off my hands to take the picture. It was -16 Celsius with a -24 windchill, chilly enough to give me that toothpick sensation in my nostrils, but not nearly as bitter as Ottawa can get.

If I'm not careful, my hands will look something like this road by February, and chunks of skin will peel away.

You think I'm exaggerating, don't you?

Things I learned during March Break

The corridors leading to the exhibits at the National
Gallery. It's a slow incline and is rarely this deserted.

March Break is usually pretty grim in Hades, but younger daughter gets two weeks off from her independent school.  We generally spend the first week catching up on movies, because the museums are crammed with kids from the regular school system -- usually in March Break day camps, so they're there under duress and often with not quite enough supervision. It can be a bit of a zoo.

In the second week, we hit the museums because Hades, being The National Capital, is rife with them. We found them well-attended (lots of university and school groups doing special tours and scavenger hunts), but less zoological.

Younger daughter has been snappish and short-tempered.  For the past five years, the catch-phrase in our household has been:  "Is it autism or adolescence?"  This year an exacerbating factor has been The Winter That Won't Leave.  The whole city has been in the doldrums for over a month.  We've actually had longer winters and colder winters, but this one has had a depressing persistent sameness that has worn everyone down.

Younger daughter seems to be in perpetual fear of another White Easter, like the one we had in 2008. Elder daughter flew off with her class to Europe between blizzards and enthusiastically described the turquoise waters off Cassis as I held the phone in my slackening hand and gazed out at the three-foot drifts on the deck.  Mind you, Easter was early that year and is not until late April this year, so we should be safe.  That's what I keep telling younger daughter.

Anyway, we must grasp what grace and beauty we can, even in the midst of this off-white (and downright dirty) limbo in which we find ourselves.  Keats tells me that all I need to know is that beauty and truth are one and the same, so here are things I've learned during March Break:

1.  John Ruskin, whom I knew superficially as a writer and critic, was one hell of a sketcher and watercolourist.  There's a visiting exhibit about him at the National Gallery of Canada this "spring".  Here's an overview of the exhibition, which focuses mainly on his architectural preservation work. The video excludes, alas, his amazing nature drawings and paintings.  I've dabbled in watercolour and know that the crispness and detail here ain't easy in that medium. The fellows here do natter on a bit; I'd just focus on the paintings and ignore the first couple of minutes. Ruskin was a photographer too -- did you know that?  In short, I went to the gallery feeling vaguely interested and came away stunned.  If you're in Ottawa before May 11th, do go see it!

2.  The 40 Part Motet art installation by artist Janet Cardiff has been to the National Gallery before, because  a)  it is amazing; and b)  the gallery has an actual historical chapel restored and reconstructed off the indoor garden which is the ideal space to set up forty individual speakers so you can wander around or sit in the centre of a flood of Thomas Tallis.  This video is in a less ideal space, but the roaming camera gives you an idea of how you can get close to the separate voices: 

However, that is not what I learned.

I've had a sore knee since before Christmas and am beginning to despair that it will ever entirely go away, so I had to sit down and rest while the Resident Fan Boy and younger daughter zoomed off to the Modern galleries. The motet is on repeat, of course and I gradually became aware that the babble in the Rideau Chapel was rather louder than it should be for the half a dozen people visiting at the time. I realized that the installation includes the conversation of the singers as they wait to begin. I got up and limped around the circle of speakers, hearing someone warming up, two baritones joking and shooting the breeze, etc. Then the singing began again, in small groups taking turns before all forty voices filled the chapel with tsunamis of sound.

Gosh.

3. The renaming of the Museum of Civilization which, as I've mentioned in a previous post, has annoyed elder daughter, has changed it not one whit.  We made it in to see a rather unimpressive exhibit called "Snow"(which is about snow), and I discovered I'd actually seen the IMAX film on Kenya before.  However, they have a wonderful new bistro, an extra balm to the spirit since the food in the downstairs cafeteria has been dropping precipitously in quality over the past few years.

4.  The Museum of Nature, a favourite of younger daughter's due to its beautifully renovated exhibits on wildlife, marine life, and dinosaurs (also its close proximity to the Elgin Street Diner), has actually quite a beautiful basement, featuring what they call a Stone Wall Gallery and a 3D theatre. In our past visits we've always used the upper floor washrooms, so this was a pleasant surprise.  We'll have to take in a film sometime.

5. I already knew from past experience, that sometimes one of the most interesting (and indeed devastating) exhibits can be hiding down the little corridor just behind the grim but clean washrooms beyond the Hall of Honour at the Canadian War Museum (another rather inexplicable favourite of younger daughter).  This time we were lucky to catch a tiny display devoted to Ansel Adams and Leonard Frank and their work recording the plight of Japanese-Americans (Adams) and Japanese-Canadians (Frank) -  when citizens of the USA and Canada were rounded up, dispossessed, and placed in internment camps because they or their ancestors happened to be Japanese.  I had long been familiar with the photography of Ansel Adams; I even attempted to replicate his famous photo of the church in Bodega, California when I was staying there the summer before the advent of elder daughter, but I was unfamiliar with this aspect of his work and knew nothing, I'm afraid, of Leonard Frank.  This was the last week of the display; I'm glad we saw it.  (And am even more hopping mad about the subject.)

6. Being close to the Bytowne Cinema, we have seen the collection of Oscar-nominated animated shorts in past year and enjoyed it again this year.  However, I've never seen the nominated short live-action films, and after seeing this batch, I'd like to do it again next year, though I really wish we could see these compilations before the awards ceremony.

Three of the films are about half an hour each, one is about fifteen minutes and one is about eight minutes. As with the feature films, it's difficult to say which one is "best", because it's very much an apple and oranges situation.

Helium, the Danish winner of the Oscar, is a gentle film about a children's hospice which I sat through dry-eyed until the very last image which hit me in the solar plexus and left me struggling for control while waiting for the next film.   The Voorman Problem (England) is one of the shorter films; it feels very much like something from The Twilight Zone and stars Martin Freeman as a psychologist confronting a prisoner who claims to be a deity.  Do I Have to Do Everything? is also very short, very funny and features a Finnish family struggling through disasters to get to a wedding.  The Spanish production That Wasn't Me was the hardest to stomach, being about child soldiers and serving up a graphic rape scene which I wasn't expecting, sitting there with my seventeen-year-old special needs daughter.

The film that continues to live with me is Just Before Losing Everything which takes a seemingly ordinary day in small-town France and gradually heightens the tension as a woman's break for safety from her abusive husband leads to and through her workplace.  The understated performances and the ambiguous ending are haunting, as is the knowledge that this is happening around the corner, every day.

So, while truth and beauty cannot removed the sting of a relentless winter, nor the heartbreak of a young girl who clearly didn't want to go back to school, I can only imagine how bleak March would have been without some helpings of food for the soul.

Perhaps it's better not to imagine it.

Talking about the weather, but not with Mark Twain

Late January 2013

Late January 2014

So last week, I was picking my way down the hill from the library.  It was bloody cold, but no colder than it normally gets in January in Ottawa.  It occurred to me that it was exactly a year since they started knocking down the house next door.  How do I know this?  I have a blog; try to keep up.  I limped across the street -- I've had a sore knee since before Christmas -- dug out my phone with my frozen fingers and snapped what they've been blasting, stapling, hammering, drilling for the past twelve months.  It now towers over the surrounding houses like a small office block and the workers have mostly moved inside to add those luxury details breathlessly described on the posters on the mesh fence.  I gather the condos will be ready by March, though I doubt I'll see our posh neighbours.  There are several similar structures springing up (well, lumbering up… or concreting up…) and you never see anyone actually living in these places.  The lights are on, but no one's home.  I mentioned this to a gentleman who had paused last winter to watch the blasting and digging and he said:  "That's because they're out late working so they can afford the damn place!"  He probably had something there.

As Charles Dudley Warner once remarked: Everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.  (Yes, I know you think Mark Twain said that; he actually quoted Warner during a lecture.)

Here in Hades, everybody complains about the weather, but no one actually remembers it.  Last January, we had rather a lot of snow and some pretty nasty wind chills.  I know this because a)  I was doing a NaBloPoMo that month; and b) I took quite a few pictures while out walking the Accent Snob.   This week, a cabbie told me it was unusually cold and he couldn't remember it being quite this bad.

Actually it isn't.  I know the media has been having a field day over the idea of a polar vortex, but no matter how weird this stuff may seem in the United States, it's what we call "winter" here in Hades. Yet Ottawans forget this every year.  Last year, they were howling because it was cold and it "doesn't usually get this cold…"  This was probably because the previous winter of 2011-2012, we had a freak humidex, if you please, in March, resulting in an unusually prolonged spring.  (Hadean springs usually last two weeks, tops.)

Anyway, I'm trying to make a point.  I was here last winter and this winter (and for a dozen bloody winters before that).  It gets cold here.  Remember that and quit complaining, unless you've got any solutions.

Running out of light

With the sun disappearing at 4:30 in the afternoon, it has been two weeks or so since I have taken the dog to the park. Usually the day has fled by the time the Resident Fan Boy gets home from work and I've been choosing shorter walks around the block in the dark.  This afternoon, I set off at before twilight. I see stepladders. Many lights have gone up today; ours went up Friday. The Resident Fan Boy managed to blow a breaker with a rogue coloured light, then, panicking, cut the power to the computer, so I lost what I was working on. I was livid, of course, but better to discover a weak breaker now, I guess…

Along the Rideau River, I'm startled by the unobstructed view. I don't know why I should be so surprised; it's an annual thing, after all, but the last time I was here, there were still quite a few leaves.

The light is going fast. Looking back at the houses, I can see what appears to be this year's fashion in house decoration -- large stars dominating the side of a house, or taking up an entire picture window. The bike path is gone, buried until March or even April. I pick my way along where the dirt path by the river bank is now tightly packed snow, beaten down by the feet of other dog-walkers, urban hikers, and determined joggers. It's knobby and knurled; slick and shiny. I walk in the snow at the edges of the path, which staggers my gait, but provides a more reasonable foothold.

The Accent Snob is now pulling at the lead, a bit nerve-wracking where there are patches of ice, and it's harder to lock the retractable lease in heavy mittens, but he's right. Time to go home. It's dark, and elder daughter came home for Christmas today.

The pendulum is the pits

When January began, we were still in the midst of the twelve days of Christmas.  The snow people made by neighbourhood children grew under layers of new snow.  I can't ever remember snowmen lasting beyond a day or two.  These lasted for weeks.  However, the pitiless pendulum of the new year has been swinging back and forth between piles of white, and pewter freezing rain.

Last week, I carefully picked my way around the slick streaks and solid slippery puddles along Iris Crescent and saw that the cheerful and slightly askance couple who seemed to be cautiously watching to see what the Accent Snob would do last month had been reduced to emaciated pillars this month.

The pendulum swung again, and a truck-cum-snow-plough was trapped on Bertrand Street one Saturday evening.  Someone had drawn a triumphant smile in the blade-devouring drift.

This week, we've had hip-high hills of white washed away (nearly) by rain which was dried (nearly) by howling winds this morning before the temperatures dropped, freezing treacherous smears across the sidewalks.  And we've still got February to come.  March and April usually aren't that much better here in Hades.

This is my tenth NaBloPoMo.  I began with February 2009, followed by September that same year. In 2010,  I did March, August, and November. I blogged for the whole months of April and October in 2011, and my NaBloPo-months for 2012 were May and July.  For almost each month in which I've participated, I've gone through my diaries to see what patterns emerged over my years of journalling.  Looking over past Januarys was rather depressing.  It's such a damn dark month, mostly in various hues of grey.  I seem to have had rather more friends die in January than other times of the year, but I don't feel like checking, thank-you very much.  I suppose January has usually been a time for facing reality for me.  Too bad the light is so poor.

 I plan to NaBloPoMo in June.  I'll still be blogging in the meantime, but not nearly as regularly. I'm tired, and there are things that need doing before I come out swinging again.

Sidewalk smarts

I made a quick trip down to the mailbox to mail what I hope are the last of this season's Christmas cards. (Fat hope. Invariably something comes in during the twelve days of Christmas which makes me moan "Oh damn!" in that charitable holiday style I have and hastily fill out another card and envelope.)

Within seconds, I'm slowing down and picking my way over and, where possible, around stretches of black and white ice, marvelling at my fellow pedestrians striding by, some on phones, some absorbed in texting. I only see one of them slip, but it doesn't seem to be an edifying experience.

I manage my errand and the Resident Fan Boy helps me force Yaktrax over the soles of my sneakers for the long trek up the hill to the library. I may not have street smarts, but I have sidewalk smarts and trembling on the brink of my thirteenth winter in this godforsaken city, I know there will wide, solid, slippery streams frozen in mid-flow from the driveways intersecting the pavement. Yaktrax may not save me there (Ice on a slant? Are you mad?); I'll walk around that, thank-you, but it will help me stand a chance -- literally -- on those treacherous stretches in front of condo-buildings where the inhabitants resolutely expect the city to clear and salt for them. I learned this the hard way but then, I got all my sidewalk smarts the hard way.

It's a bit nerve-wracking making my way up a hill that is just short of a kilometre in the icy dark, juggling a bag of library books, a bag of poop, and the jittery Accent Snob who isn't that fond of walks in ideal daylight weather. I spend the uphill trek crankily snapping at the dog as he attempts to convince me to go back by frequent stops to look longingly over his shoulder, and the downhill trek compensating for the inexorable pull of gravity and the slightly more exorable pull of the Accent Snob who recognizes that I've finally come to my senses and turned homeward. I compensate by walking like Groucho Marx, knees bent, slouching gait, the whole effect helped, I'm sure, by the cigar-sized flashlight I'm holding out to make out ice patches in the dim glow of the posh Rockcliffe Park street lights. Also the moist gleam of my philtrum, resulting from my runny nose.

There are beautiful Christmas lights on the way, but it's difficult to appreciate them under these circumstances. A winter storm is on its way and the trees are beginning to moan ominously. I just pray it is actually a winter storm. If it's more bloody freezing rain, I just may be more in favour of the end of the world which is supposedly occurring at about 6 am our time.

See you later. Maybe.

Go West

And so this is Christmas. Well, it's really Advent, but Christmas stuff is getting in full gear, including younger daughter's school's "holiday concert" which, of course, has nothing to do with either Christmas or Advent, since we have a mix of Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, and non-practising types. Fair enough.

(Actually, what really used to amuse me was the situation at the public elementary elder and younger daughter attended which featured a holiday concert and un soir de Noël for the French Immersion students which invited involvement from the English Stream French classes. The former was scrupulously secular, and the latter blithely consisted of carols, presumably because it was somehow politically correct to warble Christian ditties in French.)

Younger daughter was all set to perform Macavity from Cats, as she did TS Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats for her poetry project earlier in the fall. However, yesterday at the bus stop, she struggled for the words - a sure sign that something is desperately important to her - and announced she wanted to do something "Christmassy" instead.

I dropped her off at her voice teacher's apartment where it was decided that "White Christmas" might work. Despite the "C" word, it's a very secular song. I hurried off down to Lees Station to waylay a bus, pondering what people perceive as Christmas music today.

When, for example, did "My Favourite Things" become a Christmas song? Sure, it mentions "silv'ry white winters" and "brown paper packages", but those things happen without Christmas, and besides, The Sound of Music is set in the summer. With Nazis.

"Jingle Bells" is often described as a Christmas carol. It's a) not a carol; b) not about Christmas. Same deal for "Winter Wonderland", "Sleigh Ride" and "Jingle Bell Rock". Check the lyrics. They're songs about winter. You could sing them in February. "Baby, It's Cold Outside"??? C'mon, people!

Then, of course, there's "Santa Baby". Okay, Christmas is involved. But still, it's not a carol. And Marilyn Monroe never recorded it. I've got nothing against these ditties, y'understand, I just think they're radically mis-categorized.

I gazed out the bus window, wrapped up in these thoughts and only vaguely aware of the salmon-coloured sunset. Wait a minute. The sun sets in the west....

I suddenly realized I was barreling west along the Queensway. Our house is to the northeast of downtown Ottawa, nowhere near the Queensway. I had absent-mindedly boarded a 101 Bayshore bus. After a second's disoriented panic, I noted that the automated voice had called out "Catherine/O'Connor" and hastily made my way to the exit. From there, I scurried another block west to Bank Street, and peered into the glare of the headlights in search of a #1 bus home, while Elton John's "Rocket Man" played on CBC Radio Two in my earbuds. (Also not a Christmas song, despite the bit about Mars being cold as hell.)

♪And I think it's gonna be a long, long time...♪

It wasn't, really; I got home a few minutes before the Resident Fan Boy and younger daughter....

Too bad younger daughter has opted out of Macavity. I think her version would have been dynamite, although probably minus the swivels and wiggling you'll see in the DVD version:

The last day of winter

A very wise old woman was fond of saying to me: "March has the first day of spring...but it doesn't have the last day of winter." And I do know better, as we move into the dying days (possibly weeks or months) of our tenth winter in Hades, strange El Nino season which saw rather a lot of our usual snow being sidetracked south and dumped on unsuspecting American cities. You can talk all you like about spring in Ottawa, a blink-and-you'll-miss-it affair in the best of times, but only deluded fools put out their bedding plants before the Victoria Day weekend in late May. You never know when a hibernal whim will dump snow in June. It's happened.Still, the Resident Fan Boy came home from church waxing lyrically about the beauty of the day, and as I was planning to gorge myself on tortilla chips while watching the Oscars, I decided to head out myself.

And by Ottawa standards, it was quite a lovely day. For March. I saw the hallmarks of pre-spring in this part of the world. The neighbourhood is lopsided. Yards on the north and east sides of the street are nearly snow-free, or sporting large, slug-shaped lumps of snow. The lawns on the south and west street-sides are still in winter's grip, as yet out of reach of the sun's lengthening rays. The filthy, grey mounds retreat to reveal lawn ornaments at odd angles, litter, and piles of doggy-do.But down by the Rideau River, streams of greenish water seem to flow against the current, as long gashes appear in the treacherous ice. (We seem to have had more than our usual falling-through-the-ice-and drownings out on the Ottawa River. Usually it's someone on a skidoo, but late month, two people had fatal accidents while driving trucks over the frozen river. Both were long-time residents who have been driving over the ice for years, but this year's ice was thinner and melted much sooner.)So I picked my way gingerly along the pathway on the bank, defiantly wearing street-shoes on the agar-like slush. A jogger, similarly-shod, loped past me with nary a slip.As I searched for somewhere less sloppy to stroll, I saw a young girl ahead, at the crest of the hill that leads down from the playground. She had a saucer slider and was taking advantage of what has to be the last weekend that any sort of tobogganing is possible. In fact, the Resident Fan Boy and I noticed less of a crowding in the buses and museums this weekend, possibly because many families are seizing the final opportunity to head for the ski-slopes.

Is it really the last winter weekend? Do I dare put the snow-boots and parkas in storage?Naaaah. Victoria Day is only, what, eleven weeks away?

A Clockwork Grapefruit

These are the signs of the approach of spring in Hades:

1. Dust and the taste of salt in your mouth. With neither snow nor glaciers to hold them down, the gravel, sand, and salt rise unimpeded into the air. This heralds...

2. The unbelievably loud roar of street cleaners mowing up and down the streets between midnight and 3 am. Even our double-glazed, airtight casement windows fail to hold out the din.


3. Chunky rivers dotted with motorboats of ice wranglers. We have special machines that roll out on the ice to begin breaking it up, but I missed them this year.

4. Cars, trucks, and buses brushing by pedestrians in frighteningly close proximity. After six months of being shielded from the road by glacial trenches and palisades of snow, one feels positively naked and exposed to traffic. Rear-view mirrors appear to whistle past one's ears.

5. Cardinals.


6. In a related development, a bird feeder that now needs refilling again after hanging unnibbled for more than a month. I don't know if the birds that were here in January found somewhere warm to hang out for February or simply got frozen to the trees. Either they or some new birds are now busily ripping through my seed supply.

7. The schoolyard is a vast expanse of glossy steel-coloured ice. On warmer days, this is very slick, and on even warmer days, it's a hazardous swamp with a lubricious and perilous bottom. Watch the ankle-biters sink shrieking from view.

8. The glaciers and piles of filthy discarded snow, resembling frozen tsunamis and other bad choices for surfing, are retreating centimetre by centimetre revealing perfectly preserved dog droppings and other delights.

9. Native Ottawans are now insisting on wearing open-toed shoes and sandals, despite - 11 Celsius temperatures. Because it's spring, dammit.

10. Blood-curdling screams from the bathroom to summon The Resident Fan Boy who has been doing his morning puttering in the kitchen.
 No, wait. That's not a sign of impending spring; that was me yesterday morning.

 This is because I glanced in the mirror while wrestling with my contact lenses and saw something like this:Since brain injury has been a bit of a theme at this house for the past six months, my immediate thoughts were: Omigod-omigod-omigod, I've having a stroke; there's cranial bleeding; my brain is leaking away; I don't want to spend the whole bloody day in emergency.... However, it seemed too much of a coincidence that I had just been to the ophthalmologist the day before and had those pupil-dilating eye drops. A quick google revealed a host of horrible things that could be happening to me, but also mentioned that anisocoria (a pretty name for the condition that makes you look somewhat like Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange) is also a fairly common reaction to eyedrops. Mind you, I've never had this reaction before after many many years of taking my nearsighted eyeballs for a checkup, but I decided to hold off the panicked phone call until I'd taken younger daughter to school. If I'd really had my wits about me, I'd have only made up one eye to creep out the Rockcliffe mums, but my sense of humour was somewhat diminished that morning. When I got home, my pupils were nearly the same size and after an hour they were back to normal and I decided not to bother the doctor.

So the evening found me relatively panic-free, surveying a television schedule with little to offer. Thank God for the Turner Classic Movie channel. In between movies, they showed a delightful documentary of Chuck Jones remembering his childhood, illustrated with animated version of his rough drawings.

This got me to thinking of some of my favourite animated shorts. In my pre-mum days, I used to attend animation festivals regularly. I only had a faint recollection of one of my very favourites, in which two married animators took a soundtrack of their daughters talking and playing and transformed it into a luminous cartoon. And I found it! Here's "Windy Day" by John and Faith Hubley:
Another one I loved is one that seems to have vanished, a cartoon fantasy set to a 1930's recording of Fred Astaire singing "Puttin' on the Ritz" which is turned into a flight of fantasy with quite a bit of eroticism. I think it's from the early '80s. Let me know if you recognize it.

Finally, a delightful cartoon from then largely unknown Tim Burton:And yes, that is the glorious and classy Vincent Price himself narrating.

Now that my pupils are the same size, I don't feel quite like I would fit in perfectly with that last item. Now, if you'll excuse me, it's time to go out and get grazed by passing cars again...

Further extraneous proof that I am losing my mind

It's ice-cream-headache weather, cold enough that your head feels as if you've been downing chocolate ripple too quickly. Wind chill in the -20's; the school is surrounded by a shiny moat of smooth, lethal ice. I cross it gingerly on my YakTrax, but young daughter wails in fear and I creep back to take her hand. It takes us five minutes to work our way around the school.

The sidewalks are clear, save for the odd ice flow, so I bounce slightly on the steel springs criss-crossing the soles of my feet and a suddenly hear a high pip-pip-pip, a sound I haven't heard since the autumn. My gaze travels up the trunk of a naked maple at the corner and perched atop is a blaze of crimson. The first cardinal of the year. It must be March.

Into the house with the glow of organization that I've been cultivating over the past couple of days: tracking my time usage, making lists, updating the calendars. Now, I carefully bag my contact lens paraphernalia. In preparation for this morning's appointment with the ophthalmologist, I've eschewed eye makeup, so I look more worn and washed-out than usual, but if I'm going to have streaks of yellow pupil-dilating solution down my cheek, no one will take much pleasure from looking at me anyway. Checking the time, I waltz down to the bus stop; catch just the right bus.

As I stride confidently to the receptionist's desk at 10 on the dot, I suddenly remember I've left my care card at home. I apologetically explain this to said receptionist who keeps calling me Carol, then directs me to another desk. They direct me back. This time she sorts out my name and informs me that my appointment is March 23rd. "But I had a confirmation call," I falter, "and I returned the call." As she explains that this couldn't have been from her, a little voice says timidly from somewhere near the top of my head: This is Dr Tabor. The message was from Dr. Martin. Isn't he your dentist?

The receptionist has evidently seen the penny drop, and suppresses a smile as I beat a hasty retreat in search of a payphone. The dentist, whose office is a fifteen-minute walk from my house, fits me in half an hour later. My teeth look great...for an bird-brain...